Month: November 2017

The Complete Guide to Improving Android Battery Life

Once upon a time, you had to really keep an eye on your Android phone to make sure the battery wasn’t being depleted prematurely. Manually toggling connections, constantly adjusting brightness, and the like are basically all things of the past now—but there are still things you can do to maximize your handset’s battery life.

Before we get into the how, however, let’s talk about how far Android has come. Back in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google released a new feature called Doze Mode, which promised to improve battery life by “forcing” the phone into a deeper sleep when it’s not in use—leave it lying on the table or desk for a bit, and Doze would kick in, saving you precious juice.

Then, with Android Nougat, they improved this even further by making it a bit more aggressive: instead of kicking in while the phone is completely still, Doze now works while the phone is in your pocket, bag, or anywhere else it isn’t in active use. This means fewer apps will take up precious resources on your phone when you aren’t using it, translating to longer battery life.

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With Android Oreo, Google implemented a new set of features called “Vitals” that, among other things, aim to intelligently limat background activity in order to save precious battery life.

And so far, it works exceptionally well. There’s just one problem: not everyone has Oreo, Nougat, or in some cases even Marshmallow. If your handset happens to be forever stuck on Lollipop or KitKat (or older), there are still some things that can you do to make sure you’re getting the most life out of the battery.

If you do have one of the newer versions of Android, however, the following will also apply, though to a somewhat lesser extent. We’ll cover some of the newer features—like Android’s built-in Battery Optimizations—further down below.

First: Know Where to Check Your Usage

Look, this may seem like common sense, but I’m going to say it anyway: if you think your battery is draining faster than normal, look at your phone’s battery stats! This is very, very simple: just pull down the notification shade, tap the cog icon (to go to the Settings menu), then scroll down to the Battery section.

One some devices—like most things from the Samsung Galaxy series, for example—this will just show you a basic screen with some estimates. While those are marginally useful, you’ll want to hit the “Battery Usage” button to see the real meat and potatoes here.

On this screen, you can see what’s chewing through your battery, complete with a nice graph and a breakdown by app or service. If there’s an app causing issues, this is where you’ll see it.

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But wait, there’s more! What many users may not realize is that if you tap on the aforementioned graph, you’ll get a detailed look at when the device is awake—or “wakelocks” as they’re generally called.

There’s a really simple way to read this screen: the bars show when each particular sub-head is “on.” Since I never disable my phone’s Wi-Fi, the screenshot above shows that Wi-Fi is always on and connected. Same with Cellular network signal. But as you can see, GPS, while always on, isn’t being used.

The “Awake” indicator shows when the phone was allowed to come out of a sleep state—this is what you want to pay close attention to. If this bar is basically solid and “on” all the time, that means something is keeping your device awake all the time, which is bad. You want to see very short bursts on the “Awake” bar while the display is off. (If the screen is on—which you can easily see from its status bar below—then the phone will naturally be awake as well. It’s not going to sleep while it’s being used, after all.)

If you’re seeing something different here, then there’s a problem. And, unfortunately, there’s no easy way to diagnose wakelocks without rooting your phone, which makes it difficult for casual users to diagnose battery issues.

Lastly, in Oreo, Google brought back the option to “show full devices usage.” That means you can switch between seeing which apps are using the battery, and hardware stats for battery usage. To show this, tap the three-dot overflow menu in the upper right corner, then select “Show full device usage.” To switch back to app view, do the same thing and select “Show app usage.”

By switching back and forth between the two, you’ll be able to better determine what (if anything) is acting out of the ordinary.

In Oreo, Nougat, and Marshmallow: Check Android’s Battery Optimization Settings

In modern versions of Android (which I generally think of as Marshmallow and newer), Android has some built-in battery optimizations. While most of these are enabled by default, it never hurts to check and make sure everything is working as it should.

To access these settings, jump back into the battery menu (Settings > Battery), then tap the three-dot overflow menu in the upper right corner. From there, select “Battery optimization.”

By default, this will show apps that aren’t optimized out of the gate. Some of these won’t be able to be optimized, which is why they’re not optimized in the first place. Others may have the option available but may be disable for practical purposes—like Android Wear in my case here. Optimizations for that particular apps are disabled so the watch will always stay connected to my phone.

If you want to see a list of all apps (both optimized and unoptimized), just tap the dropdown and choose “All apps.”

I recommend just looking through this list and seeing if there’s anything that can be tweaked. Maybe there won’t be, but it never hurts to look.

Disable Wireless Connections

Look, I’m not going to pretend that this is going to make a monumental difference in your mobile battery life, but I’m going to say it anyway: disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS if you don’t need them.

See, this used to be a very important step in optimizing your Android device’s battery life, but as time has gone on and Google has improved Android, it’s almost unnecessary at this point. Still, if you never use something like Bluetooth, turning it off isn’t going to hurt anything. It’s also worth mentioning that if you do disable Wi-Fi when you’re away from home, don’t forget to turn it back on—you don’t want to chew through your data plan, after all. To toggle Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, pull down the notification shade and tap the appropriate toggle, or jump into Settings and then into each service’s respective entry.

With GPS, things aren’t as cut and dry and “on” and “off.” Back in the day, this was a monstrous battery hog, so Google optimized the absolute snot out of it—nowadays, it’s pretty much only used when it absolutely has to be, and only for as long as it needs to be. For example, your weather apps may briefly check for current location when you open the app so it can provide the most accurate forecast. If you’re using Navigation, on the other hand, GPS will stay on the entire time, because, you know…directions.

All that said, you can still actually control how GPS works. For example, you can allow the phone to use “High Accuracy” mode, which will find your location using a combination of GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi/cellular networks. This uses the most battery, but it’s also the most accurate.

