Smartphone technology is improving day by day, and the use of these technologies on the smartphones and tablets increasing in daily life as well. Android mobile devices share the most percentage of the mobile market having very large number of users around the world. Android is not just any other mobile operating system; it is a big bundle of services and features all rolled together with a very effective and efficient mobile management system. Multitasking can lead to reduced battery life and poor performance as well.
Although Android smartphone and tablets are small in size compared to laptops, netbooks and other, but in real they’re mini computers. Their power requirements aren’t as mini as we hope, sometimes very difficult to get through a busy day without running the battery dry. For the frequent travelers in particular this is one of the hardcore issue with no charging option and unavailability of any replacement battery.
Why smartphones sucks the battery of your smartphone so quickly? How can you make your battery last longer so you can use your device longer? For your first question its a very easy answer here – the applications and software that these devices have installed on them. Many applications use your smartphones battery life in background. Multitasking allows the application to work in the background, too many applications in the background can lead to reduced battery life and poor performance as well. The screen is also in most cases the biggest power drainer of all. Also, processor, memory and Wi-Fi are another great example of power users that runs your smartphone dry.
For the answer of your second question, a simple solution is to limit the number of applications that run in the background for better battery life for your smartphone. If you wish to increase the battery life of your Android devices, here are some tips and tricks to increase Android battery life for your phone or tablet.
Tips And Tricks To Improve Battery Life On Android Smartphons/Tablets
- First of all you should think about unused device features on your smartphone or tablet. Keeping applications on that are not in use is a wastage of your smartphones battery life. Whatever isn’t in use or needed, turn it off — it could be GPS, Wi-Fi, 4G/LTE and mobile network connection, Bluetooth, NFC. These connectivity features eat up some of your battery power even if they’re idle. Wi-Fi is a big power user as it uses a different antenna and so, it will consume more power, so keeping it turned off more will give you more battery. Also if you bluetooth and GPS applications are not in use, it’s better to turn them off. It’s a wise idea to disable your phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot feature if it’s not being used. This feature also eats up a lot of power. Also, instead of letting your apps sync their data automatically, choose to do it manually.
- If you have a choice between connecting to internet via Wi-Fi or mobile network, it’s better to choose Wi-Fi connectivity. Mobile data connections consumes your battery power faster than Wi-Fi.
- Do you really need your device to vibrate every time a notification or a call arrives on your phone. Do not use vibrating alerts (haptic feedback), if you don’t need. The vibration function uses a small vibration motor, which, in turn, eats up power. Its better to just stick with audio alerts, if you need to stretch the battery life on a busy day then turn off the vibration.
- You love to put Live wallpapers on your smartphone screen, its nice and pretty. But, live wallpapers can also eats up your battery life. Live wallpapers consume power because they use CPU and GPU resources to animate. Do not use Live Wallpapers, you can probably save a bit on battery life.
- If you are travelling without any charging option, it’s better to try using black backgrounds. Because of the way the LED screen works, the darker your screen or its background, the less power the OLED pixels use, thus conserving power (this tip may not have much effect on LCD-screened devices).
- Smartphone screen is the biggest battery consumer, so brighter screen consumes more power and reduces the battery life. Keeping your screen brightness a bit more dim than at full capacity will give you some extra battery life. Its better to keep your screen on automatic brightness. Android phones have an auto-brightness setting that automatically adjusts the screen brightness based on ambient room light. Android phones will automatically dim and then turn off the display after a set interval. It’s worth setting this interval as short as possible which will have a good impact on battery life.
- Keep your Android device in power saving mode. Power saving mode usually limits CPU use, reduces screen brightness, deactivates haptic feedback, disables data network when the screen is asleep, and lowers the brightness level of the browser’s background color. *(Disable power saving mode when you intend to use your phone’s smartphone features like playing games). Power saving mode has a significant impact on system performance so you don’t want to have it enabled all the time.
- Close background apps, apps running in background consume memory, and therefore power. Multitasking is one of the key areas of interest for Google Android as it allows the application to work in the background for effective multitasking. Too many applications in the background can lead to reduced battery life. So it’s better to limit the number of applications that run in the background for better battery life. Disable the “Location and Google Search” option to prevent your device from using Wi-Fi and/or mobile networks. Keep an eye on apps such as the Play Store and Gmail apps, continuously collect and send data in the background.
How-To limit multitasking or applications running in the background on your Android device–
On your device follow these steps — Application Home key > Setting > Developer’s options > Background process limit. Here will see that Android by default is set to the standard limit. You can now change the settings to the number of apps you want running in the background on your device. Generally, it’s better to have 2-3 applications running in the background for balance. Now restart the device for changes to take place. (only works with Android version 4.0 and later.)
- Its better to occasionally reboot the phone, at least once in a while. It makes sure you start with a clean slate with as few apps running in the background as possible.
- Turn off app notifications. Many apps offer notifications that tells you when something has happened in the background. This can eat up a lot of battery if the polling is happening frequently and there are a lot of apps doing it.
All these tips help you to improve battery life on Android devices and if you know any other tip, then do not forget to add via comments!
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