How to Make your Battery Last Longer

[tdavi82]

I got a Lumia 950 two weeks ago and noticed the second day how fast the battery drains. I could watch the percentage drop every few minutes in light use. Sometimes I unplugged it from 100%, get a few texts and nothing else in 1 hour and already at 80%. Obviously, I was mad and even today I wonder if I should bring the phone back for an Samsung Galaxy. Here are a list of things I did that saved my battery life. I hope it helps you too.

1. Sign out of Skype if you do not use it for messaging.

2. Turn off Enhanced 4G LTE - Settings -> Network & wireless -> Cellular & SIM -> SIM settings
- This seemed to extend my battery a lot.

3. Don't allow some programs to run in the background. Settings -> Battery Saver -> Battery use
- Apps I do not allow: Facebook, WMPoweruser, Windows Central (Sorry, lol. I check WC so often I don't need notifications), Equalizer. If you like updates on an app, then keep it allowed.

4. Some apps continue to use battery even when you back out of them. I recently started to force close them by holding the back button and swiping them down. Backing out of apps still show them in the recent or frozen state. This doesn't always close them and they still use battery/data

5. Turn on Battery Saver when battery reaches 20%. If you do not plug your phone in to charge at night, turn battery saver on manually. Swipe down Action buttons and press the Battery Saver. Don't forget to turn it off in the morning.

6. I recently turned off Automatic Screen Brightness control too. Settings -> Display

7. Multiple email accounts and do not need push then get email every 15min or 30min. I have a junk email account I sync manually.

If you have other ways to save battery until Microsoft fixes these draining issues then please reply with your solutions.

 

[EMitchell]

I turned off Hey Cortana. It was a fun feature, but it's using battery because it's always on and listening. There are probably others under the Cortana settings that could be disabled for battery savings, but that's the one I disabled and it seemed to make a difference. The same as you, I've disabled most of the background apps. I don't have the MS store automatically updating apps, I manually check a couple of times a week for updates.

 

[fly_branch]

At&t is sending me a new 950. This one gets way too hot when cellular data is on, battery drains when cellular data is on, and has too many Bluetooth problems. I will keep sending them back until they fix it. It is just as easy as resetting my current one If we all send them back, maybe it will get their attention.

 

[JohnStrk]

Great tips everyone thanks! But I'd say these apply to all phones running W10M and not just the Lumia 950's.

I've been doing most of these on my Lumia 830 and it definitely makes my difference in battery life. Biggest battery drain for me now is whenever there's a new insider build available, the download can sometimes take a few days to finish and drains battery badly in the background.

 

[majortom1981]

IF I turn off enhanced lte my calls sound horrible on my att 950.

 

[Brandon Sobotta]

I know after updates I have had this issue, and also when I just bought the phone. The thing I did to fix this issue is preform a hard reset.

 

[Tiiger88]

Also you can turn of notification bar on apps you want, so when you get notification your screen doesn't wake up, only plays notification sound. At the beginning this was big issue to me, that every notification waked up the screen...at least i figured out how to disable it....big win to me and also the battery most when you use whatsapp or telegram messaging app....