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So, if you head into Settings > Location, you can control this. Just tap on the “Mode” entry to see the available options. Remember, the less battery it uses, the less accurate it is! If you don’t use GPS or location services very often, go ahead and try one of the less-accurate and more battery-efficient modes. If you notice anything funky after that, then you may have been using an app that relies on a more accurate location service, so you’ll either have to deal with some jankiness or revert back to a higher accuracy mode.

Check Notification Settings

You’ve probably heard that notifications can drain your battery, but as with all things, it’s a bit more complicated than that. These days, the majority of apps use Push Notifications. Instead of constantly monitoring for new notifications (which is very taxing on the battery), push notifications use an always-listening port that’s built into Android to receive information. In other words, instead of the app connecting to the internet every several minutes to see if there’s any new information, Android is always ready to accept new information from services that are enabled on the device. This is far more battery efficient because it’s a passive service.

There are, however, still apps out there that rely on non-push notifications. The biggest offender is generally going to be email services that still rely on POP3—while these are likely few and far between at this point, they’re still out there. A few social networking apps may do something similar.

The easiest way to tell if this is the case with an app is to check its notification options: if you have to specify a “refresh” or “update” interval, the app or service isn’t using push notifications, and you’re probably best off turning off notifications for that app entirely. Your battery will thank you.

Use Greenify to Automatically Put Apps into Sleep Mode

While this is admittedly more relevant on pre-Marshmallow devices, it’s still a useful tool to have in your arsenal against terrible battery life. Greenify is an app that essentially pushes apps into a “sleep” state of sorts by using Android’s built-in way of preventing apps from running constantly in the background. It is not a task killer, even though it may sound a bit like one—it’s much more effective.

To set up Greenify, first install the app from Google Play—if you’d like to support the developer’s work, then you can also opt for the $2.99 “Donation Package.” It’s worth mentioning that Greenify is more useful on rooted handsets, but it can also be used on non-rooted phones—the difference is that everything is automated on a rooted device, where you’ll have to “manually” greenify apps on non-rooted devices.

Once it’s installed, go ahead and fire up the app. If your handset is rooted, you’ll grant it superuser access here; if not, well, you won’t.

You can add apps to be greenified (aka put to sleep) by tapping the plus sign in the top-right corner. Greenify will show you apps that are currently running, along with apps that may slow your device down under certain circumstances. Go ahead and tap all the items you’d like to greenfiy, but keep in mind that the apps will no longer sync in the background after being greenified! For example, if you greenify your messaging apps, you’ll stop receiving text messages. Or, if you greenify your alarm clock, it won’t go off. Be thoughtful in what you choose to add to this list!

Keep the Device Out of Extreme Temperatures

This one can be a bit trickier because it’s not just a tweak or toggle—it has to do with where the device physically is. Extreme temperatures—both hot and cold!—can cause the battery to drain much faster.

For example, let’s say you live in a hot climate (like Texas, for example). It’s July and you jump in your car, toss your phone in a dock, and fire up Navigation. That means your GPS is in use, the display is on, and it has the hot sun beating down on it. That’s a recipe for disaster—the device will run hot because it’s working hard, and when you throw that hot sun into the mix it can be catastrophic to your phone’s battery life. In fact, I’ve seen devices lose charge while plugged in under this exact situation. It’s that bad.

What many people may not realize, however, is that extreme cold is just as bad as heat. The safe operating temperatures for lithium ion batteries is –4°F to 140°F—circumstances that are highly unlikely for most people to be in—while the safe charging temperatures are much lower: 32°F to 113°F.  Naturally, as you get close to either end of this extreme, battery life will be negatively affected.

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Don’t Bother: Why You Don’t Want to Wirelessly Charge Your Smartphone

Wireless charging is overrated — at least in its current form. The dream of wireless power sounds great, but current wireless charging technologies are more “plugless” than “wireless.” They’re also less convenient, slower, and less-efficient than just plugging your phone in.

Let’s be honest: Wireless chargers are more interesting as a proof of concept and a glimpse at future technologies than they are practical. When you charge your smartphone, you’ll want to plug it in with a cable.

Wireless Chargers Are Even More Constrained Than Charging Cables

To use a wireless charger, you place your smartphone down on a “charging mat.” That mat is plugged in with a wire, and it sits on a table — you may want to leave it on your bedside table, for example. While the smartphone is placed on that charging mat, the mat will wirelessly transmit power to the phone. Lift the smartphone from the mat and the wireless charging will stop.

Let’s think about it: What other “wireless” technologies work in this way? Wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) works everywhere in your home. You don’t have to place your laptop on top of the router to get Internet access. That’s the whole point of wireless Internet — you have freedom to move aroun

In terms of pure freedom to move around, a charging cable is just better. Yes, the cable that came with your smartphone is very short and requires you be very near a power outlet. But you can buy much longer third-party charging cables — both Lightning cables for iPhones and standard USB cables for Android phones. Plug your smartphone into that longer cable and you can actually use it while it’s charging. You don’t have to hunch over the table to use the phone. With a wireless charger, you would have to hunch over to use it while it’s charging.

For example, let’s say you charge your smartphone on your bedside table. You could either use a charging mat — and the phone would only charge while it’s sitting on that mat — or use a longer cable. If you plugged it in with a cable, you’d be able to lift the phone off the table and use it while it charges.

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The same goes for chargers in other places, too. When charging a smartphone at a desk, you could leave it sitting on a pad the entire time or plug it into a longer cable that allows you to lift the cable and use it.

That longer cable will be much cheaper than buying a wireless charger, too. There’s another problem with getting a wireless charger: You have to spend extra, often $50 or more, for a device that’s arguably less convenient.

And, by the way — depending on the smartphone and wireless charger, it may be a bit finicky. You can’t necessarily just plop it down anywhere on the charging mat. You have to ensure it lines up and starts charging. If you’re picking up your smartphone and putting it back down regularly, you’ll need to ensure it lines up well enough every time you put it down. That’s more work than simply plugging it in once and then putting it down wherever you want afterwards.

