Tips for conserving your smartphone’s battery and data usage

1. Disable background data for your non-essential apps.

“Many apps run in the background, even when you’re not using them. This makes sense for things like email and social media, where you might want to know the minute you get a new message or comment, but do you really need your games, notes, and music players gobbling up battery resources 24/7?

• With iOS, you can turn off background data on an app-by-app basis. Go to Settings—>General—>Background App Refresh, and select apps to turn off.

• “With Android, you can “restrict background data” for each app. Go to Settings—>Data usage. Tap on your app of choice, then scroll to the bottom to restrict background data on cellular networks.

2. Disable app notifications that you don’t really need. 

Bugged by annoying app notifications that just keep coming? If you don’t know already, these app notifications also drain your phone’s battery. If you want to turn them off, here’s how.

On any of your unwanted notifications in your notification bar, long press on the notification for a message box to appear. Tap on App Info > Untick Show Notifications > OK.

3. Disable cellular data usage for specific apps and features to conserve battery power.

Turn off cellular data usage for certain apps and features that you won’t be needing to save battery. Go to the Cellular or Data Usage tab under your phone’s Settings, and toggle off cellular data for specific apps that use a lot of your data.

5. Don’t use your smartphone while charging it.

Ever wondered why phone manufacturers make such short charging cables? Do they want to save mon

ey? No, the answer is — They don’t want you to use the phone while charging. Yes, they discourage the idea of simultaneously charging and using it, as it reduces battery life to a large extent. Most phones run on Li-ion batteries and these batteries have a limited charge cycle after which they need to be replaced.