How to reduce battery drain and increase battery lifespan?
Battery degradation is one of the things which is inevitable but can be controlled. Even the best batteries degrade over time. Here are 8 tips that I followed which increased my battery health.
Hello readers👨🏽💻,
Welcome to the latest issue of my newsletter✨,
Today I’m going to share with you people some tips that I used to increase my battery life so that you can reduce your battery drain. Batteries are not immortal 🧛🏽♂️ their health reduces over time because of the chemical reactions it undergoes and eventually there comes a day to replace it with a new one. Let us go over the ways in which you can add some more years to your battery.
Why batteries degrade over time?
There are a few factors that can degrade your battery’s health. Like,
- Chemical Reactions: The chemical reactions that take place inside a battery can cause the electrodes and electrolyte to degrade. This can lead to a decrease in capacity and an increase in internal resistance.
- Heat: Heat can accelerate the degradation of batteries. This is why it is important to avoid exposing your batteries to extreme temperatures.
- Overcharging and overdischarging: Overcharging and overdischarging can also damage batteries. It is important to keep your batteries charged between 20% and 80% whenever possible.
- Age: Even if you are careful to avoid all of the other factors that can contribute to battery degradation, your batteries will eventually degrade simply due to age. This is because the chemical reactions inside a battery are not perfectly reversible.
What are Battery Charge Cycles?
A battery cycle is the process of fully charging and discharging a battery. For example, if you use 50% of your battery’s capacity one day and then recharge it to 100%, that counts as half of a battery cycle. If you do the same thing the next day, that counts as one full battery cycle.
The number of battery cycles a battery can go through before it starts to lose its capacity is called its cycle life. The cycle life of a battery depends on a number of factors, including the type of battery, the way it is used, and the environmental conditions in which it is stored and used.
What can you do?
There are some things I did that helped to increase my battery life.
1. Updating the software
Software updates are very important to your device in a plethora of ways and one of them include better battery life. Software updates often come with better battery optimization and bug fixes. So go check your software updates section and keep your software up-to-date. Also they include some important security updates which can also indirectly improve your battery life.
2. Turning off features
Features like GPS Location, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth can definitely drain your battery very rapidly. Turning them off when not in use can help in a significant decrease in the rate of your battery drain. Turning your Location Services off can also add to your privacy as apps cannot access your location in the background.
3. Using auto brightness
The screen is one of the biggest battery drains on your device. What I did to reduce the consumption or limit the power consumption of my screen is to turn on Auto Brightness in your Display settings(for Android) and Accessibility settings(for iOS). This has definitely helped me to increase the battery life and I noticed a significant improvement. Alternatively you can also reduce the brightness to a comfortable level to save battery life.
4. Using dark mode
Using dark mode / theme is surely a game changer for devices with an OLED display. Because the dark black color pixels get turned off in an OLED display which in turn improves the battery life. I use dark more almost all of the time. Even LCD display devices can see the difference but it is not as big as an OLED display. Also dark mode can be easy on your eyes sometimes.
5. Turning off notifications
Notifications can sometimes be a hindrance to your productivity and can derail you from your study track. Not only that they can also wake up your device every time you get a new notification. So I went and turned off notifications from some of my less important apps, that, not only improved my battery health but also increased my focus on my studies. Another thing you can do if you do not want to disable notifications is turning on the DND mode.
6. Disabling background app refresh(iOS only)
Another thing I did when I first set up my phone was turning off background app refresh not only for individual apps but totally turning the setting off altogether. This did not change my app experience in any way, every app was working as expected so there’s not need to fret about turning it off.
7. Avoid third-party chargers
When I first purchased my iPhone, I got the 20W Apple charger from a third party seller. But whenever I used to charge my device it used to heat up pretty quickly without reason, battery used to drain quickly even when not in use and my battery health reduced 2%. Then later after checking my charger thoroughly including the box, I figured out that I was scammed so I had no other choice than to buy a new one directly from Apple themselves. That fixed everything. This also applies to Android devices.
Note: a small amount of heat during charging is normal, but my device was overheating which isn’t normal.
8. Keep your charge between 20%-80%
After learning about battery charge cycles and everything I realized that the optimal charge for any device is keeping it in between 20%-80%. Since then I always charge my device when it gets below 35% and remove it when it reaches about 85%. I advice you to follow the same while charging your device.
Bonus
Additionally,
- I never use my device under extreme temperatures be it extreme cold or extreme hot. Because it can accelerate the ageing of your battery which can reduce its capacity.
- I turned off the Tracking and Analytics & Improvement toggles under Privacy & Security settings. The apps which are turned on in Tracking are often found running in the background and the Analytics & Improvement setting scans all the information about your phone’s hardware & software and shares it with the Apple devs. Not only it invades your privacy it also drains your battery in the background.
- I use WiFi connections whenever I have a connection near me instead of cellular because I observed that cellular consumes battery more faster than WiFi.
So guys these are some tips that I followed that helped me to increase my device’s battery life and I reckon they could be of use for yours too. If you need some more advanced tips that needs a good dig into the settings then make sure to communicate. Make sure to comment to share your views and tips with other enthusiasts, share with your buddies so that they can get the most out of their battery too. Lastly, subscribe to get awesome tips and hacks directly into your inbox which helps to increase your efficiency.
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