Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Apple iOS 7: How to Extend Battery Life



With every IPhone update there is an underlying fear. It is a specter over everything that people who enjoy Apple products feel that they just have to learn to live with. Battery drainage. With the new iOS there will be new and different ways of turning your phone into a paper weight between your house and your car. But the iOS 7  is so excited to show you all the cool new things that it can do. The system forgets that all the apps available do not need to be running every second of every day just in case you might need them. So here are some tips that will slow down some of these rabid battery killers. 
Firstly, there are many apps running in the background that you can easily turn off with one flick of your finger.  Firstly where the most battery sucking is in the Settings section of the IPhone. So head there, here it is on the main screen and a close up of the app

 

When you get there the first place to go is to Privacy then go to Location Services then System Services. 


In System Services there are a couple different apps that continue to run unneeded. So turning them off will help keep the battery from draining.


Three that are usually unnecessary but pull a lot of power are: Location-Based iAds, Traffic, and the Popular Near Me apps.
The first allows pop-ups ads of local businesses to come up while you are different areas. So as you pass by Best Buy an ad may pop up telling you about their cellphone accessory sale. Interesting, but not necessary. The Traffic app is pretty self-explanatory, but when sitting in an office for the next 9 hours probably isn’t needed. Another app is Popular Near Me, it lets you know what is popular in the area you currently are in, the phone will shows what people in that area usually download from the app store.  But if you need it turn it on, don’t need it all the time. 
There is also the the Reduce Motion function that can also be turned off.
This is for people who dislike the parallax effects in iOS 7, this is something that often the visually impaired or people who become nauseous while looking the screen sometimes use. By going into Setting and the General followed by Accessibility you will be able to turn off this setting so that you save yourself some battery life.




Another battery killer is the Location Services. This looks at where you go and where you have been and figures out faster routes, interesting shops along your route and the like. But it isn’t needed. Then it’s mostly just a battery killer.
So here’s how to get rid of it. Go to Settings in the Privacy Settings, and then Location Services, When in the Location Services screen will see just flick the service from on to off.


For all those apps that keep running and would rather not go through all of them there is the background app refresh setting.
In Settings, under General, the Background App Refresh can be flicked off so that different apps aren’t running without knowledge killing your battery.



Another interesting app to turn off is located under Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services. It doesn’t need to be running when the user is holding still. A great example of this is the non-need of  Passbooks. While the app is really cool because of it’s ability to have coupons, membership cards and event tickets all in one spot.  One cool feature of passbooks, is that they can be not only timed based (Movie at 7pm), but they can be location based (show me the membership card when I am at Panera).  The downside to location based Passbooks, is that they are constantly checking GPS to see where you are.  During beta testing, this was a HUGE drain on the battery.  So, if you want even greater battery life, disable location services for Passbook.
There are also some basics that can be turned off if you are not using them that can also help you save a little battery. Things like your WiFi Search, Bluetooth and you can also change Email notifications from hourly to daily and push notifications to a time when your phone is plugged in as well. So below is a list of stuff that can be disabled to help save your some battery life. 
These little changes may not seem like much but when added up they change your phone from that thing that you want to throw through a window to the thing that you love slightly more than life itself.



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