BE SMART ENERGY USER!

Be smart energy user!

How often do you recharge your Smartphone?

In a society where energy cost are rising, brownout and blackout are more common and the urge to stay connected is ever-greater, knowing how to manage your mobile phones battery as effectively as possible is increasingly important. This is not to only keep cost down – it’s also about staying in communication with emails and social networking services as well as text messaging, gaming and phone calls.

Why Battery Life Decrease

Unfortunately, one of the biggest battery killers - especially if you live or work with with bad service - is your cellular and data connection. Whether you've got a fancy new 4G phone or a standard 3G unit, your data will use up battery even if you aren't actively using the phone. Smartphone almost exclusively employ Lithium-Ion (aka Li-ion) batteries as these offer an affordable, high capacity solution for the various functions, services and connections that Smartphone users expect from operating systems. Battery charge decreases on a day-to-day basis through constant use – but what factors affect the life of a Li-ion battery? The age of the battery is most important, as this can affect the maximum charge.  A 2010 study demonstrated that from a starting capacity of 88-94%, battery life after 250 charges reduced to 73-84%.  

Looking After Your Battery

Few years ago I was convinced that full battery discharge from time to time was the best way to maintain long life for the power cell – I’ve since learned, however, that this is not the case. Instead, avoiding full discharge and charging regularly is apparently the best way to keep the battery working longer.

However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t fully discharge your battery every couple of months. Doing so enables the device hardware to recalibrate capacity, thereby ensuring that the correct charge is displayed on your Smartphone. Interestingly, temperature will affect your battery life; even occasional use in hot conditions will drain the battery faster.

Native Tips and Tricks for Maintaining Battery Life on Your Mobile Phone  
There are various ways provided by mobile phone operating system developers that you can employ to lengthen the time between charges. Sadly this means a trade-off with functionality. The most obvious thing to do is make sure your screen is set to switch off after a certain amount of time unused – perhaps after 30 seconds or a minute. You can also disable the phone’s vibrate mode and any vibrate/hap tic feedback designed to help you determine when software buttons have been pressed. After this, it’s time to turn your attention to connectivity. Bluetooth will drain your battery, so if this isn’t in use, disable it. Similarly, Wi-Fi will severely deplete battery life, especially if you have a few rogue apps or games maintaining a connection with a remote server. Mobile Internet such as EDGE, 3G, 4G and beyond will also lead to faster depletion of battery life. If you’re not using these connections for anything (i.e. your phone is sitting idle) then disable them. Finally, take a look at the apps you have installed, and determine whether or not they require localization services. These are typically provided by GPS, one of the biggest drains on your phone’s battery. If you’re not using GPS, switch it off! Your screen, especially if it's one of the new beautiful Super AMOLED or Super LCD displays, draws by far the most battery from your device. The best way to minimize your screen's battery usage is to turn the brightness down. By default, your phone should be on "Auto" brightness, which works, but might still use up more juice than you'd like. If you head to Settings > Display > Brightness, you can uncheck "Automatic Brightness" and put it on something like 10%. It'll be a little harder to see in direct sunlight, but you'll be better off everywhere else. Putting the Power Control widget on your home screen makes toggling between low and high brightness a lot easier, too, so that's a widget I highly recommend you use if you don't already. To add it, press and hold on an empty section of your screen, choose Widgets, and pick the Power Control option. I'd also recommend lowering the Screen Timeout from 1 minute to 15 or 30 seconds under Settings > Display. If you tend to let your phone sleep automatically (rather than hitting the sleep button when you're done using it), this will help you save some life as well.

Wi-Fi

When you have Wi-Fi networks around, use them. They'll automatically turn off your data connection and use Wi-Fi instead, which is better for battery life than cellular data. However, when you aren't around Wi-Fi, it'll actually drain your battery by constantly searching for networks to connect to. Apart from a few choice locations, I don't use Wi-Fi very much except at my house—so I'll turn Wi-Fi off with the Power Control widget when I'm out and about. 

