Maximizing Your iPhone's Battery Settings

Extend Your Battery’s Lifespan with These Proven Strategies

The battery life of your iPhone is one of its most essential features. No matter what you use your iPhone for, it becomes useless if the battery is dead.

In the 21st century, we all feel anxiety when we see that charge indicator hit the 20% mark.

Our phones will continue to have more features that make our lives easier but hurt battery life, so it is up to us to ensure we do everything we can to extend the time our charge lasts. These tips and tricks will help you extend your battery life and monitor your battery for the best performance possible.

Optimize Your Settings: What Should Be Adjusted?

Auto-Brightness

Using auto-lock and darkness mode will help dim your phone’s screen and reduce light output, automatically saving battery life.

Close Battery-Draining Apps

You can go to Settings > Battery, which will tell you which apps use the most battery power. Once you have those apps identified, ensure they are completely closed out after each time you use them.

Lower Audio Volume

This one may surprise many, but your audio volume will drain your battery. If you are playing music from your phone, consider switching to headphones or at least turning the volume down.

Only Important Notifications

Push notifications are the silent enemy of the battery, and most of us get more than we need. If you are getting non-essential notifications like push notifications for games, consider heading to the settings and disabling those notifications.

Only Features You Use

The iPhone undoubtedly has cool features, but they are not for everyone. If you don’t use some features that iPhone is well-known for, like Siri, AirDrop, and Location Services, you should disable them. These features are always waiting in the background for you to call them up, so they are a constant drain on your battery.

Stay on Top of Updates

Apple is aware of how vital battery life is for a phone, so they are always looking for ways to improve the iOS to save battery. There are some instances where operating systems may do the opposite and negatively affect battery life. Apple is usually quick to correct these issues with patches, so ensuring your phone is up to date will help preserve the battery.

Disable Background App Refresh

Ever since the iOS 7, apps have refreshed their data in the background when allowed, which is a consistent battery drain. If you are rocking enough apps on your phone, their combined refresh rate can drain your juice quickly. To shut this feature down, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and disable it.

Use Low Power Mode

The low power mode is a feature that preserves your battery life when your phone reaches 20% charge by disabling some battery-draining features. Switching to low power mode will help to preserve your battery until the next charge and elongate the total life of your battery.

Monitor Battery Usage

The best way to get real-time data about how your iPhone uses its battery is to see what your phone says about it. Going to Setting > Battery will show you everything you need to know about how your battery is used, including which apps use the most battery, how long your screen is open, and your battery charge throughout the day for the last ten days.

Best Battery Charging Habits

Charging Optimization

Overcharging your battery can lead to poor battery health, which is why you should have optimized battery charging on. To do this, go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health and scroll to the bottom. When optimized battery charging is turned on, it will only charge your phone to 80% at night and wait until right before you wake up to charge it the last 20%, so it doesn’t overcharge the battery overnight.

Use a Quality Charger

If Apple had its way, people would only use their chargers, but you don’t have to have an Apple-branded charger to ensure the health of your battery. However, you should use a quality charger and the correct cable as inexpensive generic chargers can harm your battery and even the charging port itself.

For more information checkout our other article: Swollen Battery In Your iPhone

Charge in Small Spurts

The lithium-ion batteries that iPhones use like to be charged in small spurts, so charging your phone for 5% here and 10% there is actually good for your battery. What’s not good is keeping your phone charged over 80% or under 20% for too long. Letting your battery die completely is not good because it reduces the number of cycles left on its Lithium-ion cell.

Monitor Your Battery Health

The iPhone’s battery health management system is an amazing addition that puts all your data at your fingertips. By monitoring everything that is going on with your battery, from the apps that are draining it to its peak usage hours, you can create a plan to monitor and optimize the health and longevity of your iPhone battery.

Additional Reading: iPhone Battery Health: What You Need to Know

How to Use Low Power Mode to Extend Your iPhone’s Battery Life

Introduced with iOS 9, this mode is a game-changer for extending your iPhone’s battery life. It reduces display brightness, optimizes device performance, and minimizes system animations. So, when your battery level reaches 20% or 10%, simply tap to activate Low Power Mode and keep your phone going for longer.

How Background App Refresh Affects iPhone Battery Life

Next up, let’s address the impact of Background App Refresh on your iPhone’s battery life. After you close an app, it may continue to run in the background, checking for new updates and content, which can drain battery life. To avoid this, simply disable Background App Refresh completely or just for specific apps. It won’t affect how the app works, but it will help conserve battery life.

Which iPhone Apps or Processes are the Most Battery-Intensive?

Let’s talk about the most battery-intensive iPhone apps or processes. Unsurprisingly, social media apps including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are among the top 20 apps that drain the most battery life. To conserve battery, simply turn off Background App Refresh for certain applications.

What Does Wireless Charging Do to a Battery?

Contrary to popular belief, wireless charging may be better than traditional plug-in charging. Wireless charging does create more heat than traditional charging, which is not optimal for a Lithium-ion battery; however, it doesn’t cause enough heat to damage the battery. In addition, wireless charging provides a more stable current and charges more slowly, so it is better for overnight charging.

Keep Your Battery “going and going”

What it really comes down to is that if your battery won’t hold a charge, your iPhone is just a very expensive paperweight.

The great news is there are so many ways to take care of your battery that you don’t have to do all of them. If it is important to you to have apps refresh in the background, you can take other actions like dimming your screen and turning down the volume.

The most important thing you can do is to regularly check your iPhone’s battery health and see if there are areas you can improve on.

If you think your battery is defective or has already sustained too much damage and won’t hold a charge, don’t worry, we can help. We can replace your iPhone battery and give your favorite iPhone a new life.