Battery Life Help
Hi Everyone!
I just got my new Nokia Lumia 900 last week and wanted to share a few things here. Some of them you may already know and some you may not, but either way I hope this will benefit you more. The main purpose of this post is to help you look at some settings that are draining your battery life.
It seems as though the issue of the battery life is 50/50 here where some are satisfied and others are unhappy, but you also have to consider usage and the apps and settings on your phone. Here are some tips on configuring your
settings to help improve battery life:
First, lets go into your
Settings. When you first open them you will see your settings for
System.
-
Wi-Fi: If you're not using this, turn it off until the next time you do. And always remember to shut it off when you are finished browsing. If you leave this setting
On your device is constantly finding networks and it does drain your battery.
-
Bluetooth: Only use this sparingly, more so when you are driving and use a headset to avoid getting a ticket. When you are done, immediately shut it off or it will continue to search for devices to connect to and will drain your battery life.
-
Internet Sharing: If you're not sharing with any other device, disable this as well. Same thing goes for the previous step, it will drain your battery because it's searching for devices and networks.
-
Email+Accounts: For the accounts that are not so important and can wait, set the account to Manually receive e-mails or to a longer retrieval setting, such as hourly or every 2 hours if needed. This will decrease retrieval time from the network and also save battery life.
-
Lock+Wallpaper: In this setting I have the
Show artist when playing music setting to
Off and the
Screen Time Out set to
30 seconds. Again, the shorter your screen is lit up, the more battery life you are saving. Easy setting here. I'm not sure if that artist when playing music will make a difference, but I set it off to try. You can always enable it if you want it back
-
Location: While some of us do like to have this on, having it off is much more beneficial given that its not searching and locating your phone on the network every so often (not exactly sure how often it searches for locations), but again, this does drain your battery life if it set to
On.
HOWEVER, with correct settings you can still have this setting enabled to balance out your battery life, but if you find that it is still draining, try turning this feature off for a while to see if there is a difference. I have found that the battery life does a good job with this setting On and other features turned off (as I have mentioned here) because it balances the life of the battery. This depends on your preferences too.
-
Brightness: Having your screen too bright does use battery life, especially if you are constantly running your apps and games on the phone. In this setting, turn the
Automatically adjust feature
On and set the
Level to
Low. This will help to save your battery by not using the battery so much to light the screen.
-
Battery Saver: This is VERY useful, however you will find that you can only keep it on when your battery becomes critically low or until your next charge. I do find this a little annoying as this would be a great battery saver because it helps to disable programs running in the background that drain your battery.
So all I can say about this option is to check the box for the
Always turn on Battery Saver when battery is low option. You can also run this if you are having trouble getting your settings to balance out for better battery life.
Keep in mind that I have read to only use this option in desperate measures. I would agree given that it only stays on temporarily.
-
Find My Phone: If you find that you are like me and easily "misplace" your phone, keep this setting enabled and select the option to
Save my location every few hours but do not select the other option as it clearly tells you that it WILL use more battery life. Selecting the option for every few hours help to save your battery by using this setting every few hours, as it says.
-
Feedback: I could care less about feedback when it comes to this. Disable this feature and leave it
Off as you are better off leaving feedback to Microsoft using your own computer rather than your Windows Phone and draining more life from your battery.
So now that we have checked the
System settings, lets move over the right and check out the
Applications settings.
-
Background Tasks: Opening this option shows your programs running in the background. If you're not using them, turn them off and you will notice an improvement in the battery life in some way or another.
Keep in mind that these apps in this list may become enabled when you re-open them, so you may need to go back here from time to time to save battery life again.
-
Games: Turning this feature off saves your battery life by not connecting to Xbox Live for score updates and achievements. Again, you can always enable this, play a game, and when finished come back to disable it for saving battery life. This keeps your phone from connecting to the xbox live network for updates. It DOES help save battery life when not in use.
-
Internet Explorer: Here you can delete browsing history and cookies for browsing to free up some space. This is not a battery saver but I did want to mention it.
-
Maps: This option has a setting for
Use my location. This goes back to location using battery life, so it's up to you here if you want to disable it. I keep mine enables because I use my GPS on a medium level so its helpful to keep it enabled. Again, this is your choice here.
-
Music+Videos: In this option you will find a setting to
Connect with Zune. If you use Zune for a music account, keep this enabled. If you don't and you use something else (such as iTunes) disable this option as it will no longer connect to the network to find music updates. Keep in mind that updating your music is also something you can do when connecting your phone to your computer.
-
Pictures+Camera: In this option you will find two settings that mention to include
location info on your photos. Disable this feature to lower your location usage and help save battery life. This can also help enhance privacy if you find that you don't want other people knowing your location.
-
Search: There is also a
location setting in here for when you search for something. With this enabled it searches locally from your location, but again, you can always disable this to also help save battery life. It's up to you on this one, but I recommend keeping it
On if you do use your browser on your phone.
That pretty much covers the Settings. One other note that I wanted to add is that if you see Live Tiles where they are animating things on your home screen, check and see if you can adjust a setting for that tile to just one single image or to
Disable any live broadcasts as this will also save battery life.
Remember that you can always return to any of these settings for future reference and to re-enable a setting or to go back and disable it. Either way it is not going to harm your phone or battery if you follow these simple steps. I hope this helps as I have noticed a major improvement and less drainage during the ENTIRE day, not just half of a day, lol. Have fun!
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