If you’re like most people, you use your smartphone throughout the whole day to message people, check your social media accounts, consume news and even check the time! This means, you also would have experienced the growing panic as that little battery icon gets lower and lower.
It seems that every time a smartphone manufacturer brings out a new model, they say ‘this battery is more powerful than any previous models.’
However, we all know better. As the smartphone manufacturers increase the power of each device, it inevitably leads to more power usage and so the problems of battery levels begins again.
Summary
- Find your phone’s power saving mode – and use it!
- Make sure you’re using the brand-name power charger, not a cheap one you bought from a local market.
- Get a replacement battery, even if you have to pay the manufacturer to do it.
- Invest in a good portable battery charger such as the Anker PowerCore 1300.
- Look after your battery by trying to avoid your phone getting hot a lot, and keep charge within it.
- Find the settings that extend your battery life and look at your battery stats.
- If you have to get rid of the phone, try selling it second-hand and look at your options to buy a new phone second-hand from one of the leading brands we research.
- Let others know your experience with the battery by leaving a community review on your smartphone (we love these things included in the way we do our smartphone reviews).
Easy win: Try out your phone’s power saving mode
An easy win for extending your battery life is turn on your phone’s power saving mode. This will automatically change several settings on your phone that can help ensure your battery will last longer. It’s available on Android as the battery saver option, or on iPhone as Low Power Mode.
Using the proper brand charger
Smartphones do better when you use the ‘real’ charger you got in the box (or a like-for-like replacement from the manufacturer), as it gives the juice which matches your phone and switches the charging off before it mildly overheats. If you’ve ever used a cheap charger and wondered why your phone goes really hot when charging it overnight, that’s why. You’re killing it!
See if you can replace your battery
If your battery life sucks, it’s worth finding out how much it would be to replace the whole battery. If you’re lucky, your phone has a removable battery which you can replace yourself after buying a new one online. Talk to your local electronics store or government department on how you can dispose of the batteries properly.
Even if you have to get the manufacturer to replace the battery, it may still be worth it.
This is something Apple customers realised in 2018, when it became known that Apple’s software was deliberately slowing down phones with old batteries (to prevent the phones accidentally shutting down). Apple was forced to lower the price of a battery replacement to USD$30 and suddenly everyone realised it would be worth it to just hold off on getting a new one (which as you might expect began hurting iPhone sales).
Invest in a good portable battery charger
These range from AUD$30 up and vary in quality. A good one such as the Anker PowerCore 1300 sells for about AUD$50. Look after your battery by keeping it cool and don’t let it get to 0%.
The key things you can do to look after the battery include:
- Avoid letting the phone get too hot (e.g. leaving it in a hot car, or in direct sunlight in summer months, or playing performance-intensive games for a long time).
- Try not to let your phone die completely – ideally you would keep it over 40%, although this might be a bit excessive to try (you may have heard it’s good to drain your battery from 100% to 0% – but that’s no longer the case for modern lithium-ion batteries).
Find the settings for making the most of every last drop of battery power
If you are struggling to get your smartphone to last all day, it’s worth getting to know which settings you can use to squeeze out every last bit of battery juice.
Knowing what tricks work best for your phone is also a very useful skill to have when you suddenly realise your phone is at 15%, and you want it to last four more hours before getting home.
WikiHow has a pretty comprehensive list of settings you can adjust in a pinch, including:
- Turning wifi off if you don’t need it.
- Try to avoid using the camera too much.
- Closing background apps.
- Frequently turning brightness down when possible.
It’s also very useful to find the battery stats in your phone settings. This will let you see what is taking up the most battery power. Information is power, so knowing this will help you understand your phone better and so you’re not wasting the battery unnecessarily.
Thinking twice before replacing your phone
As a last resort, you may decide you need to replace your whole phone. If you know battery life is important to you, it could be worth doing some online research on which smartphones perform best on battery tests when choosing your next device (even though it can be hard to trust if ANY smartphone will do a good job).
For the sake of the environment, try to put off buying a new phone for as long as you can. Years of mobile providers offering phones on two-year contracts has conditioned us to expect our phones to only last two years too, even though we would expect a similarly priced laptop to last much longer. This has led to a billions of phones been produced to keep up with demand – there are now more phones than people in the world.
Being smart about how you replace your phone
If you can, consider selling your phone for someone else to use. They may be happy to manage a few performance and battery issues for the sake of a cheaper model, or get the device fixed themselves.
You might also consider buying a second-hand phone for yourself. A lot of the time there is a pretty big market for second-hand phones from the top smartphone brands we research. Phones which are between one and two years old from a top brand may be packed with another performance to suit your needs.
But, as a last resort, if your phone no longer works and you have to get rid of it, try to do your bit by finding somewhere that disposes of your smartphone responsibly. Recovering the metals from smartphone batteries is important for the environment – recycling has a 90% smaller ecological footprint then mining the metals anew. If you’re not sure how to recycle them, you can start by asking at your local electronics store, which often has a program to recycle smartphones.
Let people know when you have a good or bad experience with smartphone batteries
Smartphone batteries can be a hot topic for people, as it can affect their day to day lives.
So, it is worth mentioning in a review of your smartphone our Good Choice Guide five star review system because the categories include what is ‘good for the world’ and ‘good quality’ – so it is very relevant.Simply find your current smartphone here and leave a review.
