Improve battery life on your iPhone in iOS 11

10 useful tips that will extend your battery life drastically…

I was so excited when iOS 11 was announced. I have upgraded my iPhone 6s on the same day it became available. The new features and user interface are really awesome, and it's definitely the best iOS version ever released. But, everything has its own price.

I started losing 30–40% of the battery life per hour, and in most cases, I had to charge it twice a day. You might be thinking that I am using my iPhone all the time, but no. Most of the time, my phone is locked and using it only when I receive a call or a message. Also, you might be thinking that the battery is old, but it was working good on iOS 10.

Improvements 🔋

My frustration grew bigger, and I had to do something about it. I started looking for improvements by testing various features and see how the battery behaves with and without them. My testing was successful, and I found few useful tips that I will present to you now.

1. Check Battery Usage

The first thing you need to do is detect what drains your battery the most. Under Settings -> Battery, you can check what apps are the biggest consumers in a 24-hour interval. By tapping on the clock icon, you will get information how much time a specific app was consuming the battery when used and while in the background.

This is very important because some apps might be working in the background for a long period of time. We can manage our apps better if we know their battery consumption. To do that, please read the next point.👇

2. Disable Background App Refresh

Upon detecting the biggest enemies of your battery, navigate to Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh and turn off the background app refresh for those apps. You can also disable this feature for all apps, but I would recommend to only do it for the most consuming ones.

3. Location Services

Location services can really drain your battery fast. It pings your location on very frequent rates. What we need to do is make sure that all the installed apps use "When In Use" option that can be found under Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services. That way, location services will be active only when the app is in focus.

4. Enable Low Power Mode

I never turn off this feature, as I find it really helpful. It's recommended to activate this mode when the battery is 20% or lower. But, I always keep it activated even when my iPhone is full. This feature restricts email updates, Background App Refresh, Auto-Lock, Siri, Brightness, and visual effects.

You can find this feature under Settings -> Battery -> Low Power Mode, or directly from your Control Centre.

5. Disable Automatic Downloads

Another big battery consumer is the Automatic Downloads option. If this feature is enabled, it will be active all the time in background checking for new updates. You can always go to the App Store and manually update all the apps once a day or two.

You can locate this feature under Settings -> iTunes & App Store.

6. Use only Still wallpaper

Please try to avoid 'Dynamic' or 'Live Photo' wallpapers, as they have a big impact on your battery life. Instead, use Still wallpapers because they have no moving effects that require more GPU power.

You can find this feature under Settings -> Wallpaper.

7. Enable Auto-Brightness

I love having my brightness level to the highest all the time. Everything is bright and it suits my eyes. But, if I wanted my battery to last longer I had to change this. The Auto-Brightness feature will automatically adjust the level of the brightness. It takes into consideration your current environment, whether is a sunny day or you are in a dark room.

From iOS 11 this feature is moved to Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Display Accommodations.

8. Manage Siri

If you are not some passionate Siri user, consider disabling the Listen for "Hey Siri" option that can be found under Settings -> Siri & Search. It basically lets you access Siri by saying her name, but in order to hear the name and the keywords, it has to listen to your voice and be active at all time. I am not a big fan of voice assistants so I have Siri disabled.

9. Reduce number of Widgets

Widgets provide you with a quick information about the weather, calendar events, currency updates etc. You can find your widgets by swiping from the top of the screen to the bottom. iOS uses the battery in order to keep these widgets up to date. Consider removing any widget that you aren't using.

10. Enable Reduce Motion

I know you love the new transitions and animations. But, they affect the battery life as well. Apple is aware of this, and provide you with a feature to disable them called Reduce Motion.

Reduce Motion can be found under Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Reduce Motion.

I have presented you 10 tips on how you can extend your battery life. It's up to you to decide which tips you want to use. If you found this story useful, please don't forget to 👏 or share it so others can find it as well. Cheers!

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