Advancement in mobile Phone technology has driven us to a point where Smartphones, mobile phones with advanced mobile operating systems which combine features of a personal computer operating system with other features useful for mobile or handheld use. Because of the powerful features captured in the smartphone – internet facilities, powerful cameras, multimedia, etc – the phone consumes high amount of Battery power, thus giving the feature phone an edge against it.

To this end, it has become tough to get a smartphone that can go much longer than 30 hours without charging.

Generally, there are two kinds of Batteries commonly used for smartphones: Lithium-ion (Li-Ion), and Nickel-based batteries. The Nickel-based batteries are also of two kinds, namely: Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd).

The battery capacity in NiCd batteries are reduced every time you recharge them. Nonetheless, NiCd batteries have longer life cycles, that is, they can be recharged more often than NiMH batteries before they stop working. Nickel-based batteries should be charged (to the full amount) when they are out of power, or having very low power, and not when there is still a good amount of energy left.

Li-Ion batteries have the longest life cycle among the three types of batteries but they also need to be charged more frequently (even when the battery is not fully used up) to maintain its original capacity. To keep your battery lasting longer, find out more about the type of battery that your smartphone uses and maintain the appropriate charging strategy for optimum usage.

Vibrations actually use up more power than ringtones. The sounds produced by ringtones are just very tiny vibrations in your smart phone’s speaker compared that to the shaking of the entire phone via vibration. The same applies for using vibration for tactile feedback. If you do not think it is necessary, then disable vibrations or at the very least, lessen the magnitude of the vibrations. In places where it does not matter, it will be better for you to use your ringtone as notification if you want to keep your Smartphone on longer.

If our screen is brightly lit up every couple of minutes when we check our emails and such, it will eventually drain the battery life. Auto-brightness setting enables the smartphone to adjust the brightness to its optimal level for reading while conserving battery life. It is obvious that dimming your screen will reduce your smart phone’s power consumption since we all have to activate the screen whenever we use our phones.

Because some of us do not have the habit of ‘locking’ the phone after we are done with it, it is good to consider shortening the screen time-out. In many cases, we just let it go lights out by itself. Keeping the timeout duration short will ensure that the phone does not waste power when you are not using it.

Sometimes, we open some apps on our phones and do not bother to close them even after we no longer use them. This multi-tasking capability is a common feature of smartphones, but it is also a main reason why battery life gets drained away easily. The worst thing is that you are losing battery juice when you are not even using them. Leaving them open will leave your battery at half-bar in no time.

As such, it is important to close all apps are unnecessarily opened.

Whenever your smartphone searches for signals, Wi-Fi, 3G or Bluetooth etc., energy is consumed.  When the reception is poor, the phone will continue scanning to attain a good connection. Repeated searches for these signals can easily make your battery level drop fast.

To prevent that, turn off your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth when you do not need the connection.

Do not leave your smartphones under direct sunlight or in any area with high temperature. Batteries run out fast when the phones are hot. Also, do not use the phone while charging it. it cause overheating of the battery, thus reducing its strength and lifespan.