10 TIPS TO IMPROVE BATTERY LIFE ON YOUR ANDROID DEVICE

It's no secret that smartphones are notorious battery hogs, with some devices having an almost embarrassing screen-on time. Those big luscious AMOLED and LCD screens are an obvious drain on your battery, but did you know there's lots of things you can do behind the scenes to get the most out of your Android? Read on for our best battery saving tips to make your battery last longer.

   1. Get rid of auto-brightness

Don't use display auto-brightness. It may sound good, but auto-brightness is usually way brighter than you really need. It's much better to manually set a super low brightness level that is still comfortable, and then just bump it up when necessary. This is one of the main ways to improve your battery life as the screen is one of the biggest battery suckers.

   2. Having a timeout is good

Set your display's screen timeout to as short a time as is practical for you. Just think, if your screen timeout is set to a minute, it'll use four times the amount of power to have it on, every time you switch your screen on, than if your timeout is set to 15 seconds. Studies report the average smartphone user turns their smartphone on 150 times a day, so anything you can do to limit that frequency (through self-control or other methods listed below) will help keep your battery running for longer.

   3. Your phone doesn't have to be smart all the time

Turn off smart features like air gestures, smart scrolling and the like, especially if you have a Samsung. Unless you really use these features every day, they're just using battery power for a feature you don't use.

   4. Don't get bogged down by widgets

Ditch widgets you don't really need, especially those that are connected to the internet like weather widgets.

  5.  Choose when you sync your data

Turn off auto-syncing for Google accounts. If you don't need every single Google account updated every fifteen minutes, just go into your Settings and Google account and turn off auto-sync for those apps you don't need constantly updated.

  6. Get rid of animations

Disable animations. This process may differ slightly from device to device but the crux of it should remain the same. Go to your settings and to the "about phone" page. Tap on the "build number" around 7 times. You will be notified that you have become an "Android developer" (don't worry, enabling the Android developer options doesn't have any adverse affects, it just adds another option in your settings menu). Go back to your settings and tap on the newly inserted "developer options" menu at the bottom. On the next page, scroll down to where it says "window animation scale," "transition animation scale" and "animator duration scale", and switch all of these off. Your device's interface may no=longer look as pretty, but the battery life will be better

   7. Use a dark colored background

If your phone has an AMOLED screen (like most Samsungs), use a dark colored background, because AMOLED screens only illuminate the colored pixels. Black pixels are unlit, so the more black pixels you have, or the more darker pixels, the less battery you need to light them up.

  8. Vibrate away!

Switch off vibrate. Unless you really need that added awareness, turn off vibration. It actually takes more power to vibrate your phone than it does to ring it. Turn off haptic feedback too. Sure it feels cool, but it doesn't really add anything to your experience, and it's another battery drainer.

  9. Nor do you need to be connected 24/7

Turn off GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi and mobile data whenever you don't need them. Turning off location data, or setting it to use Wi-Fi or 3G data rather than GPS works perfectly well. Only turn on Bluetooth and NFC as long as you need them, and there's no need to have both Wi-Fi and mobile data turned on at all times. If you use Wi-Fi a lot though, say at home and at work, then it makes sense to keep set your Wi-Fi to ''Always on during sleep'' as this uses less power than to have your Wi-Fi reconnecting every time you wake your phone.

  10. Try out Dynamic Notifications

Use lock screen widgets or notifications if your ROM supports them, or install an app that does it for you like DynamicNotifications-Premium [Download here]. You'll be able to get basically all your content without having to unlock your phone fully and navigating around. You still need to light your screen up, but you'll have it on for much less time than normal. If you have an AMOLED screen device, using a lock screen notification app with a black background can save your battery life significantly.

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