Wireless chargers do involve a wire — between the charging pad and outlet. There’s no wire between the phone and charging pad. Instead, the phone has to be pressed right up to the charging pad — it’s contactless. “Wireless” implies a lot of freedom a wireless charger doesn’t actually offer.

It Takes Longer, Uses More Power, and Generates More Heat

There’s a reason we normally plug devices in to charge them. It’s just faster and more efficient to transmit energy over a wire.

Wired charging is much faster than wireless charging. Anandtech found that a Samsung Galaxy S6 can charge from zero percent to 100 percent battery power in 1.48 hours if you plug it in and charge over a wired connection. Wireless charging takes 3.01 hours, which is twice as long. That may not seem like a big deal if you’re charging overnight, of course. But, if you quickly want a top-up your phone, you should stick with a wired connection rather than a wireless one.

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It’s also less efficient. This means it will take more electricity to charge a phone if you do so wirelessly. Some of that wasted power will be in the form of excess heat. While the heat won’t destroy your phone, heat is the enemy of your smartphone’s battery — that heat will translate to a bit more wear on your battery.

None of this is the end of the world. You’ll have an okay experience if you use wireless charging. Your phone will probably charge fast enough, as long as you’re not in a hurry, and the extra power shouldn’t be a noticeable drain on your electric bill. The extra heat probably won’t noticeably accelerate your battery’s decay, either.

But why put up with all those downsides to use something that’s just less convenient and flexible than simply plugging your phone in?

The latest specifications allow for wireless charging from up to a few feet away from a charger, but it’ll be even less efficient — that means even slower and more wasteful with electricity.

The dream of wireless charging is great, of course. If only we could have some sort of wireless power device in our home that would charge our smartphones as we use them without having to press them against it. If only our smartphones would charge automatically when we placed them down on a table at a restaurant. But we’re a ways from that.

As someone who’s tried wireless charging with several different Android smartphones, believe me: you’re better off with a wired charger and a longer cable.

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How to Know When It’s Time to Replace Your Laptop’s Battery

No matter how well you treat your laptop’s battery, it will eventually die. If you’re lucky, it will be time to replace your laptop by the time its battery dies. If you’re not, you’ll need to replace the battery.

Battery death can seem sudden, but it doesn’t have to. Windows will warn you when your battery reaches extremely low capacity levels, but you can also keep your own tabs on its capacity.

Windows Will Warn You

Windows doesn’t normally keep you up-to-date with your battery’s capacity level. As you use it and it weakens, you’ll just notice that your laptop doesn’t seem to last as long on battery.

Eventually, when your battery reaches a low enough capacity level, Windows will warn you. You’ll see a red X appear on the standard battery icon in your system tray and, when you click it, Windows will inform you that you should “consider replacing your battery.” Windows also says that your computer might shut down suddenly because there’s a problem with your battery — in other words, your battery can’t hold enough of a charge to power your laptop for long when it’s not connected to an outlet.

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Note that this warning was added in Windows 7, so you won’t see it if you’re using Windows Vista or XP.

How to Check Your Laptop’s Battery Capacity

If you’re curious just how far your laptop’s battery capacity has declined, you can use a third-party tool to view it. NirSoft’s free BatteryInfoView does this well, displaying the battery’s approximate wear level, the capacity it was designed to have, and the capacity it currently has.

Calibrating Your Battery

The information above may not be completely accurate if your battery requires calibration. For example, we had a battery that reported it was almost dead. Windows warned us that it was time to replace the battery and the battery appeared to be at 27.7% wear level according to its reported capacity.

After we calibrated the battery, Windows stopped warning us and the battery’s reported capacity went back up to 70.8%. The battery didn’t actually gain any additional charge, but the calibration helped the battery’s sensor actually detect how much capacity was in the battery. If Windows says it’s time to replace your battery, be sure to calibrate it first before checking its actual wear level. If you don’t, you may replace a battery that’s still in good enough shape. That would just be a waste of money.

Why Your Laptop’s Battery Capacity Declines

Laptop batteries decline due to a number of factors. Heat, usage, age — all of these things are bad for batteries. Batteries will slowly die no matter what — even if you put your battery in a closet and never touched it, it would slowly lose capacity due to age. However, if you never use your battery — say you use your laptop at your desk most of the time and it gets rather hot, which is bad for the battery — removing the battery can certainly help prolong its life.

Replacing Your Battery

If your laptop has a user-serviceable battery — that is, one you can remove on your own — you can replace your battery fairly easily. If your laptop doesn’t have a user-serviceable battery, you’ll need to contact the laptop’s manufacturer so they can crack your laptop open and change its battery for you.

Assuming you have a user-serviceable battery, you can order a replacement battery for your laptop model online. Don’t just head to eBay and buy the cheapest third-party batteries available — buy official batteries from a reputable company. Aftermarket batteries are often built on the cheap, with cut corners and insufficient testing. They can be dangerous — a cheap, counterfeit, and improperly designed battery could literally go up in flames.

There’s no point in obsessing over your battery’s capacity — it was designed to be used, after all — but it’s something to keep on eye on. If your capacity is dropping more quickly than you’d like, that may be a sign that you should be treating your battery better. Perhaps you’re exposing it to too much heat if you leave your battery in while playing demanding, strenuous PC games on your laptop.

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Debunking Battery Life Myths for Mobile Phones, Tablets, and Laptops

Batteries need to be cared for properly — they’re a critical part of our mobile devices and battery technology hasn’t advanced as fast as other technologies. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of incorrect information about batteries out there.

Some of the big myths come from old battery technologies and are actively harmful when applied to new battery technologies. For example, nickel-based batteries needed to be fully discharged, while modern lithium batteries shouldn’t be fully discharged.

Perform Shallow Discharges; Avoid Frequent Full Discharges

Old NiMH and NiCd batteries had a “memory effect” and had to be completely discharged from 100% to 0% to keep their capacity. Modern devices use Lithium Ion batteries, which work differently and have no memory effect. In fact, completely discharging a Li-ion battery is bad for it. You should try to perform shallow discharges — discharge the battery to something like 40-70% before recharging it, for example. Try to never let your battery go below 20% except in rare circumstances.

