While classic cell phones often lasted whole weeks, smartphones have to be plugged in almost every day. In addition, the performance decreases noticeably over time. However, you can actually use a few tricks to give a weak smartphone battery a helping hand. CHIP presents the best battery tricks for Android phones.
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Who does not know this problem? The smartphone has barely been two years under its belt when the battery begins to weaken. If the performance was sufficient for the whole day before, older smartphones, in particular, have difficulties with it. Every now and then, faulty updates or apps also reduce the battery life. On top of that, there are numerous myths surrounding smartphone batteries. But tips such as charging the smartphone only when the battery is completely empty or not interrupting the charging process have been no use for years.
Of course, you can always carry a power bank with you or simply plug your Android smartphone into the socket more often. But with a few tricks, you can precisely track down power guzzlers and get significantly more out of your smartphone battery.
Smartphone display: the most significant drain on the battery
The smartphone’s display has the most excellent power consumption – of course. So if you rely on low brightness, you can save quite a bit here.
If you have a smartphone with an AMOLED display, you can save a lot of battery by switching on dark mode. Because with this technology, dark pixels on the screen are simply not illuminated and no longer consume any additional energy. Within a few seconds, you can find out whether your smartphone has such a display with a quick Google search.
Suppose your smartphone has an always-on display that, for example, always shows the current time. In that case, it may be advisable to deactivate that as well. Widgets on the home screen also consume electricity. Here you can at least deactivate those that are continuously updated.
Android: These services eat up the battery
There are a lot of services running in the background on your smartphone that continuously consume battery power. In addition to the usual suspects such as GPS, mobile Internet, or Bluetooth, many overlook some things.
The Google Assistant also consumes battery because it constantly listens to whether you say “OK Google.” If you rarely or not at all use this function, you can simply deactivate it. To do this, navigate to your Google account in Settings, then select Account Services> Google Search, Google Assistant, and Voice Input> Google Assistant. Under “Voice Match,” you can switch off the voice command. In the “General” tab, you will also find an option to completely deactivate the Assistant.
The same applies to speakers and vibration. Sure, it’s handy to always hear when a notification arrives – but the most economical is the silent mode. If you still don’t want to do without loud tones, for example, when a call comes in, you can simply collect the notifications with apps like Daywise and call them up all at once.
Battery settings: which apps use the most?
If the battery life wandered into the basement from one day to the next, a bugged app could be behind it. This is easy to find out: In the settings, you can search for “Battery” and check the battery consumption of individual apps since the last charge. If there is an app near the top of the list that you haven’t used at all, it could be a bug draining the battery or even malware. Stop or uninstall the affected app and do not reinstall it until it has received an update.
An important point when it comes to battery life is also installing the latest updates. They often bring fixes for preinstalled apps and services or optimize system components. So if there is a new system update, do not postpone it too long, but install it quickly.
But if the cell phone is simply too old or none of the tips help, the battery may simply be weak and need to be replaced. If you don’t want to invest in a new smartphone right away, you can have the battery changed for 50 to 100 euros on most models – or you can use the power bank.
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