You’re out with friends and need to make an important call. A glance at your phone tells you the battery has one bar left and is ready to give up on you. Sound familiar?
Even if you like to carry a spare external battery pack (which is actually very handy) you may need to manage your battery life more efficiently.
We know Nokia phones have a good reputation for a long battery life, and Nokia phones have some great power saving features – one of our favourites is the built-in charging alert which reminds you to unplug your phone when it’s fully charged – but it’s always worth familiarising yourself with a few extra tips to squeeze out that extra bit of juice! So, without further ado…
1. Power Save
Starting with the most obvious, depending on the model, your phone may have a built-in power-save mode which is always a great battery saver.
2. 3G/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi
Who would buy a smartphone without 3G? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Even so, just because we have 3G, it doesn’t mean that we have to use it all the time. When you’re not using it – turn it off, or alternatively use GPRS. The same goes for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when not using them.
3. Reduce multi-tasking
Multi-tasking on a smartphone is very useful, but it also drains the battery, especially if you’re running a very active Twitter client! A quick and easy way of minimizing this is by using App Stop, which will instantly close all of your running apps – if you’re interested you can download it for free from the Ovi Store.
4. Reduce the brightness
The brightness of your screen has a huge impact on battery usage. Try turning down the brightness on your screen to save power.
5. Keep things cool
Lithium Poly Ion (or Li-Poly) batteries have allowed for up to 40% more battery capacity than previous batteries of the same size, but while that means more talk-time you need to keep them at the optimum temperature (usually around room temperature) and away from hot places which may drain the battery.
6. Noise Control
If you do have your phone set to ring, then try turning down the volume a few notches, the same goes for message tones.
7. E-mail addict?
Turning off push email or reducing the frequency of email refreshes will mean less use of data and less use of your battery power!
8. Back to black
Did you know that AMOLED screens use a lot less battery power when displaying black rather than white? So, changing your background colour to black could save valuable minutes of battery!
9. Bad Vibrations
Vibrations aren’t necessarily bad, they’re just not efficient! It’s one of the most power consuming features on a mobile phone, so ask yourself, do you really need it?
10. Battery Life Extender
OK, so we might be cheating here a bit but there is an app you can download from the Ovi Store called Battery Life Extender. It’s free and can extend the stand-by time on your phone by up to 30%. It does this by simply tweaking the settings on your mobile.
We hope you found these useful. There are plenty more tips and tricks to prolonging your battery life, we just need you to let us know what they are. Share away!