Extend the battery life of your iPhone by adopting good practices and good reflexes.
The iPhone may be a great smartphone, its main flaw, and this for years, is its lack of autonomy compared to some of its competitors on Android. After a few months of use, it is very often difficult to last a full day without going through the recharge box.
However, by following a few simple actions and adopting good practices, it is possible to extend the autonomy of your iPhone. However, it will be necessary to find the best compromise to keep a usable device.
1. Use power saving mode
The first thing to do if you are worried about running out of battery is to activate the Power saving mode built into iOS. Introduced in iOS 10, it temporarily disables receiving emails, Hey Siri, background refresh, automatic downloads, some visual effects, as well as saving images to iCloud. It also reduces the automatic screen lock to 30 seconds.
To activate it, open Settings and go to the Battery menu. You can also activate it quickly from the Control Center by adding the command to it if it is not already there.
To do this, open Settings and then, in Control Center, choose Customize Controls. Add Power Saving Mode to the list of commands to include in Control Center.
2. Adjust the screen brightness
The iPhone screen is the main source of power consumption. Apple’s smartphone is equipped with a light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen brightness according to lighting conditions.
To check if the setting is correctly activated, open Settings, then in General, enter Accessibility and then in the Adapt display menu.
You can also choose to deactivate it to manage the screen brightness level yourself, from the Control Center, or from the Settings> Brightness and display menu.
3. Reduce the time before automatic locking
Another important point to take into account is the duration of the automatic iPhone lock. When you put your iPhone back down without locking it after using it, the screen will stay on for a while.
Make sure that the time before automatic locking is the shortest. Open Settings, enter Brightness & display, then Auto-lock and select 30 seconds.
4. Turn off notifications
The multiplication of notifications received on the iPhone also contributes significantly to overconsumption of the battery. Sort out and keep only those that you consider to be really useful.
To do this, open Settings and enter the Notifications menu. iOS does not allow you to turn off all notifications for your apps for good, so you’ll have to enter the menu for each to turn them off.
5. Turn off background refresh
On iOS, some apps may continue to update their content in the background when you are not using them, and therefore consume unnecessary power.
To limit background refresh, or to turn it off completely, open Settings, go to General and go to the Background refresh menu.
In the Background refresh submenu, you can choose to keep the setting active depending on the type of connection established (Wi-Fi or Cellular) or disable the feature.
You’ll also be able to manually turn off background refresh for apps that you don’t feel need to update their data when you’re not using them.
6. Turn off Hey Siri
Siri can be very handy for quickly launching a song or sending a message to a few without grabbing the iPhone thanks to the Hey Siri feature which allows the iPhone to automatically detect each time you call the iOS voice assistant. .
If you use very little, if at all, Hey Siri, it is possible to deactivate the function. Open Settings, enter Siri and search and turn off Detect “Hey Siri”.
7. Reduce the use of visual effects
By dint of use, we no longer really pay attention to the various animations used by iOS, in particular to create an effect of depth. Reducing these different effects can have a positive impact on iPhone battery life.
To reduce animations, open Settings, go to General, and go to the Accessibility menu. Then go to Reduce animations and activate the feature.
8. Turn off automatic downloads
Automatically downloading updates or new purchases made from another device can become an energy drain, especially if they’re made with cellular data. To avoid this, it is better to turn off all automatic downloads on your device.
Open Settings, enter the iTunes Store and App Store menu, and turn off automatic downloads for all categories. You can also take the opportunity to turn off automatic playback of app preview videos in the App Store.
9. Disable automatic email retrieval
Do you really need your iPhone to automatically retrieve your emails at regular intervals? If the answer is no, open iOS Settings and go to the Passwords & Accounts menu.
Then enter New data and deactivate the Push function. If you want to keep the push for certain mailboxes or for calendar events, you can change the recovery mode individually for each account, opting for Manual recovery instead of Push.
10. Temporarily turn off mobile data
There is nothing worse for iPhone battery life than poor network coverage. Those who take the train frequently have probably already noticed that their iPhone battery seems to melt like snow in the sun. There is nothing surprising about this since the iPhone, moving at high speed, will not stop moving from one mobile antenna to another in an attempt to hook up the closest one in order to have the best possible network. .
It is therefore better to temporarily disable mobile data and opt for Wi-Fi if you have a connection.
To temporarily turn off mobile data, deploy Control Center and tap the icon for a mobile antenna signal, or go to Settings, then Cellular data to turn off Cellular data. You will be able to continue receiving calls and using your phone, but will no longer have 3G / 4G internet access.
11. Disable wireless connections
To go even further and preserve the autonomy of your device as much as possible, you can temporarily deactivate all wireless connections. Open Settings and go to the Wi-Fi menu to completely turn off the Wi-Fi connection. Do the same from the Bluetooth menu to completely turn off the Bluetooth connection.
12. Disable GPS
Another thing that can drain your battery is GPS, especially if an app is using it without you noticing it in the background. To limit the use of your GPS chip, open Settings, then in Privacy, enter the Location service menu.
The most drastic solution is to turn off the iPhone’s location service altogether. However, if you want to keep the location for some apps, do it manually. Start by checking, from the Share my location menu, that you are not sharing your location.
Then check, for each application installed on your iPhone, whether the use of GPS is really necessary. Enter the detailed settings for each app that you don’t want to be able to access GPS, and select Never, or When app is active if you think you need the location when using the app.
Then scroll down to the bottom of the list to enter the System Services menu. Here you can choose which system services are allowed to use, or not, the iPhone’s GPS.
Apple localized ads, location suggestions or location alerts are clearly not essentials for your iPhone.
Do not forget, finally, to activate the Icon of the status bar which will display each time a system service tries to use your GPS, an icon in the status bar of the iPhone.
13. Uninstall applications that are too greedy
With the introduction of Power Saving Mode in iOS 11, Apple also introduced a summary panel for battery usage by installed apps.
To find it, open Settings, and enter the Battery menu. Scroll through the options to reach the Activity by app section. For each app, iOS displays the percentage of battery used. Tap View Activity for more details.
You may decide to remove the most energy-intensive applications in order to replace them with less greedy alternatives when they exist.
14. Turn your iPhone screen down
Not many people know this, but turning the iPhone face down on a table will reduce screen activation. Indeed, with each new notification received, the iPhone screen is activated so that you can view the preview.
By flipping the screen face down on a table, notifications will still arrive, but the screen will remain off, with the proximity sensor preventing the screen from activating, in the same way as when you make a call and the screen turns off when you bring iPhone to your ear.