Why Your Phone Battery is Draining So Fast and Ways to Fix It.

We all know how useful phones can be and how important for them to be useful as long as possible. The more they do, the more power they’re going to use. A fancy phone can become a dead phone if it only lasts a part of your day. With every new generation of a certain phone, it seems like the older generations get slower and the batteries drain way too fast. While age is one thing on the list of reasons your phone's battery may be draining too fast, there may be other causes, too. Before we get into that, a question remains:

How do you check battery usage?

Exactly how to find this information is based on who makes your phone. Typically, this can be found within the Settings of your device. A Battery section within Apple iPhone settings focuses on this specifically.

As we said, there are other reasons your battery may be draining so quickly, so we’re here to break down some of the more common reasons your battery is waving goodbye too soon. We’ll also shed some light on how to mitigate the impact some apps and features may have:

• Location tracking on your apps.

  • Some apps will ask for access to your location. Knowing where you are is crucial for apps that give you directions or weather information. Some apps will continuously track your location, whereas others don’t need to know your location. The fast food place around the corner is a pretty good example. I don’t think we want them to know where you are at all times. Very weird.

  • The fix: in your settings, there will be battery usage information somewhere, and it may tell you which apps are using up too much data. Within the Privacy section of most devices, you can see which apps are always tracking your location. Find them and turn that feature off or limit it.

• Apps running in the background.

  • Just like some apps constantly check your locations, some (if not all) will continue to run and refresh their information even after you leave the app. Social media apps are big culprits, as they’re constantly updating. This is called ‘Background App Refresh,’ and it’s a feature that’s auto-enabled on some devices.

  • The fix: Turn off the background app refresh feature and also make sure you close out apps you’re not using. For iPhone users, this involves swiping up from the bottom and then swiping away all the apps running that you don’t want there anymore.

• Too much Hotspot usage.

  • When you use your hotspot, you are acting as a WiFi router for another device. Luckily Visible doesn’t cap hotspot usage so it’s a huge pro. But running your device as a hotspot puts a lot of strain on your device because it’s basically providing data to another device. It’s almost acting as a mini-network. Over time, this can drain your battery quickly, especially if you have an older phone.

  • The fix: Using your phone as a hotspot is a huge help and a huge drain, and there isn’t a major way to mitigate that other than tethering to fewer devices and using it less.

• The display brightness is too high AND/OR stays on too long.

  • No matter who makes your device, the battery will go down quickly if you turn the brightness up and leave it there. You’ll also notice that the screen or device may get warm sometimes. This should be an indicator of exactly how much this uses the battery. The light that powers your screen is strong, and having it go 100% at once is a huge strain on your battery.

    Closely tied to the brightness of the screen, most screens have a ‘rest’ mode in a sense. It’s when your device realizes you’re not using it, so it basically goes to sleep. The default on some phones is this time frame is relatively short to conserve battery. However, multiple things come into play with this – if any app thinks you’re still using it (say, watching a video even though you fell asleep), it’ll continue to run. And let’s just add that if all this is happening while your screen brightness is 100%, you’re playing with fire at this point.

  • The fix: Just lower the brightness within the settings of your device. It’s a very simple and quick fix. If you happen to own an iPhone, in the Display & Brightness section, you can make the screen brightness automatic, which adjusts the brightness based on your surroundings. This also exists on Android, known as Adaptive Screen Brightness.

• Having an old battery.

  • Like an old car, old batteries just don’t run as well as they used to. The older your device, the older your battery. Older batteries can struggle to run apps optimized for a newer operating system. You can check the health of your battery on most devices in Settings, or you can just say, “My phone is 3 years old, which is OLD in phone years.” If you find yourself stating those words, have faith you’ll find hope in ‘The fix’ for this.

  • The fix: Look – we’re going to be honest with you because we care about you: Sometimes your phone is just too old and thus, so is the battery. The only real option here is to simply get a new battery, but more likely - get a new phone. And if you’d like a new phone, well, we have some good news:

At Visible, we aim to help you stay connected to things that matter most to you, ensuring you have a battery that can keep up. That’s why we have a great trade-in program to trade in your old device (and old battery) and get paid for it. Better yet, our shop page has all the latest devices with those better batteries. That new battery, new device, or new anything will actually go really well with the plans we offer. To learn more about all that, this, and Visible, well, you know where to find us :D