Let’s face it. No matter how much we brag about the excellent battery backup of our phones in front of our friends and peers, we always know from the inside about a dark secret that we can’t tell anybody.
It is the battery drain problem that we have with our smartphones. Modern day smartphone are powerful and much battery efficient to last an entire day right from the morning till late evening. This is still not enough. We want more battery backup.
So while we can’t do anything else, we can try to reduce the battery drain issues faced by our smartphones when they are sitting idle.
If your phone’s battery gets drained by more than 4-5% during the night then you must read this article. We will list out these problems one by one and tell you how can resolve them.
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App auto-update
Checking the option for app auto updates in the Google Play app might look harmless but believe me, this can drain your battery by quite a lot. Your phone not just downloads the apps automatically but install them too and thus consumes a lot of battery juice in the process.
2. Auto-sync
You should never enable auto-sync if you want to conserve battery. Period.
I know auto-sync is very useful for catching up on your emails as they arrive, but you do it at the cost of your battery backup. So instead of disabling it altogether a better option would be to set auto-sync frequency to as low as possible as per your needs.
3. Always-on display settings
High-resolution displays also consume a lot of battery. So keeping it at a lowest possible brightness settings without affecting its visibility would be the best thing that you could do. To conserve battery during the day you can enable auto-brightness by going to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Display’.
The latest breed of flagship phones have a feature that keeps the display always on for displaying notifications, time, and other things. This can drain your battery by more than 8% during the night. Disable it if you can live without it.
4. Tune WiFi and mobile network
Enable ‘WiFi Optimisation’ by going to WiFi Settings, and keep the WiFi off when not in use.
Also don’t forget to turn it off before going to bed. You can even download some apps from Google Play if you forget such things.
Another important thing that affects the battery backup if your mobile network strength. If your place doesn’t have very good network coverage, then it would be best to put your phone into ‘Airplane’ mode before going to bed. This would not let anyone get in touch with over that mobile number, but I am guessing you do have a secondary number for emergency purposes.
5. GPS location services
GPS location services can kill your battery within no time. If you have your GPS location services enabled in ‘High Accuracy’ mode then it will drain your phone’s battery from 100% to 0% percent in a matter of 4-5 hours.
In case you use apps that can’t function without getting any location then switch GPS to ‘Battery Saving’ mode.
Again I am assuming that you don’t have a phone housing a bigass 5000 mAh battery providing superb battery backup.
6. Rogue & malicious apps
Always refrain from downloading and installing apps from unknown sources. It is tempting to use pirated apps on your Android smartphone but you don’t know what you are putting at risk. You not just putting your privacy at risk but also the privacy of your contacts at risk.
Besides this, malicious apps can do all sorts of things to drain your battery.
Sometimes, even the apps from trusted sources can go haywire and suck your battery juice like anything. A few weeks back after an update the ‘Google’ app started using more than 20% of my battery. I uninstalled it immediately and installed it again. That’s it. The issue was resolved.
You can check if some app is using more battery then it should by going to ‘Settings’ -> ‘About Phone’ -> ‘Battery’ -> ‘Battery Usage’.
Most of the apps use battery depending upon your usage patterns. If you play a game continuously, then expect it to consume a lot of battery backup. This can span even up to 20%.
7. Multiple apps running in the background
Keeping an app running in the background doesn’t consume a lot of battery, but you multiply it with tens of (resource-intensive) apps running in the background, and you will experience severe battery drain issues.
This can cause your battery to drain by a good 2-3% during the night for no apparent reason. So a good practice would be stop all the apps before going to bed.
You can use various kinds of apps for doing this, including task killers but I prefer Greenify for hibernating apps running in the background.
Isn’t it super-easy to conserver your battery during the night? All you have to do exit the apps properly, keep WiFi, location services off, and Bluetooth off. Also keep on checking battery usage stats for finding rogue apps and uninstalling them.
Sometimes your phone’s battery might not be enough to sustain your increased internet usage. If that is the case then you buy a good battery backup phone.
Do let us know if we missed on anything that you think might help in overcoming the overnight battery drain issue.
