After seeing numerous friends try to nurse a slow phone and low battery by deleting a bunch of inconsequential apps and downloading a ineffective cleaners, I said enough was enough and decided to make a list of tips.
- Reduce brightness to 50%-75% while indoors (of course it varies by phone) and save high brightness for the outdoors in daylight. Brightness is the #1 culprit for battery life. I used to have the impression that bright means more appealing, but I actually found that a bit less brightness is calmer and easier on the eyes.
- Keep resolution at 1080p. Switching from 1440p to 1080p can easily save 10% of your battery, and on smaller devices, you probably won’t notice a large difference.
- Disable bloatware. Go to settings, then apps. Click on each app you never use and press disable for each one.
- Block notifications. Go to settings, then notifications. Click on the apps which are sending you the most unwanted notifications and block them from sending notifications (i.e. social media, dating, news and networking apps).
- Widgets are evil. They drain battery by a measurable amount and very few are necessary. Most of them just result in having to open up the full app anyway, which is not that much of a task to begin with.
- Turn off Location, Bluetooth, Wifi and Mobile data as needed. If you don’t plan on using them regularly, leaving them on all day is a waste of battery. For example, I don’t use bluetooth when I’m out nor location when I’m at home, so I turn them off accordingly. Also, I don’t need wifi and mobile data running at the same time.
- Battery boosting apps don’t save battery life. They can inform you about how you battery consumes energy, but they don’t structurally fix the issue at all.
- Don’t use a RAM cleaning app. Android actually performs at its best when a majority of the RAM capacity is occupied. Android is designed to run as many apps as possible invisibly in the background so that it can load them quickly at any given time. Clearing out the RAM, if anything, is counterproductive.
- Clear cache. An app which clears cache (like CCleaner) can help save storage space with minimal time spent.
- Kill ads. Don’t use apps which have ads that intrusive pop up on you when you are not using the app. Many apps with ads have high ratings due to fake accounts, so take them with a grain of salt.
- Remove the Facebook app. It’s a resource-hog. Use it on a web browser instead and just link the site to your Android’s home desktop.
- Use Lite Messenger. It does all the essentials of Messenger, but without the bells, whistles and bloat.
- Use decent peripherals. Beware that cheap generic China USB plug adapters may charge your battery at a slower rate. Also plug into a wall outlet rather than a USB port.
