How To Make Your Phone Battery Last Longer As Load Shedding Kicks In

Forewarned is forearmed. Even though ZESA denies the circulating load shedding schedule, realistically speaking (I mean writing) load shedding is back. One way of enduring these ‘dark times’ is to manage the energy consumption of our much-needed phones which we use to communicate and buy stuff (mobile money), listen to music and so on.

Fortunately, there are creative ways to extend battery life. If you use the following strategies, you will be awarded some extra minutes or hours.

Lower the screen brightness on your phone

This is always the first step to take when your battery starts to drain. On Android, this feature is sometimes accessible in the quick settings menu which can be found by swiping down from the top of the screen. If you don’t see an option to adjust your screen’s brightness in this menu, navigate to Settings which is usually found in the app drawer under the Display tab.

Close apps that are sucking your phone’s battery

Certain apps are more burdensome on your phone’s battery than others, so spotting these apps and closing or uninstalling them can be helpful. Nowadays iOS and Android phones are equipped with features which allow identifying Apps that are consuming more energy so that you can extend the duration of your mobile phone battery just by closing down the most wasteful ones.

Make sure you have installed necessary software updates

In some cases, software updates can make your phone more power efficient. It’s also important for security reasons since some updates include important bug fixes. To check if your phone is up to date, navigate to Settings > System Updates on Android.

Lower the screen timeout on your phone

The less often your phone’s screen is actually turned on, the more battery you will save. You can cut down on this by making it so that your phone’s screen shuts off quickly when it’s not in use. If you really want to save battery life, you might want to choose the 30-second or one minute option.

Conduct One Task at a Time

Multitasking is something that many people do without realizing how much it eats up their batteries. The best way to save battery strength is to conduct one task at a time. That way, the processor is not working so hard that the battery drains quickly.

Turn Off Vibrations

Vibration is a very useful mode if you are in a meeting or in a place where absolute silence is required, but not many people know that vibrations require more power than ringtones. So it’s better to use this mode only when needed.

Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if you’re not using them

Sometimes leaving certain features turned on when not in use can impact your smartphone’s battery life. So just make sure Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are turned off.

Disable push notifications

Push notifications prompt alerts to appear on your phone’s lock screen as soon as they come in. It’s useful for seeing important information right away but it can consume battery life since it pushes your phone’s display to light up frequently. So you better disable them.

Happy Load Shedding