If you own a cell phone or smart phone and have been having problems with short battery life, take a look at these tips to extend the life of your battery. These tips may extend the life of the battery between charges and may also extend the total life of the battery” />
If you use a current model of a smart phone or cell phone, the chances are that it uses either a lithium-ion (Li-ion or LIB) or a lithium-ion polymer (Li-poly) battery. Lithium-ion polymer batteries evolved from lithium-ion batteries and are used in most smart phones. Li-poly batteries are more adaptable to a variety of shapes and can sustain a greater number of charge-discharge cycles.
These batteries can be expensive to replace and typically cost $30 or more. It could therefore be a good idea to take some simple steps to extend the life of the battery. Here are some of our best tips. You will have to read the manual for each phone to determine how to deal with each cell phone or smart phone feature that may need to be re-configured.
- Don’t charge the battery every day. Li-ion batteries can sustain about 300 charging cycles, while Li-poly technology averages about 500 cycles. Let your smart phone battery discharge at least below the 50% mark before you charge it again and then charge it to 100%.
- Keep the battery cool. Heat degrades the life of the battery. Don’t keep a cell phone in your pocket or leave it on a car dash or hot car seat in the sun. It is better to carry it in a purse of clip it to a belt. Body heat is enough to slowly degrade the life of the battery.
- Lower the LCD screen brightness. The brighter the screen setting, the more power the LCD consumes.
- Turn off location services such as GPS if you are not using them. They consume power while coordinating signals to calculate your position.
- Don’t retrieve e-mail automatically. The monitoring services suck up battery juice. Retrieve your e-mails using a manual setting. If it is important to monitor some e-mail accounts, most smart phones allow you to turn automatic retrieval services on or off for each e-mail account.
- If you do not use it, turn off Wi-fi. You can always turn it back on if you need to use Wi-fi to surf the web. The use of Wi-fi to surf the web typically draws less battery juice while surfing, but has the opposite effect when it is constantly looking for Wi-fi connections. Just turn it on when you need to use it.
- Turn off Bluetooth services if you are not using it.
- Run the battery through a complete charge cycle once per month. These means letting the battery discharge to zero and then charging it up to 100%.
These simple tips may keep your battery going longer and save you some money in the long run. Check your phone manufacturer’s web site for tips specifically related to extending the life of the battery in your phone. Apple offer a range of good tips for extending the battery life of the iPhone. Your smart phone’s manufacturer very likely offers similar tips.