If you were to discharge your battery to 50%, recharge it, and then discharge it to 50% again, that would count as a single “cycle” with modern Li-ion batteries. You don’t need to worry about performing shallow charges.

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There’s only one problem that shallow discharges can cause. Laptops can get a bit confused by shallow discharges and may show you wrong estimates for how long your device’s battery will last. Laptop manufacturers recommend you perform a full discharge about once per month to help calibrate the device’s battery time estimate.

Heat (and Cold) Can Damage Batteries

Heat can reduce a battery’s capacity. This affects all types of devices — even smartphones heat up when performing demanding tasks — but laptops can become hottest of all when under load. The battery is in the laptop, near the electronics that become hot while working heavily — this contributes to battery wear.

If you have a laptop that you use plugged in all of the time and it gets quite hot, removing the battery can increase the battery’s life by limiting the battery’s exposure to the heat of your laptop. This won’t make too much of a difference in normal use, but if you’re using a laptop to play a lot of demanding games and it’s heating up quite a bit, it may be helpful. Of course, this only applies to laptops with removable batteries.

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Your climate is also a concern. If it gets very hot where you live or you store your device somewhere that gets very hot — say, a hot car left in the sun on a summer day — your battery will wear down faster. Keep your devices near room temperature and avoid storing them in very hot places, such as hot cars on summer days.

Extreme cold temperatures can decrease the lifespan of your battery, too. Don’t put a spare battery in the freezer or expose any device with a battery to similarly cold temperatures if you’re in a region with cold temperatures.

Don’t Leave the Battery At 0%

You shouldn’t leave the battery in a fully discharged state for very long. Ideally, the battery wouldn’t discharge all the way to zero very often — but if it does, you should recharge it as soon as possible. You don’t have to race to a power outlet when your smartphone dies, but don’t throw it in your drawer and leave it there for weeks without charging it. If you let the battery discharge completely and leave your device in a closet, the battery may become incapable of holding a charge at all, dying completely.

Store Batteries at 50% Charge

On the other hand, leaving the battery charged fully for an extended period of time could result in a loss of capacity and shorten its life. Ideally, you’d store the battery at 50% charge if you weren’t going to use it for a while. Apple recommends you leave the battery at 50% if you intend on storing the device more than six months. If you’re using it regularly, you shouldn’t need to worry about its state — although you never want to leave a battery at 0% for too long.

Storing the battery while fully discharged could result in the battery dying completely, while storing the battery at full charge could result in the loss of some battery capacity and shorten your battery’s life.

This applies to both batteries in devices and spare batteries you may have lying around — keep them at 50% if you won’t be using them for some time.

Leaving Your Laptop Plugged in All The Time Is Okay, But…

This one appears to be fairly controversial. We’ve previously covered the eternal question of whether it’s okay to leave your laptop plugged in all the time. We concluded that it’s okay and the battery’s temperature is the main thing you need to worry about. Apple disagrees, recommending against leaving its Macbook Air and Macbook Pro notebooks plugged in all the time.

Ultimately, we’re both saying the same thing. It’s fine to leave your laptop plugged in at your desk when you’re using it, as the laptop won’t “overcharge” the battery — it will stop charging when it reaches capacity. However, just as you shouldn’t store your laptop’s battery at full capacity in a closet, you shouldn’t leave your laptop plugged in for months on end with the battery at full capacity. Allow your laptop’s battery to occasionally discharge somewhat before charging it back up — that will keep the electrons flowing and keep the battery from losing capacity.

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Battery University says that “the worst situation is keeping a fully charged battery at elevated temperatures.” If your laptop produces a lot of heat, removing it might be a good idea. If you have a fairly cool laptop that you occasionally let discharge a reasonable amount, leaving it plugged in — even for days on end — shouldn’t be a problem. If your laptop gets extremely hot, you may want to remove the battery, as we mentioned above.

Batteries Will Always Wear Down

Like all other types of batteries, Li-ion batteries will wear down over time, holding less and less charge. Apple says its laptop batteries will reach 80% of their original capacity after “up to” 1000 full discharge cycles. Other manufacturers commonly rate their batteries 300 to 500 cycles.

The batteries can still be used after this point, but they’ll hold less electricity and will power your devices for shorter and shorter periods of time. They’ll continue losing capacity the more you use them. Heat and aging will reduce the battery’s life, too.

Whatever you do, your devices’ batteries will slowly wear down over time. With proper care, you can make them hold a long charge for longer — but there’s no stopping entropy. Hopefully, your device will be due for an upgrade by the time its battery dies.

How to Calibrate Your Laptop’s Battery for Accurate Battery Life Estimates

So you’re using your laptop and, all of the sudden, it dies. There was no battery warning from Windows—in fact, you recently checked and Windows said you had 30% battery power left. What’s going on?

Even if you treat your laptop’s battery properly, its capacity will decrease over time. Its built-in power meter estimates how much juice available and how much time on battery you have left—but it can sometimes give you incorrect estimates.

This basic technique will work in Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista. Really, it will work for any device with a battery, including older MacBooks. It may not be necessary on some newer devices, however.

Why Calibrating the Battery Is Necessary

If you’re taking proper care of your laptop’s battery, you should be allowing it to discharge somewhat before plugging it back in and topping it off. You shouldn’t be allowing your laptop’s battery to die completely each time you use it, or even get extremely low. Performing regular top-ups will extend your battery’s life.

However, this sort of behavior can confuse the laptop’s battery meter. No matter how well you take care of the battery, its capacity will still decrease as a result of unavoidable factors like typical usage, age, and heat. If the battery isn’t allowed to run from 100% down to 0% occasionally, the battery’s power meter won’t know how much juice is actually in the battery. That means your laptop may think it’s at 30% capacity when it’s really at 1%—and then it shuts down unexpectedly.

