The tasks today's smartphones perform are more demanding than ever, and to accommodate growing needs, processors have become more powerful and screens have gotten larger.

Sadly, lithium-ion batteries haven't made as much progress. This leaves you to rely solely on software features to maximize your battery life. Here are some practical tips for improving the battery life and maintaining the overall battery health of your Android phone.

1. Turn On Power-Saving Mode

The quickest way to save the most battery on your phone is to turn on the power-saving mode (Battery Saver). On most phones, you can find it in the Quick Settings panel, or, by going to the Battery section in Settings and toggling on Power saving.

On a Samsung phone, you can set the power-saving mode to do the following things:

  • Turn off Always On Display: Always-on display is a helpful feature, but by its very nature, it's endlessly keeping your screen on and draining your battery.
  • Limit CPU speed to 70%: Limiting CPU speed means apps will take slightly longer to open and load but will use less battery in the process.
  • Decrease brightness by 10%: The dimmer the screen, the lesser the battery consumption.
  • Turn off 5G: 5G is fast and convenient, yes, but it's also a big battery hog. Use 4G when you want to save battery.
  • Limit apps and Home screen: This is the most powerful battery-saving feature of all, and can more than double your battery life! It does so by doing the following things:
    • Limits all background activity
    • Turns off Edge panels
    • Sets a system-wide dark theme (with a solid black wallpaper)
    • Reduces refresh rate to 60Hz
    • Only allows selected apps (up to eight) on the Home screen
    • Disables the app drawer

2. Turn Off Location Services

One of the most efficient ways to save battery life on your phone is to turn off the location function. In addition, you should also revoke the location permission for apps that don't require it all the time. This way, you're blocking those apps from using the service in the background, saving even more battery life.

To do so, head over to Settings > Location > App permissions. Here, you'll see all the apps that are permitted to use location. Tap on an app and select Allow only while using the app (for essential apps) or Don't allow (for apps that don't need the service at all).

You can save your battery while using Google Maps without internet access. To do so, download offline maps in Google Maps for places you often visit.

3. Switch to Dark Mode

If your phone has an AMOLED screen, switching to a dark theme will extend its battery life by a noticeable margin. Since AMOLED displays can disable individual pixels, backgrounds with deep blacks allow them to consume less power.

You can take advantage of this in many ways. You can apply a dark wallpaper, enable a system-wide dark theme, and enable dark mode on compatible Android apps like WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, Gmail, and many more.

4. Turn Off Automatic Wi-Fi

Since the Oreo update, Android comes with a feature that continues to look for open Wi-Fi networks even when you've disabled Wi-Fi. Since the service is running endlessly in the background, it's also secretly using the battery. Follow the steps below to turn it off:

  1. Open Settings > Connections > Wi-Fi.
  2. Tap the three-dots menu and select Advanced.
  3. Toggle off Turn on Wi-Fi automatically.

If the option is grayed out and you can't disable it, you might need to turn on location once to access it. Remember to turn off location again after disabling automatic Wi-Fi.

5. Limit Apps Running in the Background

Most apps you use are active even after you exit them. That's where Android's app-specific battery tools enter. With a simple switch, you can completely restrict an app from accessing the battery in the background.

To do so, open Settings > Apps and tap on an app of your choice to see its settings, like Instagram. On the app info page, tap Battery and select Restricted.

If you have an older phone, you can also try a third-party app called Greenify. This automatically stops apps from consuming resources in the background. However, we recommend using the native feature on modern devices since it generally works better than third-party solutions.

6. Manually Disable Screen Pixels

If you're not comfortable with darker gradients, you can manually switch off pixels through a third-party app called Pixoff. The app can also employ one of several available grid patterns to quickly, for instance, deactivate half of the pixels.

Unless you're watching a movie or consuming other content in HD, you won't notice much of a drop in quality, especially if you have a 1080p screen or higher. A few manufacturers like Samsung also include a setting that allows you to reduce the display's resolution.

