STRETCH YOUR SMARTPHONE BATTERY CAPACITY

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.