We all wish our phone battery would last longer. So much so, that some people will resort to using bulky cases – such as the one launched by Apple last week – to boost their battery life.
But there are some simple tricks that could help keep your mobile powered up for longer without requiring any extra equipment.
If you’ve ever traveled out of the country, you’ve probably had to turn every feature off your phone except for calling and texting,’ Paul Shearing, a chemical engineer at the University College London told DailyMail.com
‘Turning off the extra features ensures your battery will last lnger, because there are a lot of hungry apps that are draining your battery without your realizing it.’
Shearing explained that a smartphone uses a lot of power just to keep apps up-to-date.
Turning off the ‘background refresh’ setting on these apps can save that power for keeping your phone alive, and the same goes for notifications.
If you don’t need to know who like your status this second, you can also disable notifications for this app and any others that you don’t need.
People think they figured out tricks for keeping their phone charged, but it really isn’t a huge mystery,’ said Shearing.
‘There are a lot of hungry apps on your phone, and by simply shutting them down you will save your battery life.’
Shearing explains that he plugs his phone in the charger before he goes to bed and lets it go for the entire night.
It usually take just two to three hours for a phone to completely charge, but each phone has a management system that controls the battery voltage,’ he said.
Sony is working on lithium-sulfur battery and a magnesium-sulfur battery that they say will be able to carry 40 per cent more energy than the traditional batteries.
Sony tells Nikkei that it’s working on a battery that uses sulfur at the negative electrode (and plain old lithium at the positive one) to provide an energy density per unit volume of 1,000 Wh/L.
For comparison, most conventional lithium-ion batteries have an energy density of around 700Wh/L
‘The software takes care of how much power and voltage is being pushed through the battery, so it doesn’t matter if you leave the phone charge for three hours or eight hours.’
Another trick to improving your battery life is to make sure your phone never gets too hot.
A smartphone is a mini-computer and has the same parts except for a cooling fan.
When your phone is overheating the CPU chip is also operating full force, which uses a lot of your battery life.
A CPU chip is a very powerful components in both a computer and smartphone, and it’s similar to a car engine.
Just like a car engine, it doesn’t need that much power to coast, but if you want to really go in your car you have to use more gas.
‘iPhone has a feature that will shut the phone down when it gets too hot,’ said Shearing.
Lloyd Gordon, chief electrical safety officer at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, told Live Science that most of the advice you find online about keeping your phone fully charge is ‘bogus’.
‘For example, charging your phone in short bursts isn’t going to help your batter keep a charge longer, although many site swear by this,’ said Gordon.
How to switch off these features can vary dramatically on different phone models.
This past October, Glasgow-based experts created an interactive guide that reveals how to save battery life using tips specific to individual phones, such as Apple’s iPhones, HTC and Samsung’s range of devices, and Sony’s handsets.
