Thread: 10 Ways to Increase your Battery Life

My biggest complaint about the iPhone and iPod Touch is the battery life. During heavy usage you can’t even get a full 3 hours out of it. The best thing you can do is know what to look out for. . .and hopefully this list will help.


10) Keep It On
There really isn’t any reason turn it off at the end of the day. As long as it is in ’sleep mode’(without playing music) it turns all network activity off. The device actually uses a lot of the batter just to turn it on. . .even more than if you had just left it on.

9) Turn Sound Effects Off
You can go into Settings -> General -> Sound Effects and turn it off. Or at least set it to either Speaker or Headphones. . .not Both(which it is by default).

8) Turn EQ Off
You can go into Settings -> Music -> EQ and turn it off. This will use less resources to monitor the EQ.

7) Less Email Addresses
You can go into Settings -> Mail and disable a few of your email accounts. The less email addresses your iPhone or iPod Touch has to check, the more battery life you will have. This is because of network activity usage.

7a) Check Email Less Often
You can go into Settings -> Mail -> Auto-Check and set this to manual. . .or at least Every hour(as opposed to 15/30 minutes). Just like above, the your device has to connect to Wifi/Edge the longer your battery will last.

6) Set Auto-Lock
You can go into Settings -> General -> Auto-Lock and set it to 1-3 minutes(I have mine set to 1). The longer your screen is turned on the more it uses the battery. Either do this or get used to putting it into ’sleep mode’ immediately after usage.

5) Turn BlueTooth Off
You can either do this via Settings or in the BossPrefs application.

4) Keep Brightness Dim
You can go into Settings -> Brightness and move the bar on the top toward the left. Go as far to the left as you can(without sacrificing quality). The less bright the screen has to be the longer your battery will last.

4a) Turn Auto-Brightness Off
You can go into Settings -> Brightness and turn Auto-Brightness off. This will not only prevent the device from increasing the brightness level. It will also use less resources. . .since it doesn’t have to monitor anything.

3) Turn Edge Off
Much like BlueTooth, you can do this from either Settings or the 3rd party application BossPrefs.

2) Turn SSH Off
You can go into the application BossPrefs, Services, or the default SSH icon and turn this service on/off. This runs in the background when any network activity is available. This is one of the biggest reasons people who Jailbreak their iPhones and iPod Touches have very poor battery life.

1) Turn WiFi Off
Even more than SSH, WiFi really uses your battery. Paired with MobileSafari browsing, your battery will not even last 3 hours. I normally just put the device into sleep mode, and it turns of WiFi automatically. But, when music is playing WiFi is on, and it will deplete your battery with the quickness.

This is a lot of things to monitor. . .but if you get into the habit of turning services on/off(much like turning off a light when you leave the room). . .you could go an extra 2-3 days between charging sessions.

Bonus
At least once per month try and use all of the battery life in your iPhone and iPod Touch. The lower you get the battery level the better. Then recharge your device to 100%. This will ‘reset’ your battery to the best of it’s ability. The more you recharge your device, without letting the battery die completely, the lower your ‘battery capacity’ is. Doing this once per month(or even once per week) will keep your battery in tip top shape.

thanks for the great tips. you really helped out this newbie.

Run your battery from dead flat to fully charged to give it a workout and set it's operating range. It takes 8 hours to fully charge - don't go by the visual that looks like it's at 95% after four hours.

thank you for the great tips. i am really having trouble on how to save battery because everyday i keep on charging my cellphone. i will try these things out.

i Think that This Thread or certiainly that post should Be made into a sticky. Its EXCELLENT - Top Marks Mate A++ Post

You have some very good tips. The SSH one is very good since a lot of people may have jailbroke their devices and did not know this useful but power draining add-on is running. Again, well done.

thank you so much for your tips.
these are just great, i tried a few of them and my battery backup has definitely improved since then
thank you once again

thanks for sharing!
it is useful.