Look at your phone. Now back to me. Now back to your phone. Now back to me. Has your battery life depleted? If so, then this might be the perfect article for you.
We are going to discuss the top five ways to increase your Windows Phone’s battery life. If you are new to the platform, and are sucking down power like there is no tomorrow, our guide could potentially help you gain twice the battery life you have now. Read on!
Turn off WiFi/Bluetooth/GPS
One of your phone’s biggest battery drains is the intense use of its radios including WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS. Many of these networking options do not need to be enabled at all times. For example, you may only switch on your WiFi at home or turn on your Bluetooth when you use a wireless speaker.
Head to the settings menu to disable these battery vampires; doing so could as much as double your phone’s current battery life expectancy. Of course, not everyone will want to do this. I am constantly at home and using T-Mobile’s WiFi calling service, along with a smart watch that requires Bluetooth at all times. However, if you don’t need them, let them rest.
Control your screen brightness
Technology has been improving, and system components such as CPUs are running efficiently and using up less juice than ever before; the same cannot be said for the screen however. While the industry has done their best to make screens more energy efficient, they continue to be a drain on battery life.
If you have eagle eyes or don’t mind constantly adjusting the brightness manually, you can always set the screen brightness to a low level. However, if you want an efficient, yet effortless, solution you may want to put your brightness into automatic mode and let your device decide what is best.
Your Windows Phone’s theme colors can also be a factor in your battery life. Choosing the black background over the white background will save you some battery in the long run.
Stop fetching email and calendar data
When you first setup your email, you stated how frequently Windows Phone’s built in mail client should grab your latest correspondence and appointment information. Many of us set our email to be fetched “as soon as it arrives”, but this keeps the phone constantly active and has the potential to drain battery life.
The most common solution is to simply go into your email settings and change your email checks to a set interval (such as every hour). However, Microsoft has provided an even better option that allows email to be fetched when you need it; this can also be enable from within email settings and learns patterns to fetch email when you need it and skip it when you don’t.
Adjust Glance Screen settings
One of my favorite Windows Phone features that comes on a number of different Lumia devices is Glance Screen; the feature allows you to display a clock and notifications on your lock screen, when the device is in sleep mode.
While Glance Screen doesn’t have an extreme strain on battery, there is no doubt that it cuts into it a bit. If you are looking for every last bit of juice, make sure to either shut off Glance or change it to “peek” mode.
In addition, if you are using the Glance Background BETA, consider uninstalling it, as having even more imagery on the screen will suck down just that much more power. If you must have an image, aim for something small and monotone, without bright colors.
Enable Battery Saver mode
Last, but not least, Microsoft has built in a Battery Saver mode for Windows Phone 8 devices. When switched on, this feature can add hours to your battery life, but does sacrifice functionality. You can enable the option by heading to your settings menu.
Battery Saver turns off all email/calendar fetching, along with push notifications for live tiles and background applications You can set the feature to run at all times, when the battery is low, or never at all. Battery Saver can sure be a life saver, but be sure you are happy with what you are missing out on.
Further reading: Battery, Battery Saver, Glance, Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8.1
