Stretch your smartphone battery

With so much to offer, smartphones today have found their way in to the hands of almost all type of users. Be it teenagers who wants gaming, multimedia, chatting, internet or the businessman with needs for video conferencing and editing documents on the go.

But smartphones, unlike feature phones, are smaller yet powerful computing devices that require a lot of power to perform all of its functions for which its battery is the main source.

As smartphone manufacturers try to strike the right balance between battery size and battery life, here are some tips to help you use your device to the fullest throughout the day.

Control your display

Smartphone displays are typically responsible for using 60 per cent of battery capacity. Therefore, efficient use of the display will help you save a lot of power.

First, reduce the display's brightness to an optimal level, and similarly tweak your phone's ambient light sensor, if it has one.

Second, use a dark or black background as using a dark background also saves battery consumption as compared to a lighter or white background.

And finally, reduce the timer or idle on time for the back light. This is the time for which the display remains switched on when it is left idle. Keeping it at 10-15 seconds reduces load on the battery.

Update

Companies from time to time update their software to keep them speedy and responsive. Always install the updates and patches when they are available or things will tend to slow down and some times even continually crash. The slower your machine, the more power it will consume to execute a given task.

Turn off the radio

Smartphones don't have conventional FM radios. Instead, they use wireless connectivity protocol like Wifi and Bluetooth that use radio frequency waves to transmit and receive data.

Most operating systems, such as Nokia's Symbian ^3, have these radios switched on by default. It is good to occasionally check whether wireless radios are on or off since keeping them on unnecessarily wastes power.

There are several applications that allow one-touch control for wireless radios. By installing such applications, users can save battery, and don't have to browse through the menu each time they want to control the radios.

Charge regularly

Unlike the old Cadmium batteries, Lithium batteries that are used these days can be recharged without first being completely discharged. Charge your smartphone whenever possible, Most smartphones support direct USB charging, which could save the user from having to carry a phone charger to work.

Don't worry about overcharging because smartphones monitor their battery's status regularly and, like laptops, they discontinue charging when the battery is full.

Learn to turn off the phone sometimes

There is a popular myth that smartphones aren't supposed to be restarted as their file systems could get corrupted, but the truth is that an occasional restart or two will not harm your smartphone and will, in fact, benefit it since smartphones, like computers, tend to develop many dump files that are only cleared after a restart. So either you restart your smartphone manually or the device itself will restart under too much load, which can harm its file system.

In places where you know there is poor connectivity, like in the metro or the basement, it is advisable to turn on the flight mode as it stops the network radio from scanning for signals and thereby conserving precious battery power. Also, today almost all smartphones support auto shutdown and start up, which is good for conserving the battery and, more importantly, for peaceful sleep too.