iOS 15: Get the best battery life out of your iPhone | ZDNet

You’ve no doubt come across 50 — or even 100 — tips to get the best battery life from your iPhone. But, who has time to wade through dozens of tips and tweaks to eke out a few extra seconds from their battery?

Not to mention that some of these tips don’t give you any extra battery life at all in return for your efforts, and some even result in reduced battery life.

How ironic is that?

I’ve tested literally hundreds of “tips” and “tweaks” that are supposed to give you better battery life, and there’s only four — yes, four — that, in my opinion, are worth bothering with.

And they’re simple.

Here are the 4 tips you need to know:

#1: Use Low Power Mode

If you are running out of battery life and need to extend it so you can make it until the next recharge, Low Power Mode is your friend.

This feature does disable a number of features, so you might want to leave it for those more serious situations, but this single click will dramatically increase your battery’s lifespan.

This feature has gotten me out of some serious jams, and I’ve made less than 20% battery last me an entire day.

The easiest way to access this is Settings > Battery and flip the toggle on Low Power Mode. You can also access this feature from the Control Center panel (tap the battery icon).

This makes a massive difference. Yes, I know that brighter displays are nicer to look at, but it’s a huge drain on the battery.

#2: Keep the screen brightness down

Reducing the screen brightness (either from the Control Center screen or going Settings > Display & Brightness) makes a huge difference to battery life.

And the more you use the handset, the more battery you’re saving! This means that this is the single biggest tweak for heavy users like myself for better battery life.

If you have a newer iPhone with the OLED displays, then switching over to Dark Mode (again, you can do this from the Control Center screen or going Settings > Display & Brightness) is another good way to save power.

This works because the OLED display doesn’t have to illuminate black bits of the screen (unlike LCD displays where the entire display is illuminated no matter whether what’s on display is black or white).

#3: Keep your iPhone face down

When not in use, that is.

Your iPhone uses a built-in ambient light detector to tell if it is face down on a surface (or in a pocket or such), and it will not light up the display when you get a notification.

This, in turn, saves battery life. And the more notifications you get in, the more battery life you save.

For me, this one tip has a huge positive impact on battery life.

If you handle your iPhone a lot when not using it (I know one person that uses their phone like a fidget spinner), then you can also disable Raise to Wake (you can find this in Settings > Display & Brightness). This helps keep the display off when you’re not actually using your iPhone, reducing battery consumption from both the display and the processor.

#4: Keep a power bank handy

I’ve lost count of how many times having a small, portable power bank has saved the day for me or someone around me. Don’t get me wrong, I love giant power banks, but the best power bank is a power bank that you have with you when you need it, which is why I love the small 5,000mAh packs, like the Anker Astro E1.