Tired of charging your Android smartphone every now and then even though the company claims it to have amazing battery life? While Android is one of the most flexible operating systems as of now, it also comes with some pretty annoying battery drain issues. Interestingly, most of it can be resolved with some few nifty tricks. Here is the list of tricks we felt would help you save a little battery.
Screen Time-Out Duration
Probably one of the most underrated tricks of all. Reducing the screen time-out duration to a minimum helps save a lot of battery if you are not in a habit of locking your device to standby mode. To reduce the screen time-out durations, head on to your device’s Settings > Display > Sleep or Screen Time-out. Reduce it to 30 seconds or 15 seconds and enjoy a little more battery life on your Android device.
Vibration
We are pretty sure you didn’t expect this one. Turning off all kind of vibrations on your Android device actually, helps you get a little more juice. All kinds of vibrations include vibration with ringing, vibration on touch etc. While turning off the vibration with ringing is pretty simple, to switch off the vibration on touch, head on to device’s Settings > Sound and Vibration > Other Sounds > Turn Off Vibrate on tap. You can also disable vibration on your keyboard for saving, even more, battery.
Motion Gestures
If your device comes with Motion Gestures and you don’t use it much often then switching them off will help you save on battery. Motion Gestures include Double Tap to Wake, Some specific finger gesture to wake up the camera app from standby mode etc. Keeping the motion gesture on keeps a part of your Android device alive all the time. The device keeps on searching for specific finger taps or motion on the display which it can trigger and wake up the device. To turn off the Motion Gestures, go to Settings > Motion Gestures or Gestures and turn it off. Note that the Gestures location under the settings menu may vary depending on the device you have.
Google Hotword Detection
Google added the hot word detection some while back where the device would detect the phrase ‘Ok Google’ whether you are on the home screen or any other screen. However, Google Hotword Detection turned on means your device is always listening to you which comes at the cost of some battery. To turn it off, navigate to the Google App > Settings (by tapping the three line menu) > Voice > “Ok Google” detection > Turn off ‘from any screen’.
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Signal and Mobile Network
India still doesn’t have strong network connectivity when it comes to 3G and 4G mobile networks. You must have witnessed often that the signal strength on your device as soon as you switch from 2G to 3G/4G. Now though you get better internet speeds, however, we do lose out on battery here as well. In order to save some extra battery, you can switch back to 2G just after you are done browsing on 3G or 4G. Further, if you are in an area with no signal strength, switch your device to ‘Airplane Mode’ to prevent your device from searching for signal on regular intervals.
Auto Sync and Auto Brightness
Auto Sync, when turned on, results in your device refreshing your synced accounts to search for any new update and notification. The most used and probably the most important aspect where Auto Sync helps is to push your email notifications. So, if you are ok to skip emails head on to Settings > Accounts and Sync > Your Account > Turn off Auto Sync. Note that, as soon as you turn off auto-sync, you will also not be able to backup contacts which have been added thereafter.
Power Saving Mode
Most of the android devices come with a built-in power saving mode which generally located under Settings > Battery/Power. Turning on this power saving mode usually helps save some battery, however, it also reduces the CPU performance in exchange. Moreover, some of the OEMs skin also offers ‘Extreme Power Saving Mode’ which absolutely brings down the battery consumption drastically in exchange of minimal usage of device’s features.
Dark Wallpapers for AMOLED
This trick is only for devices with AMOLED screens. If you are not aware, AMOLED screen doesn’t light up blacks. In other words, if you have something black on your wallpaper or across the User Interface, chances are the display is turned off in those parts. To take advantage of this interesting ability of AMOLED screens, one can put on a black wallpaper and black backgrounds across the user interface. OnePlus introduced something like this in its OnePlus X and is also there on OnePlus 3 which, in fact, does come with AMOLED display.