Wondering why your cell phone battery drains so fast all of a sudden.
Be it an Android or iOS. Having more on-time before your phone shuts down is something very vital.
You do not want to be worrying about frequently charging all the time.
I assume you are facing such issues and you are fed up! (Heck, it is tiring moving with your charger all the time, having to worry about how you use your phone).
If you are looking for solutions, You’re in the right place!
We use our phones for different purposes such as internet connection, chatting and messaging, voice and video calls, gaming, and many more activities.
All these may or may not significantly impact battery life, and maybe you are confused about what is draining your cell phone battery more greatly or negligibly (it is going to be clarified).
By the end of this article, you will be able to identify what activities or apps have a significant impact on your smartphone battery life and how to limit them.
I have broken down activities that have a significant impact on your smartphone energy together with those that are believed to have an effect yet have a negligible effect.
This article also entails the Myths, confirmations, and disapproval of cell phone battery drainers. Since phone batteries are internal, replacement may be a hurdle and costly.
Furthermore, I have also provided solutions to solving issues that cause your device to drain fast.
So after reading and implementing insights in this article, expect lengthier periods of use with your smartphone.
Let’s get into it!
Why Your Cell Phone Battery Drains Fast.
Under this section, you are going to discover what activities and apps drain your device’s power. How they drain it and the measure of the impact.
Let’s dive into them!
Screen and Display Settings.
Screen display aspects are significant critical players in draining smartphone cell power. Factors like on-screen time, brightness level, and refresh rates play a significant degrading role, as explained below;
1. Increased brightness.
High tuning the brightness level causes your phone to use much more energy to power your phone screen pixels.
The phone then uses much energy to deliver color, and give you an enhanced and brighter view. Increased brightness requires more energy, thus much battery power is used to support the experience.
2. High refresh rates.
Refresh rate is the number of times your phone screen refreshes. Refresh rate is measured in Hertz (Hz).
Different phones have various refresh rates, such as 60 Hz, 90 Hz, 120 Hz, etc. Flagship smartphones come with higher refresh rates, and this makes the user-on-screen experience feel faster.
Despite offering a snappy experience, higher refresh rates mean more strain on your phone battery hence quick drains of your cell phone battery power.
However, if you reduce the refresh rate, this drain can be reduced.
Proceed to follow the steps below on how to reduce screen refresh rate.
Also Read: Top 25 ways to fix Waiting for download error on Play Store
How to Reduce the Refresh rate on your Android phone?
To change or turndown the refresh rate of your smartphone, follow these steps;
- Head to the settings app
- Tap Display.
- Click on Advanced.
- Tap Smooth Display.
- Tap the toggle Switch on or off to enable or disable the Higher Refresh Rate value.
3. Live Wallpapers
Live wallpapers consume battery power in a way that your phone is constantly processing and updating the live motions for your wallpaper.
They also enable your phone’s bright pixels, which light up the wallpaper, consuming more cell phone battery energy hence causing device power to drain faster.
4. Light mode
Does light mode consume cell power?
In a Dark Mode Vs Light Mode Battery Test carried out by Phone Buff. The tests showed that Light mode consumes more battery power as compared to dark mode. This is because the phone’s bright pixels are turned on and hence more energy is used to light them up.
The impact is felt much more on Phones with LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) than OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) screens.
However, the good deeds of dark mode battery-saving will only be visible in instances when your phone screen is on.
When your phone screen is off whether in light mode or dark mode no difference will be felt in battery saving.
5. Push Notifications
Push notifications are notifications that are sent by various mobile apps on your phone even when these apps are not actively in use.
They can include pop-ups, messages, reminders, alerts, and requests, among others. Apps use them to ensure that their services run properly and keep serving you.
For example, Push notifications of messages from your Instagram DMs, WhatsApp messages, or even Uber notifications.
These can keep constantly coming and, when they frequent the occurrence, consume more of your cell phone battery power.
6. Google Play Services
Google play service is Google’s service that keeps running in the background. The Google Play Services are responsible for ensuring your apps and google related apps are up to date and in sync.
Google play services tend to run in the background in order to keep these apps properly functioning.
Google play services, in turn, place a heavy burden on the battery(due to the constant background activity, and syncing of accounts) and cause it to drain faster.
7. Having Numerous/Multiple Open Apps
We use plenty of apps on our phones, all for different uses. From social media apps, utility apps, productivity apps, and many more.
We tend not toĀ clearĀ them from recent and leave them running as we proceed to open other apps. You may continually open up new apps, barely forgetting the recent ones you opened previously or intentionally leaving them open on purpose.
