While classic mobile phones often lasted for weeks, a smartphone has to be plugged in almost every day. In addition, the performance decreases noticeably over time. However, there are actually some tricks you can use to help a weak smartphone battery. CHIP presents the best battery tricks for Android phones.
Who does not know this problem? The smartphone has hardly been two years old when the battery starts to weaken. If the performance was sufficient for the whole day, older smartphones in particular have problems with it. From time to time, faulty updates or apps also cause a shorter battery life. On top of that, there are numerous myths surrounding smartphone batteries. But tips such as only charging the smartphone when the battery is completely empty or not interrupting the charging process have been of no use for years.
Of course, you can always carry a power bank with you or simply plug the Android smartphone into the socket more often. But with a few tricks, you can track down power guzzlers and get significantly more out of your smartphone battery.
Smartphone display: The biggest battery hog
The display has the greatest power consumption on a smartphone – logically. So if you rely on a low brightness, you can save quite a bit here.
If you own a smartphone with an AMOLED display, you can save a lot of battery by switching on Dark Mode. Because with this technology, dark pixels on the screen are simply not illuminated and therefore no longer consume additional energy. You can find out whether your smartphone has such a display within a few seconds with a quick Google search.
If your smartphone has an always-on display that always shows the current time, for example, it may be advisable to deactivate that as well. Widgets on the home screen also consume electricity, here you can at least deactivate those that are constantly updated.
Android: These services eat up battery
There are a lot of services running in the background on your smartphone that continuously consume battery power. In addition to the usual suspects such as GPS, mobile internet or Bluetooth, there are also a few things that many overlook.
The Google Assistant also consumes battery because it constantly listens to you say “OK Google”. If you rarely or never use this function, you can simply disable it. To do this, navigate to your Google account in the settings and then select Account Services > Google Search, Google Assistant & Voice > Google Assistant. Under “Voice Match” you can switch off the voice command, in the “General” tab you will also find an option to completely deactivate the assistant.
The same applies to speakers and vibration. Of course it’s useful to always hear when a notification arrives – but the most economical is the silent mode. If you still don’t want to do without loud sounds, for example when a call comes in, you can use apps like Daywise to simply collect the notifications and call them up all at once.
Battery settings: Which apps use the most?
If the battery life has dropped from one day to the next, a buggy app could be behind it. It’s easy to find out: you can search for “Battery” in the settings and check the battery consumption of individual apps since the last charge. If an app is high up in the list that you haven’t used at all, it could be a bug that’s draining the battery, or it could even be malware. Stop or uninstall the affected app and only install it again after it has received an update.
An important point when it comes to battery life is also installing the latest updates. They often bring fixes for pre-installed apps and services or optimize system components. So if there is a new system update, don’t put it off for too long, but install it quickly.
But if the cell phone is simply too old or none of the tips help, it may be that the battery is simply weak and needs to be replaced. If you don’t want to invest in a new smartphone right away, you can with most models have the battery changed for 50 to 100 euros – or grab the power bank.
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