Why Does My Android Battery Die So Fast? The Best Phone / Tablet / iPhone/ Android Battery Life Savers!
Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Google, or any other Android phone or tablet, issues with Android battery life almost always be resolved by addressing the one thing all these devices have in common: The Android Operating System. I’m going to explain the real reasons your Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, or Google phone or tablet runs out of battery so fast and show you exactly what to do to make your Android-based phone or tablet’s battery last a whole lot longer.
Before We Begin: Free Apps That Are Life-Savers
We’re going to be changing some settings on your device and the Settings menu on every device is a little bit different. If you’re having trouble finding any of the settings I mention below (or if you just want to make your life easier), I highly recommend that you head to the Google Play store and download these great free apps.
Don’t worry, I’m not getting any kickbacks for recommending these apps to you. I’ve used a bunch of battery life saving apps and these are the ones that I use on my own Android phone. If you’d rather skip the downloads and head right to the first Android battery life-saving tip, you can do that too!
Quick Settings
Smart Quick Settings is a free app that allows you to change your device’s settings without delving through the complicated Settings menu. I’m going to keep things simple by telling you how to change your device’s settings using the Smart Quick Settings app. If you want to use the Settings menu on your device, feel free – all of these settings can be changed without downloading Smart Quick Settings, if you’d prefer not to.
Super Task-Killer Free
Super Task Killer Free is a great app that gives you a quick, simple way to close out all of your apps at once. We’ll cover exactly why you’ll want to use it later on. For now, rest assured, it’s a huge time-saver, and well worth the download.
Now that you’ve opened up Smart Quick Settings, let’s walk through the settings that could be draining your battery without your knowledge. We’ll get to the more secret tips on the next couple of pages. If you’d like to skip ahead, feel free – but these are important!
♦ Mobile Data – Turn Off 4G
If you have a smartphone, you’ll see Mobile Data as an option in Smart Quick Settings. If you don’t see it, that’s fine – just skip to the next section.
Do any of these situations apply to you?
Your carrier doesn’t have 4G coverage in your area
You do a lot of traveling between 3G and 4G coverage areas
You simply don’t need to use 4G (because you don’t stream video on the go)
If you answered yes to any of these questions, turn off 4G on your device. When you have 4G on and you’re not in an area with 4G coverage, your phone is always asking, “Is there 4G coverage here? How about here? What about now?”, and this constant searching uses a lot of battery life.
♦ Turn Off Mobile Data Entirely (When You Can)
If you’re really struggling with battery life and you travel within areas with spotty coverage, try disabling Mobile Data entirely. You’ll still be able to receive texts and make phone calls, but you’ll save a lot of battery.
A friend of mine has a camp in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, and whenever I travel there I make sure to turn off Mobile Data. A good rule of thumb: The worse the coverage, the faster your battery drains. This happens because your phone’s antenna has to work that much harder to try to find and maintain a signal.
There’s only one solution to this problem: Uninstall the Facebook app and use m.facebook.com.
Why, you ask? One app can’t be that bad, right? Wrong!
When I had the Facebook app on my phone, I was lucky if I got 8-10 hours on a full charge, even after implementing all of the other suggestions I’ve shared with you on how to improve your battery life. Now, under exactly the same conditions but without the Facebook app, I average 12-16 hours of battery life. Yep: Applying this one simple fix has given me at least 50% more battery life.
I’ve only given one example here, but trust your gut – if you’ve recently installed an app that is draining your battery too quickly, locking up your phone or tablet for long periods of time, or causing your device to reboot – you’ve probably stumbled across a poorly-coded app. I’d love to hear about your own discoveries in the comments section below.
♦ Keep Your Brightness At A Comfortable Level (Make It Lower at your suitable Level)
♦ Bluetooth (Keep Bluetooth Off when Not Using It)
♦ Wi-Fi (If You Don’t Use It)
Do you use Wi-Fi at home or in the office? If you do, it’s probably best to leave Wi-Fi on, just to keep things simple. If you don’t, go ahead and turn Wi-Fi off to save some extra battery life.
♦ Close Out Your Apps – The Real Way
One thing’s for sure: Not all apps are created equal. In a perfect world, whenever you hit Home, your apps have a few seconds to enter a dormant mode in which they innocently sleep in memory until you open them again. Some apps have special access to the internet, are allowed to send notifications, or keep sound playing in the background, and this is absolutely OK unless an app stops playing nicely and begins to abuse its special privileges.
♦ All your apps are like kids in a classroom.
The Android operating system is the teacher, and everything goes smoothly until one kid starts to misbehave. It’s harder to control a classroom of 30 than a classroom of 10, and the more kids you have in a class, the more likely one is going to misbehave. When it comes to your phone or tablet, you’re responsible for the teacher (the Android operating system), and I’m going to show you how to send those misbehaving kids (apps) out of your classroom to the principal’s office (by closing out your apps).
I’m going to show you two ways to close out your apps, but before I do, I’d like to warn you about a pitfall most people don’t know about: When you swipe apps out of the recent apps menu, this doesn’t close out your apps at all, so it doesn’t solve any problems – it just removes them from that list of recent apps.
Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Google, or any other Android phone or tablet, issues with Android battery life almost always be resolved by addressing the one thing all these devices have in common: The Android Operating System. I’m going to explain the real reasons your Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, or Google phone or tablet runs out of battery so fast and show you exactly what to do to make your Android-based phone or tablet’s battery last a whole lot longer.
Before We Begin: Free Apps That Are Life-Savers
We’re going to be changing some settings on your device and the Settings menu on every device is a little bit different. If you’re having trouble finding any of the settings I mention below (or if you just want to make your life easier), I highly recommend that you head to the Google Play store and download these great free apps.
Don’t worry, I’m not getting any kickbacks for recommending these apps to you. I’ve used a bunch of battery life saving apps and these are the ones that I use on my own Android phone. If you’d rather skip the downloads and head right to the first Android battery life-saving tip, you can do that too!
Quick Settings
Smart Quick Settings is a free app that allows you to change your device’s settings without delving through the complicated Settings menu. I’m going to keep things simple by telling you how to change your device’s settings using the Smart Quick Settings app. If you want to use the Settings menu on your device, feel free – all of these settings can be changed without downloading Smart Quick Settings, if you’d prefer not to.
Super Task-Killer Free
Super Task Killer Free is a great app that gives you a quick, simple way to close out all of your apps at once. We’ll cover exactly why you’ll want to use it later on. For now, rest assured, it’s a huge time-saver, and well worth the download.
Now that you’ve opened up Smart Quick Settings, let’s walk through the settings that could be draining your battery without your knowledge. We’ll get to the more secret tips on the next couple of pages. If you’d like to skip ahead, feel free – but these are important!
♦ Mobile Data – Turn Off 4G
If you have a smartphone, you’ll see Mobile Data as an option in Smart Quick Settings. If you don’t see it, that’s fine – just skip to the next section.
Do any of these situations apply to you?
Your carrier doesn’t have 4G coverage in your area
You do a lot of traveling between 3G and 4G coverage areas
You simply don’t need to use 4G (because you don’t stream video on the go)
If you answered yes to any of these questions, turn off 4G on your device. When you have 4G on and you’re not in an area with 4G coverage, your phone is always asking, “Is there 4G coverage here? How about here? What about now?”, and this constant searching uses a lot of battery life.
♦ Turn Off Mobile Data Entirely (When You Can)
If you’re really struggling with battery life and you travel within areas with spotty coverage, try disabling Mobile Data entirely. You’ll still be able to receive texts and make phone calls, but you’ll save a lot of battery.
A friend of mine has a camp in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, and whenever I travel there I make sure to turn off Mobile Data. A good rule of thumb: The worse the coverage, the faster your battery drains. This happens because your phone’s antenna has to work that much harder to try to find and maintain a signal.
♦ Don’t Use The Facebook App (You Can Use The Mobile Website Instead of Facebook Apk)
Like I said before, not all apps are created equal, and in my book, you won’t find any better examples of this than the Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps. It’s strong language, but it’s true: The Facebook app for Android is horrible. The only way to stop the Facebook app from constantly checking for notifications and eating up battery life is to log out of the app. Even closing it out using the methods above doesn’t solve the problem – it restarts itself almost instantaneously.There’s only one solution to this problem: Uninstall the Facebook app and use m.facebook.com.
Why, you ask? One app can’t be that bad, right? Wrong!
When I had the Facebook app on my phone, I was lucky if I got 8-10 hours on a full charge, even after implementing all of the other suggestions I’ve shared with you on how to improve your battery life. Now, under exactly the same conditions but without the Facebook app, I average 12-16 hours of battery life. Yep: Applying this one simple fix has given me at least 50% more battery life.
I’ve only given one example here, but trust your gut – if you’ve recently installed an app that is draining your battery too quickly, locking up your phone or tablet for long periods of time, or causing your device to reboot – you’ve probably stumbled across a poorly-coded app. I’d love to hear about your own discoveries in the comments section below.
♦ Keep Your Brightness At A Comfortable Level (Make It Lower at your suitable Level)
Let’s head back to the Smart Quick Settings app and take a closer look at the Brightness setting on your device. Truth is, the displays built into our devices these days are amazing, and they can get really, really bright. The brighter the display, however, the faster your battery will drain.
Setting your device’s Brightness slider right around the middle will be absolutely fine in most circumstances and can cut down on eye strain in low light environments. I have my phone set on Auto-Brightness, a feature that automatically adjusts the brightness of the display to the level of ambient light surrounding you. This uses the ambient light sensor in your phone, which in itself can drain the battery by always asking, “How bright is it now? How about now?”, but I’ve found that the tiny amount of battery this sensor actually uses saves most people a far greater amount of battery life than the massive drain caused by leaving their device set to maximum brightness all the time.
Setting your device’s Brightness slider right around the middle will be absolutely fine in most circumstances and can cut down on eye strain in low light environments. I have my phone set on Auto-Brightness, a feature that automatically adjusts the brightness of the display to the level of ambient light surrounding you. This uses the ambient light sensor in your phone, which in itself can drain the battery by always asking, “How bright is it now? How about now?”, but I’ve found that the tiny amount of battery this sensor actually uses saves most people a far greater amount of battery life than the massive drain caused by leaving their device set to maximum brightness all the time.
