What’s the best way to extend battery life on my Android phone?

The latest mobile phones that are available these days come loaded with various inventive features. However, one thing that often becomes a problem is the low battery life of modern 5G smartphones. If you use your Android phone for resource-intensive tasks like playing high-end games or streaming HD videos, then there are increasingly high chances that your phone’s battery will draw out of charge quickly.  

However, the good news is that there are certain methods that you can use to extend the battery life of your Android phone. No matter whether you own a modern 5G smartphone such as OPPO Find X5 Pro and Find X3 Lite 5G or you are using a 4G Android device, the below-described methods are equally useful in both scenarios.  

Turn off the unused features 

One of the simplest hacks that you can use to extend the battery life of your phone is to turn off the features that you are not using. For instance, if you are not using an accessory such as a smartwatch or a wireless headphone that needs Bluetooth connection, it’s better to switch off Bluetooth. Furthermore, if you are not using an app that is location dependent like Uber, Google Maps, it is recommended to turn off the GPS of your latest mobile phone. 

Normally, these features keep running in the background and consume the battery life of your phone. Generally, you can find the toggles to shut off these features upon sliding down the notification bar. However, you can also go to the ‘Settings’ app to turn out these features. If you are in an area where you have access to Wi-Fi, then it is suggested to use Wi-Fi instead of cellular data on your smartphone. This intervention alone is capable enough to add a few minutes of battery backup to your phone.  

Shift to 4G when not using 5G 

The 5G is the latest network spectrum, offering you low-latency and extremely fast network speeds. Most of the latest mobile phones, including OPPO Find X5 Pro and Find X3 Pro 5G offer 5G connectivity. But if you want to have an extended battery life for your 5G smartphone, always shift towards 4G spectrum when you don’t necessarily need 5G connection.  

For instance, you may use 5G connection on your Android phone when you are downloading a huge file. However, if you are casually streaming on the internet or just want to send an instant message or an email, then you should use a 4G connection to eventually come up with extended battery life.  

To do this: 

• Go to the ‘Settings’ of your phone and select ‘SIM cards and mobile networks’. 
• Tap on the ‘Preferred Network Type’. 
• Opt for ‘5G’ when you need it, otherwise select ‘4G LTE’. 

Turn on ‘Battery saver’ 

Android OS offers a feature, allowing you to optimise the power usage of battery draining apps. For example, there may exist an app in your latest mobile phone that is vital to your work, but it is heavily draining the phone’s battery as well.  

If you want to stop the app from sucking out your battery life. In this case, you can turn on the battery saver for that specific app. It will restrict the background activity of the app and will consequently increase the time that your battery usually takes to drain out.  

Here is how you can do it: 

• Long press on the app whose background activity you want to restrict. 
• Tap on ‘App info’. 
• Choose ‘Battery saver’ mode. 

 Enable auto-brightness 

While the latest mobile phone screens are well-designed to provide thousands of nits of brightness. However, it does not mean that you really need it. It is bad for your phone battery as well as your eyesight.  

Thus, it is always recommended to select auto-brightness mode to save your phone battery life. 

To turn on auto-brightness, you just must do the following: 

• Open the ‘Settings’ app on the phone.  
• Tap on ‘Display’ bar. 
• Select ‘Brightness level’. 
• Then switch on the toggle next to the ‘Automatic brightness’ 

Careful Charging 

Firstly, to avoid compatibility issues, always recharge your mobile device with an original charging unit. For instance, if you are an OPPO phones lover and own an OPPO Find X5 Pro, then always try to charge it with an original OPPO charger. It will both increase the battery life of the phone and save you from compatibility problems as well.  

Secondly, don’t recharge your Android phone with a fast charger until you really need it, no matter if it is a fast wired phone charger or a fast wireless charger. Thirdly, though many of the modern Android phones are now coming with an OS intervention that stops the charging of the phone once it is fully charged. Still, there are some Android phones which don’t have this facility. Therefore, be extra careful while charging these devices to avoid overcharging.  

Reduce the screen sleep time 

The screen sleep time of a mobile phone is the amount of time for which your Android phone display light will remain switched on, whenever you leave your mobile unattended or forget to press the power button. When the screen sleep time is high, it will badly affect the battery health of your modern 5G smartphone.  

Therefore, it is always touted to reduce the screen sleep time to get better battery life. To do this, just follow the steps mentioned below: 

• Go to the ‘Settings’ app. 
• Select ‘Always-on display & Lock screen’. 
• Then tap on ‘Sleep’, and then set the screen sleep time for your phone. Ideally, set it below 30 seconds to get the best battery backup on your Android phone. 

Deactivate Google Assistant 

Google Assistant is a handy tool, providing you several interesting and productive features. To access the tool, you just need to say, “Hey Google” and the tool will open on your Android phone.  However, most of the Android user are unaware of the fact that this robust access of the app comes at the cost of your less battery life. As to ensure quick approach to the app, Google Assistant keeps on running in the background with active listening mode switched on. It ultimately decreases the battery backup that you used to get with your latest mobile phone. 

You can disable Google Assistant to extended battery life of your Android phone. To get started, just follow the steps described below: 

• Open the ‘Google’ app. 
• Tap on your ‘Profile Picture’ and select ‘Settings’. 
• Go to the ‘Google Assistant’ followed by the tap on ‘General’ tab and toggle off ‘Google Assistant’. 

You can deactivate Google Assistant in a faster way as well.   

• Just tell your ‘Google Assistant’ that ‘Hey Google! Turn of Google Assistant’ and the app will prompt you to ‘Assistant Settings’. Just simply toggle off the ‘Google Assistant’ from there and you are good to go.  

The Bottom Line   

The battery is a critical component of your phone and plays a crucial role in providing power to your mobile device. Our guide is describing some of the most authoritative methods that you can use to add some minutes or hours of battery life to your phone. If your phone is quite old, then there are significant chances that its battery has been degraded enough to deliver you a power backup far lesser than what you initially got. However, you can still use these methods to see if you can observe a difference in the performance of battery or not.