Calibrating the battery won’t give you longer battery life, but it will give you more accurate estimates of how much battery power your device has left.

How Often Should You Calibrate the Battery?

Manufacturers that do recommend calibration often calibrating the battery every two to three months. This helps keep your battery readings accurate.

In reality, you likely don’t have to do this that often if you’re not too worried about your laptop’s battery readings being completely precise. However, if you don’t calibrate your battery regularly, you may eventually find your laptop suddenly dying on you when you’re using it—without any prior warnings. When this happens, it’s definitely time to calibrate the battery.

Some modern devices may not require battery calibration at all. For example, Apple recommends battery calibration for older Macs with user-replaceable batteries, but says it’s not required for modern portable Macs with built-in batteries. Check your device manufacturer’s documentation to learn whether battery calibration is necessary on your device or not.

Basic Calibration Instructions

Recalibrating your battery is simple: just let the battery run from 100% capacity straight down to almost dead, and then charging it back to full. The battery’s power meter will see how long the battery actually lasts and get a much more accurate idea of how much capacity the battery has left.

Some laptop manufacturers include utilities that will calibrate the battery for you. These tools will usually just make sure your laptop has a full battery, disable power management settings, and allow the battery to run to empty so the battery’s internal circuitry can get an idea of how long the battery lasts. Check your laptop manufacturer’s website for information on using any utilities they provide.

You should also look at your laptop’s manual or help files. Each manufacturer may recommend a slightly different calibration procedure or tool to ensure your laptop’s battery is properly calibrated. Some manufacturers may even say this isn’t necessary on their hardware (like Apple). However, there’s no harm to performing a calibration, even if the manufacturer says it isn’t necessary. It just takes some of your time. The calibration process essentially runs the battery through a full discharge and recharge cycle.

How to Manually Calibrate a Battery

While it’s a good idea to use any included utilities or just follow instructions specific to your laptop, you can also perform battery calibration without any specialized tools. The basic process is simple:

  • Ÿ Charge your laptop’s battery to full—that’s 100%.
  • Ÿ Let the battery rest for at least two hours, leaving the computer plugged in. This will ensure that the battery is cool and not still hot from the charging process. You’re free to use your computer normally while it’s plugged in, but be sure it doesn’t get too hot. You want it to cool down.
  • Ÿ Go into your computer’s power management settings and set it to automatically hibernate at 5% battery. To find these options, head to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings. Look under the “Battery” category for the “Critical battery action” and “Critical battery level” options. (If you can’t set it to 5%, just set it as low as you can—for example, on one of our PCs, we couldn’t set these options below 7% battery.)
  • Ÿ Pull the power plug and leave your laptop running and discharging until it automatically hibernates. You can keep using your computer normally while this happens.

NOTE: If you want to calibrate the battery while you aren’t using the computer, be sure your computer isn’t set to automatically sleep, hibernate, or turn its display off while idle. If your computer automatically enters power-saving mode while you’re away, it will save power and won’t discharge properly. To find these options, head to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Change plan settings.

  • Ÿ Allow your computer to sit for five hours or so after it automatically hibernates or shuts down.
  • Ÿ Plug your computer back into the outlet and charge it all the way back up to 100%. You can keep using your computer normally while it charges.
  • Ÿ Ensure any power management settings are set to their normal values. For example, you probably want your computer to automatically power off the display and then go to sleep when you’re not using it to save battery power. You can change these settings while the computer charges.

Your laptop should now be reporting a more accurate amount of battery life, sparing you any surprise shutdowns and giving you a better idea of how much battery power you have at any given time.

The key to calibration is allowing the battery to run from 100% to almost empty, then charging it all the way up to 100% again, which may not happen in normal use. Once you’ve gone through this full charge cycle, the battery will know how much juice it has and report more accurate readings.

Apple reportedly launching iPad with Face ID and no home button in 2018

Apple is working on a redesigned iPad that would remove the device’s home button in favor of the new Face ID system introduced on the iPhone X. Bloomberg reports that the new iPad, which will feature a display size “similar” to the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, is likely to be released “later next year.” An improved Apple Pencil is also under development and expected to launch alongside the updated tablet.

Just as it did for the iPhone, getting rid of the Touch ID home button will allow Apple to trim the iPad’s bottom bezel closer to the device’s edge. This would result in a more immersive screen that fills nearly the entire front of the 2018 iPad. The company reduced the iPad Pro’s side bezels significantly with the 10.5 model that went on sale in June. Bloomberg’s report doesn’t confirm whether or not it would have the iPhone X’s signature “notch” up top, however.

Current iPads still use a physical, clicking home button — and that feels a touch out of date after last year’s iPhone 7 switched to a non-moving button that simulates presses with vibration. Apple did the same thing with the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus this year.

Apple is unlikely to use OLED for the 2018 iPad lineup and will stick with LCD, according to the report. “Technical and financial constraints” are preventing the same display technology transition that the top-tier iPhone made this year. Samsung utilizes high-resolution OLED screens both for its Android-based Galaxy tablets and the 12-inch Galaxy Book that runs Windows. But those products don’t sell at nearly the same volume as iPads, so the “constraint” would likely be whether Samsung can produce enough screens for iPad demand. And if Samsung Display can’t, it’s doubtful that LG or other supplies could.

Other details about the next-generation iPad remain a mystery. Will it also change to a glass back to allow for wireless charging? Will we finally get an iPad that’s water resistant? (I think I’d value that more than Face ID, personally.) Bloomberg estimates that the launch is about a year out, so we might not see it until fall 2018, and the report warns that Face ID integration could be nixed due to supply issues between now and then.