♦ GPS (GPS Constantly Using Internet)
If you rarely use your phone for GPS, you probably don’t need your phone to constantly ping satellites for a service that you’re not using anyway. Head to Settings -> Location Services and turn GPS off.
♦ Bluetooth (Keep Bluetooth Off when Not Using It)
Do You Even Have Any Bluetooth Devices? This one’s simple: If you don’t use any Bluetooth devices, turn Bluetooth off to save battery life.
Do you use Wi-Fi at home or in the office? If you do, it’s probably best to leave Wi-Fi on, just to keep things simple. If you don’t, go ahead and turn Wi-Fi off to save some extra battery life.
♦ Close Out Your Apps – The Real Way
One thing’s for sure: Not all apps are created equal. In a perfect world, whenever you hit Home, your apps have a few seconds to enter a dormant mode in which they innocently sleep in memory until you open them again. Some apps have special access to the internet, are allowed to send notifications, or keep sound playing in the background, and this is absolutely OK unless an app stops playing nicely and begins to abuse its special privileges.
♦ All your apps are like kids in a classroom.
The Android operating system is the teacher, and everything goes smoothly until one kid starts to misbehave. It’s harder to control a classroom of 30 than a classroom of 10, and the more kids you have in a class, the more likely one is going to misbehave. When it comes to your phone or tablet, you’re responsible for the teacher (the Android operating system), and I’m going to show you how to send those misbehaving kids (apps) out of your classroom to the principal’s office (by closing out your apps).
I’m going to show you two ways to close out your apps, but before I do, I’d like to warn you about a pitfall most people don’t know about: When you swipe apps out of the recent apps menu, this doesn’t close out your apps at all, so it doesn’t solve any problems – it just removes them from that list of recent apps.
♦ The Easy Way To Close Out Your Apps
There’s a great app that gives you a quick, simple way to close out all of your apps at once, and it’s one that I recommended at the beginning of this article. If you haven’t already, click here to download Super Task Killer Free from the Google Play Store.
After you’ve downloaded the app, open it up, select the apps that you’d like to close (by default they’re all selected), and tap “Kill selected apps.” That’s it. This doesn’t delete your apps – it just clears them from the application memory. The next time you open an app, it gets a fresh start, and (hopefully) it will behave the next time you use it. If you continue to have a problem with a specific app, it might be time to look for an alternative in the Google Play store, or read on…
Fortunately, there’s a much simpler way to do this – just use Super Task Killer Free, the program that you installed in the beginning of this tutorial.
The “Official” Way To Close Out Your Apps
If you read your Android phone’s manual, you’ll find the officially way to close out your apps is built into Settings on your device. It’s a long, drawn-out process – especially if you’re closing more than one app. I did want to cover this method, however, because it’s the one way to do it that’s built into every device. Head to Settings -> Apps, select the app that you want to close, and tap Force stop. When it warns you about the possibility of causing the app to misbehave, tap OK anyway, because in most cases, closing out your apps actually fixes issues, and it definitely doesn’t make anything worse. Repeat this process for as many apps as you’d like to close.
There’s a great app that gives you a quick, simple way to close out all of your apps at once, and it’s one that I recommended at the beginning of this article. If you haven’t already, click here to download Super Task Killer Free from the Google Play Store.
After you’ve downloaded the app, open it up, select the apps that you’d like to close (by default they’re all selected), and tap “Kill selected apps.” That’s it. This doesn’t delete your apps – it just clears them from the application memory. The next time you open an app, it gets a fresh start, and (hopefully) it will behave the next time you use it. If you continue to have a problem with a specific app, it might be time to look for an alternative in the Google Play store, or read on…
Fortunately, there’s a much simpler way to do this – just use Super Task Killer Free, the program that you installed in the beginning of this tutorial.
The “Official” Way To Close Out Your Apps
If you read your Android phone’s manual, you’ll find the officially way to close out your apps is built into Settings on your device. It’s a long, drawn-out process – especially if you’re closing more than one app. I did want to cover this method, however, because it’s the one way to do it that’s built into every device. Head to Settings -> Apps, select the app that you want to close, and tap Force stop. When it warns you about the possibility of causing the app to misbehave, tap OK anyway, because in most cases, closing out your apps actually fixes issues, and it definitely doesn’t make anything worse. Repeat this process for as many apps as you’d like to close.
♦ Wrapping It Up
There’s no way to make your battery last forever, but I guarantee that if you make even some of these changes I’ve suggested, you will notice a significant improvement in battery life on your Android tablet or phone.
Have questions, comments, or tips of your own? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you! Thanks to John “Wiggums” Millere to write this article to help people worldwide.
There’s no way to make your battery last forever, but I guarantee that if you make even some of these changes I’ve suggested, you will notice a significant improvement in battery life on your Android tablet or phone.
Have questions, comments, or tips of your own? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you! Thanks to John “Wiggums” Millere to write this article to help people worldwide.
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