8:10:00 AM
 |
| Close-up detail of man holding new iPhone 5 smart phone showing screen with many apps |
Battery drain has always been one of smartphone users' biggest bugbears. Former Apple Genius Bar worker Scotty Loveless offers tips on how to extend the iPhone's battery life
Loveless said that Usage time should be significantly lower than Standby time, unless you have been using your device every second you have had it unplugged. If this is not the case, you have a problem. You can futher test this by making a note of the Usage and Standby times, and then putting the device to sleep for five minutes. When you come back, take note of the change in times. If your device is sleeping properly, the Standby time should have increased by five minutes and your Usage time by less than a minute. If your Usage time has risen by more than a minute, something is keeping your device from sleeping properly. The Facebook app for iPhone consumes a huge amount of memory and processing power, even when you're not using it. Turning off background app refresh can actually cause your battery percentage to increase. Background App Refresh was a feature added in iOS 7, to allow apps to check for new content and download updates even when they're not running. However, it can use up a lot of power, and you don't necessarily need it running for every app that supports it. Most people tell you that closing your apps will save your battery life because it keeps the apps from running in the background. However, this can actually make your battery life worse if you do it on a regular basis. By closing the app, you take the app out of the phone's RAM, so when you open it again your device has to load it back into memory all over again. All of that loading and unloading puts more stress on your device than just leaving it alone. The truth is, apps in your multitasking menu are not running in the background at all: iOS freezes them where you last left the app. Unless you have enabled Background App Refresh, most of your apps are not allowed to run in the background. Push email allows your device to receive instant notifications every time you get an email. It is great if you need to know when every single email comes in, but does impact battery if configured incorrectly. Try changing the setting to fetch emails every hour, thirty minutes, or fifteen minutes and see if the drain stops. You could also trying disabling Push on individual accounts if you have multiple. Every time you get a push notification, your phone wakes from sleep for 5 to 10 seconds to light up your screen and wait for your potential action upon each notification. If you receive 50 notifications during the day and never act on them, that will add 4 to 8 minutes to your Usage time. People that are anxious about their iOS device battery life are constantly checking it to see the percentage and how much it has dropped from the last time they checked it. So if you check your device twice as much, simply to check on the battery life, you are essentially halving the time your device will last. When the iPhone detects that you are in a place of low signal, it will increase the power to the antenna in order to stay connected enough to receive calls and maintain a data connection. This will destroy your battery life if you are constantly in a location with one bar or no service at all. If you still need to receive calls there is nothing you can do, but if your service is so poor that you can't receive calls anyway, turn on Airplane mode. You can then turn Wi-fi back on if you need to. Apple has rolled out a new 'Extended Battery Life Test' for all iOS technicians that allows them to see a detailed report of battery usage on your device. If your physical battery is defective, the technicians can replace it for free if your iOS device is under warranty.
From: telegraph.co.uk