Confirmed: Windows 10 may cut off devices with older CPUs

No Windows 10 Fall Creators Update for you, Microsoft says—at least, not if you happen to be the unlucky owner of certain older Atom-based Windows devices, and other aging hardware. After stories arose of failed attempts to upgrade such hardware to the Creators Update, Microsoft says that any hardware device that falls out of the manufacturer’s support cycle may be ineligible for future Windows 10 updates.

In the case of the four “Clover Trail” processors (part of the Cloverview platform) that have fallen into Intel’s End of Interactive Support phase, they will be ineligible for the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft confirmed. Instead, they’ll simply be offered the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, plus security updates through January 2023, the end of the original Windows 8.1 support period.

Microsoft doesn’t seem to have excluded any new processors from the Fall Creators Update. The problem, however, is that Microsoft’s language opens up the possibility that any unsupported hardware device could be excluded from future Windows 10 updates, whenever they may be.

“Recognizing that a combination of hardware, driver and firmware support is required to have a good Windows 10 experience, we updated our support lifecycle policy to align with the hardware support period for a given device,” Microsoft said in a statement. “If a hardware partner stops supporting a given device or one of its key components and stops providing driver updates, firmware updates, or fixes, it may mean that device will not be able to properly run a future Windows 10 feature update.”

Why this matters: For years, the rule of thumb was that you could run virtually any operating system on top of any Intel, AMD (or even Cyrix) hardware. Chances are that it would run, if slowly. Over time, though, things changed. As malware became more potent, running a supported Windows operating system became more important. Now, there’s Windows as a Service: If Windows 10 never really goes away, what limits PC builders is supported hardware, apparently. Now we have to worry about how long all of our PC hardware components are supported, lest we lose access to upcoming versions of Windows 10.

Is this more than sweeping Atom under the rug?

Microsoft appears to be doubling down on its belief that up-to-date hardware requires an updated operating system, and vice versa. Microsoft said last year that it would restrict the latest Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Ryzen silicon to Windows 10. Recently, the company has blocked patches on PCs that try to run older Windows operating systems on modern hardware.

“As new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support,” Microsoft said in January, 2016. “This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon.”

Microsoft’s Clover Trail stance sets limits on what those previous generations can expect. If a processor platform falls out of support by a chip vendor, Microsoft may drop it from its OS list.

What’s unclear, though, is whether Microsoft’s new position represents a fundamental shift in policy, or a rather narrow focus on Intel’s troubled Atom processors. At one time, Atom’s “Clover Trail” architecture represented the future of Intel processors within the smartphone and tablet markets. But Intel never could quite develop the system-on-chip with logic and communications that rivals like ARM provided, and Intel essentially killed the Atom platform in 2016. Without a healthy customer base to support, Intel apparently decided to refocus its support resources away from the Clover Trail architecture.

Devices that use Intel’s Clover Trail chips “require additional hardware support to provide the best possible experience when updating to the latest Windows 10 feature update, the Windows 10 Creators Update,” Microsoft said in a statement. “However, these systems are no longer supported by Intel… and without the necessary driver support, they may be incapable of moving to the Windows 10 Creators Update without a potential performance impact.”

Specifically, the Clover Trail chips have moved into the “End of Interactive Support,” (EOIS) which is defined as “Intel Customer Support Agents no longer respond to telephone, chat, community support forums, or email inquiries for this product.” Self-help is provided by Intel’s support community, generally made up of other users.

What’s worrying about Microsoft’s statement, though, is its broadness. Conceivably, any “device”—microprocessor, hard drive, network controller, sound card, headphones, monitor, and more—that a manufacturer discontinues or fails to actively support could drop out of Windows updates. While this would certainly encourage new PC and hardware purchases, it would also infuriate millions of PC users whose otherwise-functional legacy devices fell by the wayside.

A related question is whether Microsoft will refuse to support any other Intel processors that have reached EOIS status. Intel has published an enormous list of legacy Core processors on its site, which includes dozens if not hundreds of chips that have already fallen into the EOIS bin. The most recent EOIS chip appears to be the Core i7-990X, a 32-nm Gulftown processor most recently sold during the first quarter of 2011. But chips including the Ivy Bridge (2012) architecture are already at end-of-life status, and presumably headed for EOIS status next. It’s not clear whether moving a chip to an EOIS status is decided on a chip-per-chip basis, or if there’s a fixed timeline by which chips move from officially supported to end-of-life, and then to EOIS status.

Intel representatives declined to comment on whether other chips beyond the four Clover Trail processors were affected, referring questions to Microsoft.

If there’s an upside, it’s that Microsoft said it will actively work with chip vendors to find support for older hardware. “We know issues like this exist and we actively work to identify the best support path for older hardware,” Microsoft’s statement added.

This is why your laptop battery dies fast

A simple change can help your laptop die less often.

Quick, what is the biggest drain on your laptop’s battery?

If you answered “the display,” you’re right — for the most part.

The single biggest occupier of battery resources, day in and day out, is your laptop’s display. More specifically, it’s the that energy goes into powering the backlight that illuminates the pixels on your laptop’s display.

The obvious move to extend battery life is then to lower your display’s brightness. On either a Windows 10 laptop or an Apple MacBook, you can usually do this on the keyboard, but there are a couple other settings to change that will help automate the process.

Change your display settings

Managing display brightness on Mac OS X

Open System Preferences and click Display. On the Display tab, you’ll see a slider for Brightness. Lower it to a point between super bright and depressingly dull. Not only will a display set at a lower brightness aid your battery life, but it will also be easier on your eyes unless you are sitting in direct sunlight and need brightness at its max in order to see text and images.

Below the slider is a check box for Automatically adjust brightness, which may or may not help extend the life of your battery. If you use your laptop primarily in a brightly lit office or sunny breakfast nook, then keep this setting off so OS X isn’t bumping up screen brightness to compensate for your bright environment. You’re better off lowering the display brightness manually. Of course, the opposite is also true. If you often work into the wee hours at night in a darkened room or keep your office light low, check the box and let OS X lower the brightness in such settings.

