It’s also making heavier use of cellular and Wi-Fi connections in order to aid in pinpointing your location. Similarly, when you’re using a mapping app for long navigation sessions, your phone’s screen is on and the app forces the phone’s GPS circuitry to refresh at a more frequent rate than in normal usage. On a Moto X Pure, Wi-Fi used 11 percent of a full battery, and LTE used 13 percent. On an iPhone 6s Plus, streaming over Wi-Fi for an hour consumed 5 percent of a full battery LTE streaming used 11 percent. For example, we watched Pee-wee’s Big Adventure on Netflix with the volume and screen brightness both set at 50 percent. Watching a movie on, say, Netflix requires your phone’s screen to be on continuously (the biggest battery drain), your phone to maintain an active Internet connection (another notable drain), and the phone’s processor and graphics processor to decode the video and audio. The following may seem obvious to you, but many people engage in these activities regularly. If you still need more juice: Battery packsīefore we get into the specific changes-to settings or behavior-that you can make to extend your phone’s use time, we want to point out some activities that have a big impact on your battery.Myth: Use only the charger that came with your phone.Myth: Calibrate your battery to extend its life.Myth: Always choose Wi-Fi over cellular.Myth: Disable location services completely.Myth: Use a battery-saving utility or task manager on Android.For iPhone: Use Bluetooth instead of AirPlay to listen wirelessly.Disable GPS or location services-but only for power-hungry apps or apps you don’t need.Consult your phone’s battery-usage screen to find the biggest offenders.Disable cellular or Wi-Fi when the signal is bad.

Use airplane mode or low-power mode (if you must).Switch from push to fetch email if you have many accounts or get lots of email.Use the screen less-or at least turn brightness down.1 The article on the NYT website includes a summary of our findings, but if you want to know more, read on for our extended recommendations. We partnered with The New York Times to find the answer by testing, on both Android and iPhone smartphones, a slew of procedures that people, publications, and-in some cases-smartphone manufacturers suggest for getting more use time out of your phone. But many of the claims in those articles are specious at best, and some of the tricks they suggest could actually shorten your battery life. For many people, just making it through the day can be a challenge, which is why you see so many “How to make your phone’s battery last longer!” articles in your friends’ Facebook feeds.

One of the biggest complaints people have about their smartphone is that the battery doesn’t last long enough.

How to fix battery saver active