Smartphone 101: Why Is My Battery Draining So Fast?

Smartphone 101: Why Is My Battery Draining So Fast?

Your phone’s battery draining quickly? We may have solutions for you

Today we’re kick off a series of articles talking about smartphone ownership and some of the issues you may face if you’re a first time phone owner. And what better way to start off a new article series by talking about something that people worry about all the time: battery life. Specifically, we try to lay down the reasons why your phone’s battery may be draining faster than you anticipated.

1.) Your phone’s battery is getting old

Phone batteries, like anything that gets used constantly, wears out. Typically a normal smartphone’s batteries nowadays is good for around 1 1/2 year to 2 years of use without negligible degradation. However, your usage habits may contribute to your phone’s battery wearing out earlier than expected, so it’s always a good idea to check in on its health once in a while. To do this, type in *#*#4636#*#* in your phone’s dialer to see the overall health of your battery under Battery Information.

If your phone’s battery is unhealthy or has problems, you sadly have to replace it. For most Android phones nowadays that means sending your phone to a certified service center because of the sealed battery designs today.

2.) You constantly have bad signal

Believe it or not the signal strength of your provider greatly affects your phone’s overall battery life. In areas where signals are spotty, your phone expends more power trying to reach the cell tower it’s linked to, or expends energy trying to search for a better cell tower. We’ve noticed this during our usage habits too – our weekend battery life is better since we spend time near malls and such compared to our weekday battery life, which is spent mostly in our house that has poor cellular reception.

3.) You have apps constantly refreshing in the background

You’d think that killing apps constantly running in the background kills your battery life more than terminating those processes altogether. But, that’s not the case, according to Hiroshi Lockheimer, the VP of Engineering for Android.

The better solution would be to restrict background refresh for apps that are not important, which basically limits their ability to use the phone’s modem to retrieve information from the net. Some games (especially the ones that require internet connections and the ones that push notifications to your phone) have this option on by default, so you’ll probably save a few mAh and gain a few minutes if you turn that off.

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