Having multiple open apps causes a lot of off-site activity to go on as these apps operate in the background. Thus impacting your cell phone battery power.
For phones with lower amounts of RAM, numerous apps running in the background cause the phone to even function at a slow rate.
8. Having Apps Running in the Background.
It sounds a bit similar but different in this way. You can open apps on your smartphone and be reluctant to close them;
Keep in mind that some apps function from the background even after clearing them from your recents.
These apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, run in the background as their original functioning criteria. ( You will need to go further and restrict their access to completely limit them)
Since these apps work to deliver notifications, and real-time updates, they end up encroaching much battery power.
These apps may also include Anti viruses providing real-time security for your device.
You can limit some apps from running in the background to reduce cell phone battery drain.
Follow the procedure below on how to limit apps from running in the background.
How to Limit Apps from Running in the Background?
- Open Settings.
- Tap on Battery.
- Under the subsequent menu, tap Battery Usage.
- Your phone will show the battery usage statistics of each app. It will show time used, and battery percentage used among other stats.
- Identify the ones you would wish to restrict from running in the background.
- Tap on the app and click Background Restriction.
- Tap Restrict to confirm.
Determining which apps to disable is dependent on personal preferences considering which apps you do not frequently use.
Also Read: Common Cellphone Keyboard Issues and How to Solve Them
9. Haptic feedback, Sounds and vibrations.
Haptic feedback includes sounds and vibrations made by your keyboard keys, keypad, and other phone sounds.
Your smartphone uses the device energy to power the motor that causes vibration and other sounds on your phone.
Turning off Haptic feedback helps save cell phone battery (though not a significant amount).
How Automatic Connections such as Wi-Fi, Location, or Hotspot drain Cell phone battery
Wi-Fi
Does disabling Wi-Fi save device power?
In situations where your smartphone is connected to a fast and robust Wi-Fi connection, your phone will use less cell power, unlike when it is connected to a slow and weak Wi-Fi network.
Your device strains to optimize the weak Wi-Fi network it is connected to, hence impacting cell power and causing fast drainage.
Disabling Wi-Fi from automatically turning on does not necessarily save significant amounts of your cell phone battery if it is not connected. Wi-Fi consumes sufficient amounts of battery power when in service, i.e., connected.
It may seem like battery saving habit, and it is a phone battery-draining myth that you should scrape.
In summing up leaving your Wi-Fi open and waiting to receive connections will not drain your cell phone battery, more so having to switch on your Wi-Fi freshly in situations where it has been previously switched off has a more significant battery-draining effect.
Just like restarting your phone requires more battery power, these connections will require more strength in signal power to power up.
Bluetooth.
There is a long-time myth about Bluetooth draining batteries that I am going to clarify in this section.
Does Bluetooth really drain cell phone battery power?
Leaving Bluetooth turned on, and idle does not necessarily cause your cell phone battery to die or run out faster unless it has an active connection. Negligible amounts of your cell phone battery are used.
Bluetooth drains device power in situations, For example, where your device is actively connected to external devices.
Significant cell power drainage by Bluetooth can happen for instance when you are using your phone to play music through a Bluetooth speaker, AirPods, or earbuds
This long-time myth of Bluetooth draining battery power would have been correct if we were in stages when Bluetooth was first introduced years back.
Considering the battery capacity and power of phones that existed, it surely encroached on lots of cell power and made them die faster.
However, the latest phones have been developed and improved to carry lots more battery capacity milliamps (mAH) to handle the capacity.
The same applies to Bluetooth; newer versions have been released over time.
New Bluetooth versions are more efficient, have more vital connectivity, and consume less battery.
Your phone uses majorly two versions of Bluetooth;
- Original or standard Bluetooth.
- Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).
Original/Standard Bluetooth uses more battery power, and Bluetooth Low Energy uses less cell power.
The standard Bluetooth is used by your phone, where more substantial and faster connections are required in connectivity. It uses more cell power while Bluetooth Low Energy consumes less energy; thus, negligible amounts of device power are used.
When your phone performs tasks such as connecting to your earbuds, speakers, air pods to transfer sound for longer periods expect a significant impact on your cell phone battery power.
Bluetooth drains your cell phone battery power but it is not to be entirely blamed. It causes your device to die faster in instances mentioned earlier together with other factors discussed further.
GPRS Location
Does disabling GPS Location Save Cell Phone Battery Power?
Your phone uses the location/GPS for various functions, such as quickly locating places while we are on the move or traveling or even inquiring about the site of a specific area on the map.