There is another display-related setting on the Energy Saver area of System Preferences. Check the box for Slightly dim the display while on battery power.

Keeping your display running while your laptop sits unattended is a needless waste of battery resources. On the Energy Saver page, you can set times for Computer Sleep and Display Sleep, both of which spring into action if your MacBook sits idle for a period of time. Set as short a time as you’re comfortable with for the Battery tab; it’s less important for the Power Adapter tab.

Windows 10

First off, if you are concerned about your Windows 10 laptop’s battery life, head to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options and make sure you choose a Balanced or Power Saver plan. Use the High performance plan only when you need a boost for gaming or high-end graphics apps.

With Windows 10, there are additional power and display settings from the Settings button on the Windows 10 start screen. Tap the Home button, tap the Settings button on the left edge, and then tap System. From the left menu, tap Display and you’ll find a slider for Adjust brightness level.

Next, tap Battery Saver from the left menu. Tap the toggle switch to turn on Battery saver. If the toggle switch is grayed out, unplug your laptop so it’s running on battery power and the toggle switch will become active. Battery saver is a new feature with Windows 10 that limits background activity and push notifications to extend battery life.

By default, Battery saver turns on when your battery falls below 20 percent. Tap Battery saver settings to adjust this percentage. Also on the Battery saver settings page, you can check a box for Lower screen brightness while in battery saver to further extend battery life.

Lastly, tap Power & sleep from the left menu and select times for Windows 10 to turn the screen off and put your PC in sleep mode to avoid needlessly draining your battery while your laptop sits idle.

Don’t forget keyboard backlighting

Similar to powering the display backlight, powering keyboard backlights can also be a big drain on your battery. First, make sure you turn off your keyboard backlights when you don’t need them. Secondly, both OS X and Windows 10 have settings that will kill keyboard backlights after the laptop sits idle for a time of your choosing. This setting varies by manufacturer with Windows 10, but on OS X, you’ll find it in System Preferences > Keyboard.

Turn off wireless and unplug peripherals

While the display is the primary culprit for draining your laptop’s battery, I still want to leave you with two pieces of tried-and-true battery life advice.

  1. Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when they aren’t needed. Both wireless adapters use battery power to scan for networks and devices and keep you connected.
  2. Unplug any peripherals when they aren’t in use. An unpowered peripheral draws power from your laptop, which means it’ll drain the battery when the laptop isn’t plugged in.

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How To Take Care of Your Smartphone Battery the Right Way

Your smartphone is a minor miracle, a pocket-sized computer that can fulfill almost every whim. But none of its superpowers matter a bit if it runs out of juice. With removable batteries becoming more and more rare, you’ve got to take good care of the one you got. Fortunately, it’s not to hard keep the lithium-ion powering your everything-machine happy if you follow a few simple rules.

Outstream Video

Obviously, the first rule for extending your battery life is not using up all your battery life playing Candy Crush and walking around with Wi-Fi and GPS enabled when you’re not using either and really, really need your phone to last that extra hour. But aside from that, there are some basic rules for care and charging, and they’re the simplest baseline for a healthy battery.

Top it off

You may vaguely recall hearing something about rechargeable batteries and the “memory effect.” You know, that if you don’t “teach” your rechargeable batteries their full potential by taking them from totally full to totally empty, they’ll “forget” part of their capacity. Well forget all that. Right now. It does not apply to your phone.

Battery memory is a real thing, but it applies to nickel-based batteries; your trusty sidekick (literal Sidekick or otherwise) doubtlessly has a lithium-ion battery, and it needs to be treated a little differently. Specifically, it should be topped off whenever you get the chance.

To get the most out of a lithium-ion battery, you should try to keep it north of 50 percent as much as possible. For the most part, going from all the way full to all the way empty won’t help; in fact, it’ll do a little damage if you do it too often. That said, it’s smart to do one full discharge about once a month for “calibration,” but don’t do it all the time. Running the whole gamut on a regular basis won’t make your battery explode or anything, but it will shorten its lifespan.

But! You don’t want to have battery charging constantly either; lithium-ion batteries can get overheated. Luckily for you, your charger is smart enough to help with this, and will cut your phone off for a spell once it’s full. And to complicate matters a even further, your battery doesn’t particularly like being all the way full either. In fact, your battery will behave the best if you take it off the charge before it hits 100 percent, and leaving it plugged when it’s already full is going to cause a little degradation.

So if you’re really particular about optimizing your battery’s life, you should try to go from around 40 percent to around 80 percent in one go, and then back down whenever possible. A bunch of tiny charges throughout the day is your second best bet, and going from zero to 100 and then 100 to zero on a regular basis will put the most strain on your lithium-ion battery.

Keep it cool

It’s easy to worry about bad charging habits thanks to the training we’ve had from old rechargeable batteries, but lithium-ion batteries have a worse enemy than sub-optimal charging: Heat. Your smartphone’s battery will degrade much, much faster when it’s hot, regardless of whether it’s being used or just sitting around doing nothing.

At an average temperature of 32 degrees fahrenheit, a lithium-ion battery will lose six percent of its maximum capacity per year. At 77 degrees, that number jumps to 20 percent, and at 104 degrees it’s a whopping 35. Sure, it’s not exactly practical (or sane) to keep your phone in the fridge, but it’s worth going out of your way to prevent long stays in hot cars and the like.

Avoid wireless charging

Wireless charging can be incredibly convenient if your phone can do it, but it’s not without its disadvantages. The inductive, wireless chargers out there today have this nasty habit of generating a fair bit of waste heat. And while wasted energy is just a bummer in general, that heat will also toast your battery in the process. That’s no bueno. It’s a little less convenient, but standard plug-in charging is going to keep your battery in better shape, especially if you’re some place warm to begin with.

Never go to zero

If you’re going to be shelving any lithium-ion battery for a long time, try to leave it with at least 40 percent battery power to tide it over. Lithium-ion batteries don’t hemorrhage power when their not in use, but they’ll lose maybe five to ten percent of their charge each month.

