How to make the most out of your phone's battery life

Mobile phone batteries are improving all the time. It seems that each new phone has a little more life in it compared to the last one, making for a better and longer user experience, every time. That being said, there’s always room for more power; with each new app, there’s a new drain on battery life.

At giffgaff, we want you to get the most out of your device, so here are our hacks for getting the most from your phone’s battery life.

Set a short timeout screen time

You are able to choose how long your phone’s screen stays lit up since you last ‘tapped’ it; this can be adjusted in your device’s display settings. The minimum timeout setting for most mobiles is 15 seconds, usually with a maximum of two minutes. Every second literally counts when it comes to screen timeouts, so set it to the minimum amount of time you can have.

Turn off non-essential notifications

The likes of texts and notifications from certain apps are essential and you should be notified as soon as possible. However, do you need your phone to buzz and flash up every time someone challenges you to a new game on Words With Friends? How about every time Tinder lets you start swiping again?

Some things can wait, so save your battery some juice by turning off notifications from apps and features that aren’t urgent.

Adjust your screen brightness

Different users have different needs when it comes to screen brightness. If your eyesight isn’t great, you will likely need to set the phone’s brightness quite high; on the other hand, if you have perfect vision, or if your eyes are sensitive, you will need the brightness levels to be a little dimmer.

However bright you do or don’t need your screen to be, having it set to a lower level will save a great deal of power because the brightness won’t be draining your battery.

Kill the vibes

Vibration is great for receiving messages and calls, but the vibration setting is a silent killer. The fact is, the vibration setting on your phone can actually use more power than a ringtone, because it takes more energy to shake the phone than it does to use the sound system, which is only a small amount of vibration.

If you don’t need them, disable the vibrations to save a great deal of power.

Turn off background apps

It’s great to be able to multitask on your mobile phone, so having more than one app open at any one time can be a fantastic timesaver. However, don’t forget to turn these apps off when you are no longer using them; leaving them running in the background can be a huge drain on your battery.