Low power? How to extend your iPhone's battery life
CNE
iPhone is great, but the battery life leaves so much to be desired. When I compare my iPhone to a handset like the Moto G7 Power, I'm amazed at the poor battery life I'm getting.
Fortunately, there are things that you can do to help make the iPhone's battery life better.
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Battery life is always forefront in the minds of people who rely on their iPhone. So, after a lot of testing, and spending a lot of time running my iPhone's battery flat, I've come up with what I believe are the best ways of making your iPhone battery last all day.
And the nice thing is that both of these methods are quick and simple, and don't involve making huge changes to iOS.
iOS 12 tells you (almost) everything you need to know about your iPhone's battery
Low Power Mode
The first one is the simplest one, but also the most effective, and that is to switch on Low Power Mode.
As the name suggests, activating this setting puts your device into low power mode. And it really does work, giving you about three hours of extra battery life. If you are worried about your battery not making it through the day, this is the setting to activate.
However, it achieves this by turning off or reducing mail fetch, background app refresh, automatic downloads, and some visual effects.
What does Low Power Mode affect?
Here's a list of what Low Power Mode reduces or affects in order to increase battery life:
- Email fetch
- "Hey Siri"
- Background app refresh
- Automatic downloads
- Some visual effects
- Auto-Lock (defaults to 30 seconds)
- iCloud Photo Library (temporarily paused)
iOS pops up a notification offering to turn on Low Power Mode when your battery goes below 20% and 10%, and will automatically switch it off when the device is charged back up to 80%.
You can also turn this on manually, either from the Control Center panel, or from Settings > Battery.
iPhone Low Power Mode
One thing that I do -- if I know I have a long day ahead of me away from a charger -- is to switch over to Low Power Mode as soon as I start my day. I find that this gives me the longest possible battery life.
Be aware, if you recharge your battery above 80%, this will automatically disable Low Power Mode, so you will have to re-enable it.
Screen Brightness
Another trick I find that vastly improves battery life is turning down the screen brightness. OK, don't go bananas with this one and turn it down to the point where the screen is completely unreadable because that would be counterproductive, but toning it down a bit when you are indoors and not in bright sunlight really makes a huge difference to how long your battery will last.
You can either drop the brightness from Settings > Display & Brightness or from the Control Center screen.
Change iPhone screen brightness
Change brightness in the Control Center screen
Tame that display!
Another couple of display-related changes you can make that I find handy -- doubly so if you find the iPhone's screen is too bright -- is to head over to Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations and make sure that Auto-Brightness is enabled and, if you want to take things further, enable Reduce White Point.
Display Accommodations