The frustration of a dead battery will be familiar to every iPhone owner. But what can you do to avoid it, other than use your phone less?
Apple is good at squeezing maximum performance out of the hardware in the iPhone and that's one of the reasons that the iPhone's battery is comparatively small. The first iPhone had a 1400mAh battery, and seven years later the iPhone 6 has a 1,810mAh battery, although the iPhone 6 Plus has a whopping 2,910mAh offering.
Many of the current Android flagships have batteries rated over 3000mAh, but then they have much bigger displays - the 6 Plus aside, of course. But that doesn't mean we still don't struggle to keep our iPhones going for longer, no matter how big the battery pack.
Until the next big leap in battery or charging technology comes along, we'll have to rely on smarts to get the most out of our iPhones. Here are a few simple tips you can follow to get a whole lot more juice from your Apple smartphone.
1. Keep an eye on signal strength
The biggest culprit for rapid battery drain is often a weak signal, but there isn't a great deal you can do about that. If you're in an area with a poor signal then you might consider switching Airplane mode on, which stops the constant searching that sucks the life from your phone.
You should also always use Wi-Fi instead of cellular data whenever possible too, as that offers a more stable connection and will stop all that battery-abusing searching for a signal.
2. Turn off app notifications
Some apps will spam you with pointless news. How many of the notifications you get do you actually want to see? In most cases, very few.
Every one of them is sucking down some battery life, so cut them off at the source. Go to settings > notification centre and tap on any apps you don't want notifications from. Then choose 'none' under the alert style, and turn 'badge icon' and 'sounds' off.
3. Change display settings
Your display is costly to power, so you want it to shut down quickly when you aren't using it.
Go to Settings > General > Auto-lock and see if you can live with a shorter time before the screen auto-locks.
You should also head to Settings > Wallpaper & brightness and turn 'Auto-brightness' off to save some battery. Set the brightness as low as you can and only adjust it up when needed and you'll save a decent chunk of power – although this might mean you can't always see your phone screen in direct sunlight.
4. Stop the animations
You don't need dynamic backgrounds and parallax, '3D' effects. They're fun but they're munching your power. Pick a static image or a favourite photo in Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness, then choose 'Wallpaper' and turn 'Reduce Motion' on in Settings > General > Accessibility.
5. Reduce background refreshing
People imagine that swiping apps closed in the multitasking menu is saving power, but you really need to be taking a look in Settings > General > Background App refresh to really make a difference.
Allowing apps to refresh themselves like this is a big drain on your battery. Go down the list and turn off everything you don't need - Facebook in particular can drain your battery really quickly. These apps still refresh when you actually load them up, which is a lot more efficient for your battery.
Apple Battery Tips: Stop background refreshing, get your email manually and check your location settings
6. Get email manually
There's some argument about the benefits of push email (arriving when sent) versus fetch (the phone checks at pre-agreed intervals), and it really depends on how much email you get and how often you have it syncing.
Push should only send from the server when a mail comes in, and it will be more power efficient than checking every five minutes with fetch, but if you get a lot of email then push could drain the battery faster than fetch with a slower refresh time of an hour.
Assuming you're only going to check your email once every couple of hours, getting it manually is going to save you power over both options… but you'll have to actually remember to do it!
7. Kill location tracking
Unless you're actually using the Maps app it's debatable how useful location tracking is for you. What isn't up for debate is the fact that it eats your battery.
Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and turn them all off, or just select apps you don't want tracking you.
You should also look in Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services, and think about turning off 'Frequent Locations', 'Location-Based iAds', and maybe 'Diagnostics & Usage'.
8. Keep it cool
Heat is really bad for batteries. Don't leave your iPhone lying in direct sunlight. If it gets really hot when you're gaming or when you're charging it, then remove the case, if you use one. Or only play Infinity Blade 3 in the freezer. Your call.
9. Update selectively
Generally speaking updates are going to bring improvements, but it doesn't hurt to check the feedback from others before you pull the trigger on a software update.
For iOS newness, you should check in Settings > General > Software Update to alter the automatic settings. Don't let your content update automatically either.
Go to Settings > iTunes & App Store and consider turning all automatic downloads off. That way you can choose when to update and make sure to use Wi-Fi or hook up to your PC to save power.
10. Turn Siri shortcut off
You'll find the raise to speak option in Settings > General > Siri and if you aren't using it, then make sure you turn it off, because that sensor check is going to impact on the battery as it's constantly looking for your face touching the phone.
11. Turn off vibrations
In Settings > Sounds you can toggle 'Vibrate On Ring' to 'Off'. You can also go to Settings > Sounds > New Mail > Vibration and set it to 'None'. This disables the motor, and that movement really hurts your power.
Finally, go to Settings > Notification Center > Mail and tap on the accounts you use, then choose Alerts and set 'Vibration' to none to really cut down the problem.
12. Cut the cloud
Do you need everything to sync with iCloud? Go into Settings > iCloud and take a look at the list. Cloud syncing eats power and data, so it's worth turning off anything you aren't bothered about – plus you won't find you've suddenly run out of storage and are constantly getting your iPhone moaning at you about it.
You can make sure this only updates when the phone is locked and charging - a good tip if you want to get the best of both worlds.