The location feature is used by Google maps, Food delivery apps, or even transportation apps like Uber.
You should be aware that your smartphone GPS Receiver constantly obtains location signals even when your mobile data or Wi-Fi is off.
The only difference is the GPS Receiver can not be able to send out these signals to nearby towers and satellites when Wi-Fi or Mobile data is turned off but is still able to receive them regardless.
Here’s how GPS location drains your device’s power,
If you happen to be in locations of poor network signals and your location services are turned on, expect to get fast rundowns of your device power. This is because your phone is constantly sending out and receiving signals and the fact that the signals are weak it strains more causing a significant impact on battery power.
Your phone will similarly lose less device power where the signals are strong and stable.
If you are fond of using apps that rely on location such as google maps, uber among others, combined with other factors mentioned earlier you will face fast cell phone battery power drains.
10. Outdated Apps and Software
Dedicated App developers always work around the clock to find more ways of optimizing and improving apps and software.
These improvements come with better app/software and optimizations. These include less battery use, better speeds, and efficiency.
When you take a long time to update your software and apps, you probably miss out on these features making your phone bulky with outdated un-optimized software and apps that drain much of your device’s power!
11. Mobile Data Connection Speed
Having a poor and weak data connection signal strains your phone to utilize the available network packets to serve a stable connection for you. Under such circumstances, your smartphone will use much device power, causing fast drainages.
Your phone will use much cell power in sites of low connectivity; thus, you will face quick cell phone battery drainages in such areas.
12. Longer Periods of Screen Time-out
The screen is a major draining factor. Having longer periods before your device’s screen blacks out will drain much energy.
Lessening the time that your phone screen stays on while idle will help save battery.
The phone will not use battery energy to light the pixels in periods of idleness compared to when your phone will be lighting and yet idle.
13. Old Battery
Do not expect your old cell phone battery to function as compared to when it was new.
Cell phone batteries have a metric called Battery health. It is in most cases measured in percentages, i.e., 95%, 80%, etc.
This metric connotes your battery strength over a certain period. It is meant to deteriorate and drop as time goes on, considering that your phone will function for a while. (You do not expect it to stay new forever).
The good news is that you can still reduce the rate at which this may happen.
Unlike Android, By default, this option is inbuilt in iPhones/iOS, and users can check for battery health under settings.
How to Check for Battery Health on iPhone?
- Head to Settings
- Open Battery Menu
- Tap on Battery Health
You will be able to view the details of your iPhone’s battery health.
However, Android users can also check for Battery usage statistics under Settings;
How to Check for Battery Usage Statistics on Android
- Head to Settings.
- Tap Battery.
- Click on Battery Usage.
- Under Battery Usage, you will view necessary data on how apps on your device are using cell phone battery power.
For comprehensive and detailed monitoring of the statistics of your Cell phone battery, you can download the Accu Battery app.
14. Battery Draining activities.
Having looked at some of the significant factors that cause batteries to drain, let’s not forget that some activities are generally resource-intensive Such activities include;
Use of the Camera, Video Calls, Internet Connection, Gaming, Bluetooth, Voice Calls, Use of Location and GPS features.
You should note that longer periods of using your smartphone for these activities are resource-intensive and thus drain more cell phone battery power.
13 Top Tips on How to Make your cell Phone Battery Last Longer
Having looked at what aspects make your cell phone battery drain faster, and how they drain device power, here are the top tips on how to make your Cell phone battery last longer.
After applying the following tips you will be able to enjoy lengthier periods of use with your smartphone, be it on a journey, an outing, you will worry no more about your device blacking out after applying these tips.
Let’s get into them!
- Use adaptive brightness.
- Reduce screen refresh rate and Reduce screen animations.
- Set shorter periods of screen time out.
- Use more black wallpapers.
- Limit the usage of live wallpapers.
- Use dark mode.
- Turn the phone to airplane/flight mode(when network services are not needed)
- Uninstall apps you do not use.
- Clear apps from recents after use.
- Turn on adaptive brightness.
- Limit/Restrict background apps.
Also Read: How To Set Airtel APN Internet Settings.[2021]
Conclusion
Summing up, your phone draining so fast is not caused by only a single factor but many of them. Some with a great impact while some have a lesser impact.
What are some of the activities that you have been ignoring yet have a significant impact on your cell phone battery life?
After implementing the above-suggested solutions you will notice a great difference in the time your device power will serve you.
If these implementations are helpful to you share them with your fellows to spread the insights.
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