And when lithium-ion batteries get too low—like, literally zero percent—they get seriously unstable, and dangerous to charge. To prevent explosion-type disasters when you go to charge one that’s been sitting around for a month or two, lithium-ion batteries have built-in self-destruct circuits that will disable (read: destroy) the battery for good, if it reaches rock bottom. And sure, that’ll save you from a face full of battery-acid, but it’ll also leave you short one battery.

Only charge fast when you need to

A lot of newer phones support some sort of “fast charging” feature. These suckers will let you juice your phone up from zero to around half-full in just about a half hour. It’s a life-saver for when you’ve only got a few minutes to spare, but it’s also not great for you battery. Surprise!

Lithium-ion batteries live their longest lives when charged and discharged at low, consistent speeds. Fast charging is not that. But since fast charging is only for the beginning of a charge cycle—and phones and their chargers are smart enough to only apply the extra voltage when it’s useful—the damage isn’t too bad. Still, if you’re not in a hurry, it’s probably better for your battery to apply a slow and steady charge through a low-voltage charger.

Don’t sweat it too much

It’s easy to get protective of your battery, but it’s also easy to get lazy. And that’s fine, because as long as you’re not a complete idiot, you’ll be OK. Typically, a lithium-ion battery lasts for three to five years, and chances are you’re going to want to swap out your gadgets sometime in that window anyway. The slight damage of a technically bad idea—like leaving your phone plugged in all night every night, or using fast charging when you need it—is worth the convenience.

Still, it’s pretty easy to keep your battery reasonably healthy just by avoiding particularly egregious torture like letting your phone discharge from full to zero every single day, or leaving it in a hot car all the time. And the next time you make it back home with power to spare, you’ll thank yourself for it.

How To Make Your Cell Phone Battery Last Longer

Although battery life is improving greatly with the production of each new smartphone, the world-wide line of phones still has not been perfected. Some smartphones have amazing battery lives that last up to 24 hours, while others have performances that are less than stellar. Fortunately, a cell phone owner can find creative ways to extend battery life. Implementing these strategies will help give a user the extra minutes and hours that he or she needs:

General Battery Saving Tips

Shut Down Unnecessary Applications

Many people end up shortening the battery life on their smartphones by having multiple applications running in the background. A person can easily access the list of applications by going to the application menu and clicking on “running applications.” The user can then end the functionality of a running application by clocking the “force close” button. Force close will completely shut down an Android application so that the battery does not drain as much as it drained beforehand. The application shutdown is the quickest way to save battery life.

Other functions may also be shut down to spare battery life on your smartphone. Examples of extra functions that one could shut off to spare battery life are the GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi functions. GPS is a strong application that will run a battery down quickly. Wi-Fi is the second strongest application. Bluetooth is not that bad of an application in terms of burning up battery life, but the phone owner could still shut it down.

Tweak the Display

The display screen often uses a great deal of battery life on a smartphone. One of the things that a person can do to slow down battery draining is changing the settings on the display screen. For example, the brightness can have a huge effect on the quickness of battery drainage. The best way to control it is to go to “Settings,” “Display,” “Brightness” and then “Brightness level” to change the display’s effect on the battery life.

Turn the Phone Off When Not in Use

Turning the phone off when it’s not in use is an excellent way to spare battery life, especially on a long trip. For example, a person can turn the smartphone off if he or she is going to go on a long trip that consists of several hundred miles of a straight line. Then, the individual can turn it back on and have full use of the GPS system for the duration of the trip.

Conduct One Task at a Time

Multitasking is something that many people do without realizing how much it eats up their batteries. The best way to save battery strength is to conduct one task at a time. That way, the processor is not working so hard that the battery drains in the blink of an eye. Users should close applications when they are finished with them instead of letting them run in the background. Simple unitasking can save hours of time on an Android device.

Saving Battery Life on an Android Device

A smartphone user can improve battery life on an Android device in several ways. The first way is the battery life saver mode with which many smartphones come equipped. Power saving mode is the name of this special battery saving mode on various Android devices. It keeps the usage down to a minimum so that the user can receive the maximum amount of time on calls, texts and Internet expeditions. The mode diminishes CPU performance and lowers the screen’s impact on the battery. Power saving mode is an excellent feature for people who have to go on lengthy driving expeditions.

An extended battery is available for most Android cell phones on the market. The extended battery is a fat battery that usually has double the capacity of the factory battery. An extended battery usually comes with an extra door, as well. The original cell phone door cannot accommodate the grand size of the replacement battery. Learn more about how to make your Android battery last longer.

Saving Battery Life on an Apple Device

Two tips exist for saving battery life on an Apple device. The first tip is to disable Siri. Siri is the most energy-consuming application on any Apple device. A second element that one can disconnect is the Ping element. Not every person knows who owns an iPhone realizes that he or she has the Ping service, but it can be found under “settings,” “general,” “restrictions” and then “Ping.” The person can then slide the control switch to the “off” position.

Sparing Battery Life on a Windows Device

Sparing battery life on a Windows device is easy because Windows phones have a “battery saving” mode of their own. The special battery saving mode is already built in to the Windows mobile phone, which means that the user does not have to change any settings. The battery saving mode will automatically kick in when the life of the battery reduces to 20 percent. Many things will occur when the battery saving mode comes on. First, all background apps will cut off to spare battery life. Next, email sync will switch to a manual process instead of battery guzzling automatic process.

If Nothing Else Works

If nothing else works, the last resort is to reset the phone. Resetting may work for a person who is losing battery life quickly. The software may have a glitch in it that will resolve itself with a factory reset. The way to reset an Android device is to touch the “settings” menu and then look for “backup and reset.” The person will be able to erase everything on the memory card and the phone if that is what he or she desires. If the master reset does not work, then it may be time for the user to take the phone back to the stores for an inspection and a possible warranty replacement.