Tag: Phone Battery

Mobile phone accessories to buy Sony LIS1558ERPC mobile phone battery

Mobile phone accessories to buy Sony LIS1594ERPC mobile phone battery

Phone Batteries Only Live a Couple of Years: FALSE-ish

Phone batteries measure their lifespan in “charge cycles.” That means every time you discharge up 100 percent of the capacity, that’s one cycle count—but that doesn’t mean you went all the way to 0.

For example, if your phone is at 80 percent, you go down to 30 percent (that’s 50 percent), and you charge it back to 80 and use it up again… that’s one cycle. You could use 75 percent one day, 25 percent the next; that’s one cycle. Depending on where you read, expect iPhones to have a lifespan of 400 to 500 charge cycles (note, that’s not 400 to 500 times the phone is actually plugged in to charge.)

If the phone’s capacity has eroded enough, you may have to do that 50 percent charge-and-use a couple of times a day—and that’s when the lifespan goes even faster. Here’s Apple’s graphic trying to explain it:

Apple chart iphone charge cycles​

While your phone battery doesn’t have a “memory” that makes the capacity worse and worse, that limited lifespan means you may want to swap in a new battery (or batteries, as you can see in the image below). And if you have an older iPhone, you can grab a new battery on the cheap right now.

Last month, Apple admitted to secretly slowing down batteries on older iPhones in the name of “overall performance and prolonging the life of…devices.” It first applied the slowdowns to iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and iPhone SE devices, but has extended it to iPhone 7 devices, too. After an uproar, Apple said it would offer battery replacements for these phones for $29, down from the usual $79 fee, from now until Dec. 31. Here’s how to see if you’d benefit from a new battery.

Battery replacements re generally best done by a professional unless you’re brave. Few new smartphones have a user-swappable battery. Those that do are from previous years, including models from LG (V20, V10, and G5), the Moto G5, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 from 2014. The newest one out with a removable battery is probably the Moto E4.

Why so few? Well, you can look at it this way: most Lithium-ion batteries perform effectively for around two to three years, and that’s when the manufacturers would really like it if you upgraded to a new phone. Or maybe it’s because the average smartphone user in the US keeps a phone for around 22.7 months, according to Kantar WorldPanel, so they can always have the newest, coolest gadget on hand—so why bother making it easy to swap a battery?

The takeaway here: if you plan to swap phones every year or two, charge the stupid thing any way you want, as often as you want, and don’t worry about the diminished capacity. But if you want to stretch things out, use best practices for Lithium-Ion batteries we described above. It may help. Or, just take it in to and get a new battery installed every couple of years.

How to Extend Phone Battery Life

1. Dim the screen brightness or use auto brightness

You love your smartphone’s large, colourful display, but it’s the battery’s mortal enemy. More than any other component of your phone, the display consumes battery life at a devastating pace. Most phones include an auto-brightness feature that automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness to suit ambient lighting levels.

This mode uses less power than constantly running your screen at full brightness would, of course, but you’ll get even better results by turning your screen’s brightness down to the lowest setting that you can tolerate and leaving it there. Even if you do nothing else we suggest, following this one tip will extend the life of your battery dramatically.

2. Keep the screen timeout short

Under your phone‘s display settings menu, you should find an option labeled ‘Screen Timeout’, ‘Sleep’ or something similar. (On an iPhone, look for Auto-Lock in the General settings menu.) This setting controls how long your phone’s screen stays lit after receiving input, such as a tap.

Every second counts here, so set your timeout to the shortest available time. On most Android phones, the minimum is 15 seconds. If your screen timeout is currently set to 2 minutes, consider reducing that figure to 30 seconds or less.

3. Turn off Bluetooth

No matter now much you love using Bluetooth with your hands-free headset, your wireless speaker or activity tracker, the extra radio is constantly listening for signals from the outside world. When you aren’t in your car, or when you aren’t playing music wirelessly, turn off the Bluetooth radio. This way, you can add an hour or more to your phone’s battery life.

4. Turn off Wi-Fi

As with Bluetooth, your phone’s Wi-Fi radio is a serious battery drainer. While you will at times need to use your home or office Wi-Fi connection rather than 3G or 4G for internet access and other data services, there’s little point in leaving the Wi-Fi radio on when you’re out and about. Toggle it off when you go out the door, and turn it back on only when you plan to use data services within range of your Wi-Fi network.

In iOS it’s easier than ever to toggle Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on and off. Simply swipe up from the bottom of the screen to display the Control Centre.

The exception to this rule is for location services, since Wi-Fi can help your phone to obtain a GPS fix using less power (see myths section below).

5. Go easy on the location services and GPS

Another big battery sucker is apps using GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile data for monitoring your location. As a user, you can revoke apps’ access to location services, or set levels (in Android) to determine how much power they use. In Settings > Location, you can choose High accuracy when you need it, or Battery saving when you don’t.

Both iOS and Android have battery monitors, so you can check exactly how much each app is using and easily spot those which are using too much power. Then you can either uninstall them or simply make sure you quit them when you’re not actually using them.

6. Don’t leave apps running in the background

Multitasking – the ability to run more than one app at a time – is a powerful smartphonefeature. It can also burn a lot of energy, because every app you run uses a share of your phone’s processor cycles (but this isn’t true of all apps – see the myths section below).

By killing apps that you aren’t actually using, you can drastically reduce your CPU‘s workload and cut down on its power consumption.

In Android, tap the multi-tasking button – usually the right-most of the three icons at the bottom of the screen – and you can swipe away apps to close them.

In iOS, double-tap the Home button so the multitasking screen appears, then swipe upwards to close the app.

Both iOS and Android have battery monitors, so you can check exactly how much each app is using and easily spot those which are using too much power. Then you can either uninstall them or simply make sure you quit them when you’re not actually using them.

7. Don’t use vibrate

Prefer to have your phone alert you to incoming calls by vibrating rather than playing a ringtone? We understand the inclination; unfortunately, vibrating uses much more power than playing a ringtone does. After all, a ringtone only has to make a tiny membrane in your phone’s speaker vibrate enough to produce sound.

In contrast, the vibration motor rotates a small weight to make your whole phone shake. That process takes a lot more power. If you don’t want to be disturbed audibly, consider turning off all notifications and leave the phone in view so you can see when a new call is coming in. This approach is as courteous to your battery as it is to your friends and colleagues.