For its iOS devices, Apple is striking a good balance between hardware features and usability. Having good battery life is one essential usability feature high in Apple’s design agenda. Thus you do not find battery draining LTE components in iOS devices, as Apple is awaiting for those technology to mature.
Battery life on iPhone or iPad are acceptable and is the best among smartphones. You should not have to turn off features in order to get reasonable battery life. The following tips are just to highlight areas that impact battery life on your iPhone and iPad.
1. Display Screen. The screen is one component that uses much battery juice. By default, screen Auto-Lock is set to one minute on your iPhone and 5 minutes for iPad. Make sure you know what you are doing if you choose the “Never” option. You can save on battery life by lowering the Auto-Lock minutes for iPad. To adjust, go to Settings app, select General > Auto-Lock.
2. Auto-Brightness. When the screen is brighter, more battery is required. Make sure Auto-Brightness is turn on to let iOS adjusts the display’s brightness according to your current environment. To adjust, open Settings app and select Brightness.
3. Location Services. With location service turned on, the GPS component in your iPhone or iPad is working, thus is draining the battery. Nowadays it seems like almost every apps wants to use your location. You can turn off location service from Settings > Location Services. It is advisable not to shut down location service for all apps as it is useful feature for some essential apps such as Photos, Reminders and Find My iPhone. Instead turn off location service for apps that you do not use for their location aware feature.
4. Bluetooth. The settings for Bluetooth is under Settings > General > Bluetooth. Turn off Bluetooth when not in use will save some battery life.
5. Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is another radio component that uses battery as it searches constantly for Wi-Fi network around you. You can turn off Wi-Fi from Settings > Wi-Fi. Turning off Wi-Fi is not recommended if you use Wi-Fi a lot, nothing beats the convenience of having access to the network automatically wherever you are.
6. Fetch New Data. For mail, contacts and calendars, you can disable Push to saw battery life under Settings > Mail,Contacts,Calendars > Fetch New Data. It is not recommended to turn Push off if you use iCloud for mail, contacts or calendars and require up-to-date data to be always available. If you do not use Push for mail, contacts or calendars, you can setup to a lower fetch frequency to save battery life. Instead of fetching every 15 minutes, set it to fetch hourly for example.
7. Vibration. If you receive a lot of calls, alerts or messages, you can save battery life by turning off the phone’s vibrator. Go to Settings > Sounds for the settings.
8. Equalizer. The Music app has an EQ equalizer feature which adjusts music on the fly and uses battery while doing so. Make sure it is off if you do not use it. The settings is under Settings > Music > EQ.
