Break these bad iPhone habits to be more productive and save battery life

The iPhone wall-hugger is a common sight in today's technological jungle. It can often be observed roaming beyond its natural habitat, always on the lookout for rarely-available power sockets.

This adaptable creature thrives in diverse environments, from bustling cafes and shopping malls to serene libraries. Much like their counterparts in the animal kingdom, they’ve developed a unique set of survival skills as they scour nearby walls, drawn to the allure of a quick top-up charge.

Upon finding a socket, the wall hugger deploys its charger cable like a chameleon's tongue, quickly achieving a precise connection. However, many are beginning to evolve and break their bad habits. They’re learning how to save their battery life and gradually relinquish the wall-hugging ways that have held back their ancestors.

In this article, we’ll show you how to do the same. With a simple reevaluation of charging methods and proactively investing a few minutes in refining your phone habits, your wall-hugging days will be over. Let’s get your device operating at its peak potential!

Regaining control: steps toward a more organized smartphone

Most people will admit they rely heavily on their smartphones for their work and personal lives. However, we all have a friend whose iPhone differs from the organized and efficient tool it's meant to be. The reason? Upon unlocking their iPhone, they skip the update and request to back up the phone. A glance at the home screen reveals an astonishing number of unread emails.

The smartphone inbox is daunting, with thousands of unread emails piling up by the day. From important work messages to newsletters, promotional offers, and spam, the messages keep coming, turning inboxes into a digital nightmare. In addition, the smartphone screen is constantly bombarded with notifications from various apps. Social media updates, news alerts, messages, and reminders all clamor for attention, creating a cacophony of digital noise that slowly drains the battery on the device.

Many of us need a little help managing our digital lives. With a little effort, however, anyone can regain control over their smartphone and improve productivity. For example, taking the time to unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters, organizing emails into folders, and setting up filters can create a more manageable inbox. Additionally, turning off non-essential app notifications and using the "Do Not Disturb" feature during focused work or relaxation time will help reduce distractions and save your battery.

Repeated notifications from apps can significantly impact your device's battery life too. Thankfully, optimizing app notifications is as easy as navigating to Settings > Notifications and ensuring the preferences for each application are set accordingly.

Busting the myths about iPhone battery life

Shutting down and restarting apps is the worst advice you’ve received. Did you know that doing this usually uses more battery power than simply allowing them to run in the background? The trick to saving battery is to focus on closing apps that are particularly draining to your device's power resources.

At first glance, it may also seem logical to assume that turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth conserves battery life. But, surprisingly, this is not the case. Modern Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies are designed to be energy efficient, managing their activity to minimize battery drain. In addition, these features enter a low-power mode to conserve energy when not in active use.

Even during active operation, their power consumption is negligible, with minimal battery impact. Disabling and re-enabling these features can cause more significant energy expenditure as they transition back to active mode. However, cellular data usage does have a much more dramatic effect on battery life. Poor signal strength or an active 5G connection can drain your battery quickly.

Into the wild

There's no doubt that spending time outdoors on a hike, day trip, or music festival can be a rejuvenating experience. However, when you're away from the conveniences of modern life, it's essential to make your phone's battery last as long as possible. Here are a few tips to help you extend your iPhone's battery life while exploring the wilderness.

First of all, enable auto-brightness. Contrary to popular belief, auto-brightness does not hurt battery life. Instead, it's designed to save battery life by adjusting the screen brightness based on ambient light and the time of day. To enable auto-brightness, navigate to Settings > Display & Brightness and toggle on the Auto-Brightness option.

Background App Refresh allows apps to update their content in the background, which can consume battery life. To disable this feature, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and toggle off the option. Constantly fetching emails and updating apps in the background can significantly deplete your battery. Enhancing your battery life can be as simple as fine-tuning Email and App Refresh in Settings.

Opting for manual email retrieval and turning off background app refresh can help extend battery life. You can achieve this by heading to Settings > Mail > Accounts > Fetch New Data and Settings > General > Background App Refresh.

Location services can also be a significant battery drain, as many apps utilize GPS. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services to limit location services usage. From there, you can either disable location services entirely or adjust the settings for individual apps to only use location services when necessary.

Dynamic wallpapers and parallax effects may look cool but can consume valuable battery power. To save battery life, switch to a static wallpaper by going to Settings > Wallpaper. To disable the parallax effect, navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion and toggle the option on.

However, if tweaking too many settings sounds like a nightmare, your best friend is the built-in Low Power Mode. This reduces background activity and optimizes device performance for longer battery life. It can be activated in seconds by going to Settings > Battery to enable this feature and toggle on Low Power Mode.

Save iPhone Battery Life Without Sacrificing Your Smartphone's Premium Features.

There is no such thing as a one size fits all approach that will prevent every user from becoming a desperate wall-hugger in constant search of a power socket. For example. If you were to follow every tip in this article, the only thing you would achieve is turning your $1,000 smartphone into a reliable yet featureless phone like a Nokia 3310.

Before smartphones, Robert De Niro's character in the 1998 movie Heat advised, "I never walk into a place I don't know how to walk out of." Fast forward 24 years and the well-known phrase has transformed into, "I never enter a place without making a mental note of potential power sockets for charging my phone."

In the grand tapestry of life, the iPhone wall-hugger stands as a symbol of modern society's unending pursuit of connection and energy. But saving battery life on your iPhone requires a simpler and more mindful approach, where users dare to tweak or turn off features they do not use. Then, if you succeed, you can finally shake the curse of continuously searching for those ever-elusive power sockets.