Consumer Reviews – Blamza!

Before owning a smartphone I had a standard ‘flip phone’ that I would use to make calls (gasp) and the occasional text. That baby would last almost a week before it needed a recharge and it was awesome. Since 2010 I’ve been a proud owner of an Android smartphone with my first phone being the Nexus One. I can now surf the web with ease, watch videos, play games, check the weather plus call and text Everything was for the better except the battery life. I would have to religiously charge it every night and sometimes in the afternoon during heavy usage. It made me pretty distraught to have such a powerful handheld device but still have to be tethered to the wall once or twice a day. So I went out and sought a solution which I will be explaining here.

This guide is tailored to Android smartphones but some of the advice is useful for all mobile electronics.

Syncing

With great power comes great responsibility and owning an Android smartphone is no different when it comes to battery life. Your phone has the ability to sync constantly with the internet by pulling weather information, Facebook messages, RSS feeds, etc. However all this retrieving is murder on your battery life and your data plan.

1. On the home screen, press the settings button and scroll down til you see accounts & sync.
2. Inside this menu you can see what applications are syncing and you can turn them off.

Personally I let everything sync once, then I turn off everything except for the Google and Weather options. This will dramatically improve your battery life and if you are on a limited data plan, your wallet.

Power Cycling

This is the single most important thing you can for your phone to increase battery life. I actually learned this from the iPad user manual so it obviously applies to Apple devices as well. The purpose of a power cycle is to teach your device what to look for in a full or dead battery. This will make the device better at battery management and give more accurate readings. It also helps keep your lithium-ion battery healthy, so do this once a month and you should be golden.

1. Let your phone run out of juice and die.
2. Then plug-in the charger with the phone still off.
3. Once your battery is full, turn on the phone and let the battery die again.
4. Charge the phone back to the full and voilà your battery life should have increased.

Note: For those that are rooted, you can do one extra step to improve your battery life. Once you fully charge the phone the first time, boot into the recovery and erase the battery stats. Then continue following my guide.

Miscellaneous

Here are a few more tips to help get the most out of your battery.

• If you can always be connected to WiFi, since it uses much less power than the cellular radio.
• If you are NOT connected to WiFi turn it off.
• Leave the phone on auto-brightness or low brightness
• Leave the screen timeout at 1 min or less
• Remove any apps that you do not use

Hope this helps all of you. I’ll be doing a Sensation 4G review soon where I’ve been getting 2 days worth of battery life!