Maximizing Battery Life on Android

When I first got my hands on an Android phone, it had a 1150mAh battery. Normally, it wouldn't last a day without recharge. Sometimes its a real pain, running out of fuel so fast. I surfed forums, tried apps and many tweaks. I experimented over time and finally cracked the mystery. Now I manage just near 3 days on average without recharge and guess what? its on the same battery. It may last 4-5 days on standby! Here's a thing or two I learned from my experience.

0. First things first

Stop using hungry apps. By 'hungry apps' I mean: apps that drain a lot of power. Especially, cool games. They keep the processor running high and drains the battery. Your device will get heated and that does no good for the battery either. When you are running these, it really doesn't matter how many tweaks have to save power. You will not last much longer.

1. The Display

The touch screen is the major drain for you battery. Keep it turned on and you are destined for a recharge not far away. Light emission consumes a big deal of the power. So try to keep screen brightness as lowest as possible; still comfortable for the eyes. Set screen timeouts to lowest (30 seconds). By doing this, try to keep the device in Standby mode much of the time. It should reduce power wastage. Don't poke the device unless you really need to.

After this tweak you'll be saving may be 60% of power on average use.

2. Network Connectivity

Mobile devices are connected to networks all the time. That means some energy is used for the communications all the time. If you have the chance to unplug wireless communication, you can save a considerable amount of battery power. When you go to sleep, turn the device into Airplane mode. You'll be surprised to see how slow the battery has drained over night.

Ofcourse you can't keep your device like that all the time. But here's another catch. Mobile service can work on different protocols: 2G, 3G, 4G and so on. 4G networks perform better but consumes a lot of power. 3G networks consumes less power with a bit less performance. And 2G is not the best match for a smartphone but, it's cheap on power. Try switching to 2G if possible, its OK for calls and messaging stuff but not atleast nearly good for Internet Connectivity. Switch back to 3G or 4G when you surf Internet.

Never ever use the Network Mode with a 'prefered' setting. Having a preferred setting will cause the device to switch between 2G-3G etc when network coverage is weak- that's a waste of power.

3. Internet Access

As already said, 3G or 4G are best for Internet access(data access). It will cost a great deal of power. Try to use WiFi for Internet access since it consumes much less power.

4. Other Wireless and GPS

When not in use, keep Wifi and bluetooth switched off. GPS communication consumes some power. So keep it off too(unless required). And remember that doing so may cause GPS to spend a couple of minutes after a fresh start to get a good fix.

5. Apps

Use only the needed Apps. Remove the ones that you may never use and keep some free internal memory space. Some apps keep running on background. Its better if you can force close unwanted ones. (its not that important anyway)

6. Sound and Vibration and more

Keep sound settings at levels you prefer and not all the way high. Remember that you can tweak vibration behavior to save tiny bits of power. Under Screen settings you may find Animation settings. Try turning off them. It can lesser the burden on the processor and by the way, I noticed only some animations went missing. Other effects became faster and smoother than ever before. And it seems that there's a bug in Gingerbread version related to animations. Once you turn on the animations, battery starts draining fast. Has to be rebooted to stop it.

7. Bugs

No piece of software is 100% free from bugs and Android is no exception. It could be even worse on Android since its being constantly bombarded with new features, experiments, upgrades and so on. So, occassionaly your device may come across a couple of bugs and some of them might keep the device working hard on background and draining power for no good reason. Give your device a reboot here and then. Plus, rebooting allows your device to run fresh and smooth.

Conclusion

Battery consumption is directly related to the performance of your device. Excessive heating may indicate rapid battery draining. Key to longer battery life is to lesser the burden on the device and reduce wastage. Otherwise, a battery with larger capacity will be required. But batteries made at same physical size have nearly equal capacities. It is said that highest capacity available for the regular mobile phone size is 1600mAh. To go beyond, batteries of larger size may be needed.

Keep an eye on Battery Usage stats on your device. It may assist you to predict when to do the next recharge and will help you greatly.

Oh, and about 'battery saving apps' as they claim, now I can stay much longer without them than have them running in the background.