Download: Pixoff: Battery Saver (Free, premium version available)

7. Disable Background Data Access

Similarly, you can cut off cellular data access for apps you don't think should use it in the background. If apps don't receive internet access, they can't load new files and work in the background. As a result, this saves battery.

To stop an app from using cellular data in the background, go to Settings > Apps and select an app. Under Usage, tap Mobile data and toggle off Allow background data usage.

8. Monitor Misbehaving Apps

Your battery life can take a big hit if an app doesn't work like it's supposed to. This could be caused by anything from a bug to a deliberate aggressive background feature. To check this, head over to Settings > Battery and device care > Battery and tap on the battery usage graph to see which apps have drained the most of it.

If there's an app you don't use much, you should uninstall it and monitor the battery for a day to see if it improves. You can also force-close the app and give it another shot. If nothing proves useful, get rid of it and switch to an alternative.

9. Disable Google Assistant

While Google Assistant is a handy tool to have for fun and work, it's also one of the Android features that constantly gobbles up your phone's energy. It's listening for the wake command, is connected to your location for instantly fetching contextual results, and more.

If you don't heavily depend on Google Assistant, it's best to shutter it. Unsurprisingly, Google hasn't made Assistant's switch easy to reach. You have to jump through a few hoops to find it.

First, open the Google app, tap your profile picture, and select Settings. Then go to Google Assistant > General and toggle off Google Assistant. Or, to do this faster, simply tell your Google Assistant, "Hey Google, turn off Google Assistant" then tap Assistant settings, and toggle off Google Assistant from there.

10. Switch to Lite or Progressive Web Apps

Another nifty method that doesn't require much sacrifice and still extends your phone's battery life is switching to lite or progressive web apps. These are slimmed-down versions of apps available in a browser.

Companies offer them to make the experience better on underpowered phones. They take fewer resources, but you won't miss out on much. You have a host of lite Android apps as well as progressive web apps available to check out.

11. Change Your Sync Settings

Notifications are important. But if you find them intrusive and hate the persistent stream of pings, you should try disabling auto-sync altogether. That way, you'll only see new content when you open an app and refresh it manually.

Since apps won't constantly refresh themselves in the background to feed you new information, this can save you a ton of battery life too. You can disable auto-sync via the Quick Settings Panel on your Samsung phone, or, simply go to Settings > Accounts and backup > Manage accounts and toggle off Auto sync data.

12. Turn Off Nearby Device Scanning on Samsung Phones

Samsung phones repeatedly scan for nearby devices so that you can easily detect and connect to your earbuds, smartwatches, Bluetooth speakers, and more. This is great for convenience, but not great for your battery.

So, once you've paired your accessories, you should turn the feature off. To do so, go to Settings > Connections > More connection settings and toggle off Nearby device scanning.

13. Change the Screen Timeout to a Lower Setting

When left unattended for a given amount of time, your phone automatically turns off the screen to preserve battery life. This is called screen timeout and it's present on all Android phones.

You can save slightly more battery life on your Android by changing the screen timeout to a lower setting, allowing your phone to turn off the screen quicker when it detects a lack of activity. To do so, go to Settings > Display > Screen timeout and select 1 minute or less.

14. Enable Auto Brightness

Reducing your phone's brightness level is perhaps the easiest and quickest way to save its battery life, but having to manually adjust it every time can be cumbersome.

To address this, consider using the Auto Brightness feature (aka Adaptive Brightness on Samsung phones) which senses the ambient light and adjusts the brightness level as appropriate. To enable it, go to Settings > Display and toggle on Adaptive brightness.

How to Increase the Battery Life of Android Phones

There are tons of things you can do to save battery life on your Android phone. As you saw above, a plethora of apps and services run in the background at all times that you may not even need, so it's best to shut them off for good.

For the best battery life possible, it's a good idea to rely on your phone's battery saver and simply use your phone less. And while you're at it, you might want to turn off notifications too so that you're not tempted to pick up your phone again and check what's up.