Monthly Archives: October 2009

10 tips to make your iPhone battery last longer

Today we have a guest post by Kishyr Ramdial. Kish is an iPhone developer at immedia and is iPhone obsessed :)
If you want to read up a bit more about Kish and his ways, be sure to check out his interview on izimvo.

Let’s face it, the iPhone is a life changing device. Most of you either don’t know how you managed with out it, or wondered what you’d do if you were forced to use another device. But in all it’s glory, there’s one factor that we all, thoroughly, hate about this gifted device: the poor battery life.

Or at least, what we perceive to be a poor batter life. We’ve all complained about it at some point but the thing is, it’s battery life is actually pretty decent. There, I said it! Think about it. This all-in-wonder device has four(!) radios built-in: GPS, GSM, 3G, and WiFi; a proximity sensor; a light-metre; an accelerometer; and 3GS users also have a digital compass. Woah. And all those apps to take advantage of each one of those awesome technologies.

But that’s just not it. iPhone users also use their phone more than any other mobile device they’ve used before (not a scientific study but it’s pretty obvious). We’re constantly on our phones, tweeting, checking maps, replying to emails, browsing the web, listening to music and laughing while our phone makes farting noises.

The sheer fact that we use this device more often means the battery life will inevitably reduce it capacity quicker, not because it’s got a poor battery inside it (well maybe that too).

But if you’re caught in a situation where that gloomy red battery indicator is on the top-right of your screen indicating that you’re down to your last 20%, and you might need to make an emergency call, here a few tips to squeeze every single drop of power out of your phone:

1. If you don’t have Wifi reception; turn Wifi off. (But if you do have Wifi reception, leave it on as 3G uses more battery power than Wifi does).
2. Turn off 3G.
3. Reduce your screen’s brightness.
4. Turn off Push notifications. A significant drop in battery power happened when iPhone OS 3.0 was released. This is because the iPhone always maintains a single connection to the mothership’s server so that it can push alerts to your device.
5. Turn off bluetooth.
6. Turn off Location Services or stop using apps that require the A-GPS. Location based apps use the iPhone’s A-GPS technology to pin point your location. Apps can use three different technologies to get your location: Wifi geolocation; cellular triangulation; and the built-in GPS itself. Depending on the accuracy of location that the app requires, it can use any of the above technologies, or all three (like how Maps does).
7. Use apps that don’t require the 3D graphics power of the phone’s graphics processor (like games).
8. Set the phone’s auto-lock feature to 1 minute.
9. Set your mail to manually check for new messages (instead of an periodic check or Push).
10. Stop checking what the time is on the stand-by screen! You know you do it all the time. I’ve said it before: cell phones are the new pocket-watches! By constantly putting the display on and off, you are using precious battery power.

Hope these tips help!