Tips and Myths on Smartphone Battery Life

Smartphones are an essential component of modern life. These handheld devices are vital pathways to communication and information. Outside of their fragility, their one major weakness lies in the batteries that power them. With most models, it's exceedingly difficult to get more than ten hours out of even the largest integrated battery--especially if the device is used for intensive tasks. External battery packs can sometimes double the charge, but at a tremendous penalty in weight and bulk.

Most of us have tried some of the strategies outlined below to help minimize our drain and maximize our time between charges. This article from the New York Times discusses actual testing of each of these key strategies to help separate the myths from the useful tips.

The first paragraphs discuss the current state of battery technology:

So why is battery technology still underwhelming? Plenty of companies have been developing smarter battery technology for years, including methods to increase battery capacity tenfold or charge devices by pulling energy from the air. But lithium ion, the technology that most mainstream batteries are based on, is low cost and easily reproducible while being safe — so we’ll be stuck with it for the foreseeable future, said Charlie Quong, an executive at Mophie, a battery accessory maker, in an interview.

“There’s a lot of investments on all fronts for improving the technology above and beyond that, but I don’t think we’re going to see that hitting any kind of mass market for several years out,” Mr. Quong said. In general, lithium ion improves about 10 percent a year in terms of the amount of energy that can be stored in a given space, which is partly why consumers perceive batteries as being far behind other technologies.

The article goes on to describe the testing they did on the various tips and tricks. They recommended eight tips. I found these two to be most useful:

• Use auto-brightness for the screen (dimmer screens save energy--unfortunately, they are harder to read)
• Turn off wi-fi when reception is poor (an established connection is no problem; the constant search for wi-fi is very draining)

I found a few of the myths very surprising.

• Closing unused apps doesn't always help. This one shocked me. I thought that you had to shut them down to stop them from draining resources. For most programs on your phone, apps in the background are frozen and do not draw power! In fact, force quitting forces the app to reload from scratch which could end up using more power.
• Don't assume turning off wi-fi will always help. As noted above, established connections can actually save power. It's far more efficient to use wi-fi than cellular data!

Here is the link to the full article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/technology/personaltech/tips-and-myths-about-extending-smartphone-battery-life.html?