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Tips to Improve your android battery life

Android phones are infamous for eating out the battery soon. My Nexus S battery lasts about 30 - 36 hours after tweaking my phone. It is obvious and a fact that the battery usage is proportional to the number of applications and services you are running.

The battery life of android phones can be extended by these tips:

Tips to improve battery life

• Turn off unnecessary Wireless : The number of wireless operating devices that are turned on affects your battery life. This includes

  • WiFi
  • BlueTooth
  • GPS (Global Position System)
  • NFC (Near Field Communications)
  • 3G/Data connection
  • 2G voice communication.

  So the more devices that are turned on the more battery is consumed. Typically you would not need to use BlueTooth and GPS so you can turn it off when not used. Typically the wireless settings are under Settings > Wireless and Networks, as shown below:

  

  Similarly with GPS which is under Settings > Location. GPS takes up a lot of battery when used. If you are not using 3G, you can disable 3G altogether by enabling the "Use only 2G Networks" setting in Mobile networks settings. A good application that ships by default in android is the power control application widget which can be put on the home screen to put shortcuts of these settings on your home screen. A slightly advanced version you can use is available as Widgetsoid in which you can configure your shortcuts. Here is my widgetsoid widget on my home screen that has shortcuts to most of the battery saving techniques discussed here:

  

• Applications and Services :

  • The more applications you run, the more your CPU is used. Typically playing games result in draining of the battery. So if you want to save a battery life for that important call, you better not play that game. You can use a task killer to see and kill the applications. Applications such as "Task Killer", "Advanced Task Killer" etc can help you with this.

  • The similar is with services. There are many services that run on your android phone that does many tasks. You can stop some of the non essential services to save your battery life. You can stop running services by going into Applications > Running Services > Tap on the Service > Tap Stop

    

  • You can also turn off background data and account sync to save battery life.

• Wallpaper and Display :

  • Display brightness can determine the usage of your battery, the more the brightness the more the battery usage. So to extend the life we should use as minimum as possible. But since usability is a big concern, putting the display in automatic brightness is the best as it automatically increases and reduces screen brightness according to ambient light. You can find the settings > Display > Brightness.

  • While you are at it you can also reduce the Screen timeout to a lower value so that your screen is turned off when not in use which can save you lots of juice.

  • Putting a live wallpaper can also eat more of your battery life so if you want to improve battery life consider using a static wallpaper. It would also help to choose a dark wallpaper with lots of black as it requires less energy to display a black dot than a white dot. So using a dark wallpaper definitely helps. See my wallpaper at nexus s wallpaper for a dark wallpaper.

• Tones and sounds :

  • You can reduce the volume or turn off unnecessary sounds like Screen lock sounds.
  • You can also turn off Haptic Feedback to save battery.

On the move battery drains faster

This one is applicable to any mobile phone not just android, when you are on the move the cell networks and antennas keep changing this causes significant radio traffic and hence drains more battery. Moreover more battery is used to communicate to weak signals from various towers. You can turn off all the wireless if you are absolutely positively sure of not expecting any calls (This is true when doing overnight journeys and half the journey you may not have a signal) by turning on the Airplane mode. But you wont get any calls or messages making your phone useless, but battery is saved so that you can use it when you arrive at your destination.

More tips on how to extend your battery life are on its way ..

Have a tip that worked for you ? Share with others and let us know. Post a comment.

Still your battery life is low ? Carry a USB data cable at all times.