Bluetooth

Having Bluetooth on kills battery just like Wi-Fi does. If you don't use a Bluetooth headset, just turn Bluetooth off entirely. Again, you can toggle it on and off from the Power Control widget, so on the occasions that you are using a Bluetooth headset, or transferring files over Bluetooth from your computer, you can quickly toggle it on right from your home screen.

GPS

Everyone hates on GPS as a huge battery killer, but it probably isn't as bad as the others since it's unlikely that you're always using it. GPS only turns on (and drains battery) when you use it for something, like Google Maps or turn-by-turn navigation. Of course, if you use location services with Twitter, Facebook, or other social apps, then it may be turning on more often than you realize. Like the others, it can't hurt to toggle this one off using the Power Control widget when you're not using it, and then just turn it on when it's time to use Google Maps.

Underclock or Undervolt Your Phone 
If you have a new, powerful phone, you probably don't need all that CPU power it's giving you. Rooted users can download and install previously mentioned >Set CPU, which lets you adjust your CPU's clock speed. Tone the CPU down a little bit, or even create a new profile that turns it way down whenever your phone is sleeping - after all, why do you need your processor clocking out at 1 GHz when you're not even using it? You can also create profiles that underclock your phone more and more as your battery goes down, so once you get to, say, 25%, your phone sacrifices more performance so it can last as long as possible.

Battery Management Applications 
Pretty much all mobile platforms have battery management apps available for them. These are available either as third party apps that can be installed from the corresponding app store or provided as a native option.
Sadly, these apps don’t really do anything magical. Typically they will restrict data transfer on mobile Internet services, or at best all but disable non telephony connectivity in order to maintain battery life for as long as possible. After all, Smartphone are basically for making phone calls, so as long as this fundamental function is available with a low battery, there isn’t an overwhelming need to recharge. If you have had problems with the performance of your battery, you can try the tricks to extend battery life on your Android Smartphone. If you notice that the performance continues to decline, then it’s time to try to calibrate the battery. One of the most obvious signs that it’s time is when your mobile battery drains quickly or the device won’t charge. Users that have encountered these problems may think the battery or device is damaged. This may be the cause, but before doing anything drastic, we highly recommend trying to calibrate the battery properly.

What does it mean to calibrate a Smartphone?  
The Android operating system has a setting called Battery Stats which indicates the battery capacity, when it is full or empty. The problem is that it sometimes become corrupted and starts displaying data that isn’t real, which causes the phone to turn off before reaching the 0%. The process of calibrating the battery would correct the information.

Battery Calibration  
This option is extremely simple given that your phone is already rooted. If your phone is not rooted, go ahead and root your device. If your phone is already rooted, simply follow these 4 easy steps:

1. Download Battery Calibration application for free from the Android Market.
2. Plug in your phone and charge to 100%. (“It’s suggested, but not necessary, to let the phone fully discharge after calibration, then charged to 100% without break.”)
3. Open Battery Calibration on your Android device and press the “Battery Calibration” button.
4. Unplug your phone and enjoy a better battery life!

Temperature Wise

It is actually possible to get more battery life from a smart phone by placing it somewhere cold – not in a fridge for a while. The principle of keeping a Lithium-Ion battery cool will increase the amount of power that it delivers to your phone. Li-ion rechargeable batteries generate heat when in use, something that is mitigated by internal resistance (this is also why charger voltages are so low; a high voltage would result in a faster charge but also a higher temperature – above 30 degrees Celsius/86 degrees Fahrenheit – reducing the life of the battery). This causes the battery to discharge more quickly while simultaneously providing energy for the normal functioning of the device. Using the phone in a cooler environment or storing the battery itself in a cool place when not in use can extend the charge and the life of the cell. 

Conclusion  

Keeping your Smartphone battery charge going for as long as possible isn’t just environmentally sound, it is financially sound too. While recharging from a modern car battery might not cost as much as recharging your Smartphone from the mains electricity every day, understanding what services and functions impact battery power the most and taking steps to minimize these is the best way of increasing the life of the current charge. As for your battery itself, regular top-up charges, with occasional recalibration discharges will increase battery life.