Month: January 2018

How to Use iPhone Low Power Mode for Longer Battery Life

Squeezing the longest use out of your iPhone battery is crucial. There are dozens of tips and tricks to help you, but if your battery is very low right now or you won’t be able to charge for a while, here’s one simple tip to conserve battery life: turn on Low Power Mode.

Low Power Mode is a feature of iOS 9 and up that disables some features of the iPhone in order to make your battery last longer.

How Much Extra Time Does Low Power Mode Get You?

The amount of extra battery life Low Power Mode delivers is dependent on how you use your iPhone, so there’s no single prediction.

According to Apple, though, the average person can expect to up to get an extra 3 hours of battery life.

How to Turn On iPhone Low Power Mode

Sound like something you want to try? To turn Low Power Mode on:

  1. Tap the Settings app to open it.
  2. Tap Battery.
  3. Move the Low Power Mode slider to On/green.

To turn it off, just repeat these steps and move the slider of Off/white.

This isn’t the only way to enable Low Power Mode, though. The iPhone gives you other options:

  • Siri—Just tell Siri “turn on Low Power Mode” (or a variation of that phrase) and she’ll take care of it for you.
  • Pop-up Window—When your iPhone’s battery life drops to 20%, and then again at 10%, the iOS displays a pop-up warning. In that warning is a button that can turn on Low Power Mode. Tap it to start saving battery.
  • Control Center—In iOS 11 and up, you can add Low Power Mode to Control Center. Check out the section at the end of the article for more on this.

What Does Low Power Mode Turn Off?

Making your battery last longer sounds great, but you have to understand the trade-offs to know when it’s the right choice. When Low Power Mode is enabled, here’s how the iPhone changes:

  • Processing power is reduced—The speed of the iPhone’s processor influences how much battery it uses. Low Power Mode reduces the performance of the processor and the graphics chip to conserve battery. This means your phone will be a little slower and might not perform as well in games and other graphics-intensive tasks.
  • Background App Refresh is disabled—Your iPhone learns how you use apps and automatically updates them around the times you use them to ensure that the latest data is always waiting for you. It’s a cool feature, but it also requires battery life. Low Power Mode temporarily suspends this feature.
  • Email fetch is turned off—The iPhone can be set to periodically grab new email from your accounts. Low Power Mode turns this feature off and forces you to manually check for new messages (open Mail and swipe down from the top on any inbox to refresh).
  • Automatic downloads are disabled—You can set your iPhone to automatically download app updates or purchases made on other devices. This keeps your content in sync, but it also requires power. Low Power Mode prevents automatic downloads while it’s on.
  • Visual effects and animations are suspended—The iOS is packed full of all sorts of cool visual effects and animations. They make using the iPhone more fun, but they also use battery. By turning them off, Low Power Mode saves power.
  • Screen brightness is turned down—The brighter your phone’s screen, the more battery you use. Low Power Mode reduces your screen brightness to save energy.

Can You Use Low Power Mode All the Time?

Given that Low Power Mode can give your iPhone up to 3 hours of extra battery life, and the features it turns off aren’t completely essential to using the phone, you may wonder if it makes sense to use all the time.

Writer Matt Birchler tested that scenario and found that Low Power Mode can reduce battery use by 33%-47% in some cases. That’s a huge savings.

So, if you don’t use the features listed above very much, or are willing to give them up for more juice in your battery, you could use Low Power Mode all the time.

When Low Power Mode Is Automatically Disabled

Even if you’ve turned on Low Power Mode, it’s automatically turned off when the charge in your battery exceeds 80%.

Adding a Low Power Mode Shortcut to iOS 11 Control Center

In iOS 11 and up, you can customize the options that are available in Control Center.

One of the changes you can make is to add Low Power Mode. If you do this, turning the mode on is as simple as opening Control Center and tapping a button. Here’s how to do that:

  1. Tap Settings.
  2. Tap Control Center.
  3. Tap Customize Controls.
  4. Tap the green + icon next to Low Power Mode. It will move into the Include group at the top.
  5. Open Control Center and the battery icon at the bottom of the screen toggles Low Power Mode on and off.

IBM 24P8062 Controller Cache Battery
Premium Superb Choice 90W  Asus Zenbook UX51VZ Laptop AC Adapter Battery Charger
Replacement Tablet Battery for LENOVO L13D3E31 
Super Powerful Charger for Asus N56
LENOVO Ideapad U510 4060mAh/45Wh Low Prices Battery
Hp Pavilion x2 battery replacement
HP 633196-001 Desktop PC Power Supply

Computer Power Supply Wattage

Pretty much every power supply on the market for a desktop PC computer is advertised solely on its wattage. Unfortunately, this is a simplistic view of a very complex issue. The power supply is there to convert the high voltage from the wall outlet into the lower voltages required to operate the computer circuitry. If this is not done properly, the irregular power signals that are sent to the components can cause damage and system instability.

