The iPhone 5 is supposedly a great phone. Unfortunately, quite a few users have been complaining about its atrocious battery life. If you’re finding your iPhone bordering on useless when it comes to basic functions like Internet surfing or VoIP service, here’s a little list of standby tips to get more power out of it.
Turn Off the Extra Sounds
Do you really need the keyboard clicks? They’re distracting anyway, so turn them off.
Turn the Lights Down Low
If your iPhone is emitting a Star Wars Lightsaber-like glow, maybe it would be better to turn down the screen brightness a bit.
Turn off LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth
Yeah, I know. What’s the use of having all those extra bonus features like LTE if you have to turn them off? Look at it this way, when you were young, your parents and schoolteachers would tell you to turn off the lights when you weren’t using them. The same logic applies to all smartphones, not just your Apple iPhone. Not using those functions? Turn them off.
Kill off those apps
What apps are running in the background? Check for apps you forgot to close and kill them off. As a bonus tip, if you rarely use an app, consider removing it from your phone altogether.
Lock Your Phone
Set the auto-lock feature for a shorter amount of time (think one minute), so the display light is turned off sooner.
Stop telling everyone where you are through every app
Okay, so you became the Mayor of Pizza Hut. Or you checked in KFC just this moment. Does every connection you have on Facebook, Twitter, and Pandora really need to know? Choose which apps actually need to access your location and disable those that don’t. If your battery life is really on the dying end of the scale, its best to disable all of these location services in one go. Simply open Settings>Privacy>Location Services>OFF.
Silence Siri
Unless you find Siri’s "Raise to Speak" function absolutely necessary, turn it off in Settings.
Update your OS
Check if Apple has released an OS update to help improve battery life.
Download an App
There are several apps on the App store that purportedly extends battery life.
Go for a reboot
If your battery is draining right before your eyes, then try to do a reset. There might be a process that needs to shut down and that’s killing your battery. A reboot will sometimes solve the problem.
Drain and charge
Do this once a month or when you’re having problems: completely drain the battery until it shuts down then fully recharge it. Some swear that this helps lengthen the power cycle.
Don’t be Push-y, be Fetch-y
If you’re not waiting for an important email on your RingCentral business phone, you can turn off Push on email. You can also do this for your calendar and contacts. Instead, set these to Fetch.
Restore
If all hope seems lost, then you might want to do a clean install. The downside is that you will need to start from scratch and set up everything again. The upside is that there’s a chance you’d get more juice out of your iPhone. To lessen the pain of doing a reset, back up all your data first so you wouldn’t have to reinstall apps and move all your files. Plug your device to the computer and the back up process should begin. If it doesn’t, go to iTunes, right click on your device and choose Back Up. While your device is still plugged in, select the left-hand menu which should show you a Restore option. Now you can select Restore from Back Up in ITunes, so you can view all your apps and files again.
Swap or Replace
At this point, with almost every function turned off, you’re probably already thinking that you had been hoodwinked into buying an iPod (or a brick) instead of an iPhone. Unfortunately, sometimes Apple hands you a lemon and you can’t even make lemonade out of it. If not even one of these fixes can boost your iPhone’s battery life, go to the Apple Store for a replacement. Or you can always go for an Android phone. We can’t promise that you still won’t have battery issues though.
