So you’ve had iOS 7 for a fortnight and the honeymoon is over – you’re enjoying the new design, but it’s draining your battery at an alarming rate. Here’s some ways to give your phone a bit more stamina – keeping some battery power for things you really need.
1. Turn off location services for all but those apps that really need it – do you really want the Angry Bird to know where you are?
Go to Settings – Privacy – Locations Services then choose the apps that you really need location services for (like Maps and Camera) and switch off the rest.
2. Switch off Parallax – it’s the 3D effect for your app buttons. Cool for 2 minutes – a complete waste of battery. Settings – General – Accessibility and turn on Reduce Motion.
3. Change your email settings so that you emails are ‘pushed’ to your account less often. Settings – Mail, Contacts, Calendar – Fetch New Data. You can switch off Push altogether, or, if you have less important email accounts on your phone, you can choose which of your email accounts to fetch or push.
4. Lower the brightness of your screen – sounds obvious, but this is a big battery drain. Settings – Wallpapers & Brightness; use Auto-Brightness or to be really frugal, manually set it low.
5. Turn off the system diagnostics and usage function – this is a setting for Apple to gather data about how you use your phone – enough said. Settings – General – About scroll right down to the bottom to Diagnostics & Usage then select Don’t Send.
6. Stop notifications that you don’t need: Settings – Notification Center and then work out which apps you’d like to send you news and which you don’t need to hear from.
7. This isn’t new to iOS 7, but only have Bluetooth and WiFi on when you need them. It’s much easier to switch them on and off with iOS7. Just slide up the Control Centre menu from the bottom of the home screen and switch them on and off.
Follow these 7 simple rules and your iPhone should last all day.
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