We’ve all had that moment when we find ourselves somewhere with no power outlets to be found, and with less than 20 percent of battery life left on our iPhone. Sorry, beautiful plate of cheese fries you were planning to show off on Instagram, today is not your day. To prevent that travesty from occurring again, here are 10 tips for saving battery life on the iPhone, with an emphasis on applications in iOS 7:

iPhonebattery

10 Tips for Saving Battery Life on iPhone

  • Background App Updates
    We agree it’s awesome not having to check which apps need to be updated on your iPhone, thanks to Background App Refresh which allows the automatic updates of your apps. However, this can really take a toll on your battery life. If you prefer to turn this feature off, to disable the feature go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and turn off the function or choose and pick the apps you don’t want to update automatically.
  • AirDrop
    Airdrop allows you to beam/send files to other iOS devices. You don’t need to have this feature on all the time. In order to save your precious battery life, you can turn off this feature by going to the Control Center and selecting the option to Disable AirDrop.
  • Lower Screen Brightness
    No matter what iOS device you’ve had, screen brightness is a battery killer. If your iPhone’s screen is so bright, you gotta wear shades, consider taking it down a few notches. Go to Settings > Wallpapers and Brightness, then disable Auto-Brightness. You can then lower decrease the brightness of your screen manually.
  • WiFi Search
    If you don’t need to be on the constant search for a WiFi connection, turning off the WiFi Search function will save some battery life. Go to the Control Center and toggle off the WiFi button.
  • Location Services
    Perhaps you find there is no need to have location settings enabled for all your apps. In that case, you can turn them off by going to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and toggling off the apps you don’t need connected to your phone’s GPS.
  • Spotlight
    This internal search function can come in handy, but it can also put in a serious dent in your battery life while it’s indexing the contents of your iPhone. Go to Settings > Spotlight Search and take a look at any items you don’t use and remove them from Spotlight’s search.
  • Parallax
    You like animations? You like the new dizzying features of iOS 7 like moving wallpapers and such? If not, then you can save your battery life by turning off Apple’s Parrallax feature. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and select Reduce Motion to On.
  • Email Notifications — So Fetch
    Make “fetch” happen and disable the Push option on your emails! Push email downloads emails when they arrive, meaning your iPhone is constantly checking for new email and using up your battery. If you aren’t in a rush to get new emails the moment they arrive, you can schedule when to check for new email. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendar and go to Fetch New Data. Disable the Push option. Then set the Fetch Schedule to every 15 minutes.
  • Push Notifications for Apps
    You don’t really need a push notification for all your apps, do you? Give your battery a rest by turning off some of your notifications. Go to Settings > Notification Center and scroll down to the Include section, and turn off some of those pesky notifications.
  • Siri’s Raise to Speak
    The Raise to Speak function does exactly that, allows you to raise your iPhone to speak into it and talk to Siri. This also takes up some battery power, so you can disable this feature by going to Settings > General > Siri > Raise to Speak and toggling the feature off.

Follow these tips for saving battery life on the iPhone, and you won’t be caught with a dying battery when you need it most!

Photo credit: Flickr


Paul Williams
Paul Williams

Paul Williams brings a wide range of experiences to his writing. He worked extensively in technology, as a software engineer, technical writer, and now a technology writer. Known as the leader of one of the top American Spacerock bands, his forward-looking music continues to be heard all over the world.