Because of this, it is important to make sure you buy a power supply that meets the needs of your computer system.

Peak vs. Maximum Wattage Output

This is the first real big gotcha when it comes to looking at power supply specifications. The peak output rating is the highest amount of power the unit can supply but this is only for a very brief time. Units cannot continuously supply power at this level and if it attempts to do so will cause damage. You want to find the maximum continuous wattage rating of the power supply. This is the highest amount that the unit can supply stably to the components. Even with this, you want to make sure the maximum wattage rating is higher than you intend to use.

Another thing to be aware of with the wattage output has to do with how it is calculated. There are three primary voltage rails inside of the power supply: +3.3V, +5V and +12V. Each of these supplies power to the various components of the computer system.

It is the combined total power output of all these lines that make up the total power output of the power supply. The formula used to do this is:

  • Ÿ Wattage = Voltage * Amperage

So, if you look at a power supply label and it shows that the +12V line supplies 18A of power, that voltage rail can supply a maximum of 216W of power.

This may be only a small fraction of say the 450W the power supply is rated at. The maximum output of the +5V and +3.3V rails would then be calculated and added to the overall wattage rating.

+12V Rail

The most important voltage rail in a power supply is the +12V rail. This voltage rail supplies power to the most demanding components including the processor, drives, cooling fans and graphics cards. All of these items draw a lot of current and as a result you want to make sure that you purchase a unit that supplies enough power to the +12V rail.

With the increasing demands on the 12V lines, many new power supplies have multiple 12V rails that will be listed as +12V1, +12V2 and +12V3 depending on if it has two or three rails. When calculating the amps for the +12V line, it is necessary to look at the total amps produces from all of the 12V rails. Often times there might be a footnote that the combine maximum wattage will be less than the total rating of the rails. Just reverse the above formula to get the maximum combined amps.

  • Ÿ Amperage = Wattage / Voltage

With this information about the +12V rails, one can use it against a general power usage based on the system of the system. Here are the recommendations for the minimum combined 12V rail amperages (and their relative PSU wattage rating) for various size computer systems:

  • Ÿ Small Form Factor – 15A (250W)
  • Ÿ Mini-Tower – 25A (300-350W)
  • Ÿ Mid-Tower – 35A (400-500W)
  • Ÿ Full Tower – 40A (600-650W)
  • Ÿ Dual Video Card (SLI) – 50A (750W+)

Remember that these are only a recommendation. If you have specific power hungry components, check the power supply requirements with the manufacturer. Many high end graphics cards can pull near 200W on their own under full load. Running two of the cards can easily require a power supply that can sustain at least 750W or more of total power output.

Can My Computer Handle This?

I frequently get questions from people who are looking to upgrade their graphics card in their desktop computer system.

Many high-end graphics cards have very specific requirements for power in order to operate properly. Thankfully this has improved with manufacturers now listing some information. Most will just list the recommended total wattage of the power supply but the best is when they list the minimum number of amps required on the 12V line. Previously they never published any power supply requirements.

Now, in terms of most desktop computers, the companies generally do not list the PC’s power supply ratings in their specifications. Typically the user will have to open up the case and look for the power supply label to determine what exactly the system can support. Unfortunately, most desktop PCs will come with fairly low power supplies as cost savings measures. A typical desktop PC that didn’t come with a dedicated graphics card will usually have between a 300 to 350W unit with around 15 to 22A rating. This will be fine for some budget graphics cards, but many of the budget graphics cards have been increasing in their power demands where they won’t work.

Conclusions

Remember that everything we have been talking about involves the maximum limits of the computer power supply. Probably 99% of the time a computer is being used, it is not being used to its maximum potential and as a result will draw much less power than the maximums. The important thing is that the computer power supply needs to have enough headroom for those times that the system is being taxed heavily. Examples of such times are playing graphic intensive 3D games or doing video transcoding.

These things heavily tax the components and need additional power.

As a case in point, I put a power usage meter between the power supply and the wall outlet on my computer as a test. During average computing, my system was pulling no more than 240W of power. This is well below the rating of my power supply. However, if I then play a 3D game for several hours, the power usage peaks upwards to around 400W of total power. Does this mean that a 400W power supply would be sufficient? Probably not as I have a large number of items that draw heavily on the 12V rail such that a 400W could have voltage problems which would result in system instability.

Bose Sounddock Portable Digital Music replacing System Battery Pack
Replace Battery for Dell Alienware 17 R2 14.8V 92Wh 
New 48Wh 11.4V B31N1336 Li-ion Battery
NEW 220w Replace HP 504965-001 power supply
Dell Inspiron 530 Power Supply Replacement 
Rechargeable lithium-ion battery for Bose Soundlink Mini I