➤10 tips to improve the autonomy of your smartphone 🕹

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Poor relative of the evolution of the mobile phone, the battery of a smartphone still rarely lasts more than a day. TechnologiesTips therefore gives you ten tips to optimize the autonomy of your precious companion.

Since the pre-touch era of mobile telephony, an era that saw dinosaurs like the Nokia 7650 or the BlackBerry 7230 frolicking on the shelves of shops, the technical characteristics of our smartphones have evolved exponentially. So much so that it would even be ridiculous to try to compare them. Don't worry, that's not our point here. What we want to point out is rather the only characteristic that has regressed: autonomy. Because although the batteries have also progressed in capacity - and this will still be the case in 2015 - the energy consumption of modern components is such that a smartphone manages on average to last a day with a single charge. The rare exceptions are to look for models that carry much larger batteries, 3000 mAh and more.

TechnologiesTips offers you an overview of the little tips that can improve the autonomy of your phone. We might as well warn you right away: do not expect to find a miracle solution in the following paragraphs. You have certainly looked for it as much as we have and you must have come to the same conclusion: it does not exist.

On the other hand, it is still possible to significantly improve the autonomy of a smartphone thanks to a set of small habits to adopt, and especially to apply at the same time. Finally, we can consider save several hours on the same charge. But we insist that the following solutions should be implemented simultaneously whenever possible. We have deliberately remained quite generalists, because most of these tips are valid for all operating systems. But it is still good to specify before starting thatiOS appears globally better optimized than Android in terms of autonomy management, especially for managing multitasking. However, the iPhones having really small batteries for the time, they do not no miracles.

1/ Management of brightness and standby time
The screen is often the most energy-intensive element. Leaving its brightness at maximum is therefore one of the worst things to do to take care of autonomy. All modern smartphones offer an automatic brightness management mode, so that it adapts itself according to the situation. It is also necessary to pay attention to the standby time of the device. Generally, it is set to 30s by default. But if that does not penalize you too much in your use, do not hesitate to pass it to 15 s. It is also preferable to put the display on standby or even manually each time you have finished using it.

2 / Notifications

For many of us, notifications are a real blessing, allowing information to come to us effortlessly. However, smartphone batteries are very far from sharing the same opinion. Between sports apps, news, social networks, e-mails or games, almost all kinds of apps are likely to send notifications. Which is far from trivial. Especially when they do it out of sync like on Android. To remedy this, you can either cut to the chase by disabling all notifications, or select only a few by hand.

3 / Geolocation and autonomy do not mix
There are many applications that use the GPS module of the smartphone. Many more even than one might think at first glance. Because if we expect a mapping service to try to find out where we are, we can however be surprised that social network apps, games and even news also locate you. . This does not necessarily mean that their authors are malicious in most cases. But the result is that this localization ends up weighing on autonomy. So, it is better to disconnect it completely, and reactivate it only when you need it in an application.

4 / Airplane mode for areas where reception is poor or not at all

This is certainly one of the most annoying points on this list. But it is nevertheless one of those who can pay off big in terms of energy savings. Indeed, when your smartphone is in an area of poor reception, it will intensify its own signal to manage to pick up a network. Which obviously consumes more. If it's not at all practical to put it in airplane mode at home when you have bad reception, consider doing so in places like underground public transport or any areas where reception is really bad.

5 / Monitoring and cleaning

This part is more particularly aimed at owners of Android smartphones. Google's OS offers a pretty well done consumption tracking page, which shows the most greedy apps and functions. Ideal therefore for flushing out an application that consumes more than reason. Also note that it is necessary to get into the habit of deleting from the multitasking manager all the apps that you will no longer use in the short term, because their presence in the active windows also consumes energy. Finally, it is better to simply uninstall the applications that you no longer use. Some of them continue to launch processes “silently”, even when they are not launched. As for the patient user, he can always consult the list of processes in question for each app and manage them manually.

6 / Connectivity management

Between 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC or even GPS, there is no shortage of connectivity. Even if you use them all, chances are you won't do it all at the same time. For example, if you use the Bluetooth connection in the car, it is better to switch it off as soon as you are no longer in the vehicle. The same remark applies to Wi-Fi, because when the latter is activated, but not connected to a network, it will regularly "sniff" its environment in order to detect one.

7/ Beware of overheating

Overall, you should avoid anything that will cause the smartphone to heat up unnecessarily. Because overheating not only reduces the range on the spot, but also the overall life of the battery. Obviously, when the device heats up because you have launched a particularly greedy application, such as a 3D game, there is not much to do. On the other hand, it is better to avoid situations where the device may heat up when not in use, such as when it is left in the sun. Similarly, some poorly developed applications unnecessarily strain processors. Avoid them like the plague!

8/ Avoid vibrate mode and haptic feedback

Another piece of advice that will annoy some users a lot. However, the vibrator present in all smartphones is not insignificant for the handling of the battery. When possible, prefer a ringtone set to the lowest volume possible. Similarly, haptic feedback that vibrates the interface when you touch the screen should be banned, especially for the virtual QWERTY keyboard and notifications.

9 / Batteries nickel-cadmium et lithium-ion

Many users kept in mind the charging guidelines found with electronic devices — including phones — that have nickel-cadmium batteries. They consisted in letting said battery completely empty before recharging it completely. A modus operandi not only obsolete today… and which can even reduce the life of recent batteries in some cases! Indeed, currently, the vast majority of smartphones are equipped with lithium-ion batteries. However, the latter better support more frequent refills, without waiting to be completely flat. No need to wait to be in the red to recharge. Better to do it as soon as you get the chance.

10/ The wallpapers in question

If you have a mobile with an AMOLED screen, like all the Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Note, the Motorola Moto X, or even several Lumia, you should not choose a clear or white wallpaper, but rather choose for a dark color, or even black. This technology indeed consumes much more energy when it has to display light tones.

Finally, beyond these tips, it is good to specify that each manufacturer of Android smartphones now integrates its own tools to monitor and improve autonomy. We do not detail them more here because everyone can test them at their leisure on their own mobile. Most of them also automate several of the measures described above, with different possible scenarios depending on the profile of the users. Again, no miracle solution, but an aid to consider.