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6 Easy Ways to Extend Your Smartphone Battery Life

Give yourself the ultimate holiday gift–lengthen the battery life on your smartphone. Just a few easy changes and you can delay the shrinking bars in your battery bar and the frustrating search for a power outlet at restaurants, airports, and other public places. Believe it or not, a few tweaks and you will gain more pleasure from using your smartphone.

• Turn the phone off. First, turn off your phone when you are in a dead zone, need to conserve battery or are going to sleep at night. If it’s not on, it can’t use power. It’s as simple as that.
• Turn off the big offenders. Make sure the Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi are off when not in use. Avoid games and videos which use lots of juice. A corollary: turn off location detection on apps that request it. Every time an app pings your GPS chip, it uses power.
• Kill apps you are not using. We love our smartphones because we can multi-task. But too many open apps is also one reason why battery life can quickly get drained away. So close apps right after you use them.
• Enter the settings zone. Just a few tweaks to the phone’s default settings can have a significant impact on battery usage. Try these:

1. Turn down the display screen brightness and volume. (If your phone’s brightness can automatically adjust to lighting conditions, select that option.)
2. Disable push notifications for email and social media updates.
3. Get rid of widgets and animated wallpapers.
4. Don’t connect to 4G LTE networks if 3G will do.
5. Turning off vibration and sound feedback for typing.
6. Choose sleep mode to kick in after one minute of activity or when you are holding the phone up to your ear. A dark screen translates to less battery drain.
7. Turn on your phone’s built-in battery saver feature to helps minimize save juice when the battery runs low.

• Stay cool. Don’t leave your device in a hot place, like next to a heater vent or on a car dashboard, or it will drain faster.
• Remember airplane mode. When the reception is poor, your phone will continue to scan for signals to make a good connection. That’s the time to switch to airplane mode to ensure you have enough battery life to check your email when you reach a coverage zone.

Smartphones have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other by adding capabilities well beyond calls and texts. But what good is your smartphone if you can’t enjoy its features because of a dead battery? By making a few adjustments to your settings and your behavior you will be well on your way to giving yourself the best holiday gift of all–a smartphone that lasts a lot longer.

Do you have a smartphone or battery that won’t recharge anymore?  Recycle it at a Call2Recycle drop-off location. Depending on condition, the cellphones may be refurbished and resold. We recycle phones that can’t be refurbished. Proceeds are used to fund the cellphone collection program and public education. For the Samsung Note 7 and other phones or batteries impacted by a recall, please contact