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Extending Battery Life: Be Smart with Your Smartphone

There’s nothing more frustrating than running out of juice when you need your phone most. Read on to learn how to extend your phone’s battery life.

With proper care, most smartphone batteries are designed to last between three to five years. To make sure your device makes it to your next upgrade, heed these battery-care tips:

Give Your Screen a Rest: Unsurprisingly, the screen is the biggest power drain on most smartphones. You can minimize the damage by dimming the screen brightness, setting your screen to turn off quickly when not in use, and eschewing animated wallpapers. Since LEDs switch off pixels to display black, reading text against a dark background will also ease the battery’s workload.

Cut the Background Noise: Your phone will waste much less energy without a bunch of unnecessary apps running in the background. Be sure to close out of any programs you aren’t using, and turn off push notifications on email and social-media apps if possible—you can always manually check these when you need to. And, of course, turning off Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth will conserve power throughout the day.

Don’t Hit Zero: Contrary to a popular myth, smartphone batteries aren’t designed to go from zero to a full charge on a regular basis. Unlike nickel-based batteries, the lithium-ion batteries found in most smartphones last longer when they’re kept at a 50% charge or higher. It’s fine to charge your phone once or twice a day, but try to unplug it once it hits 100% or you’ll risk damaging the battery.

Stay Cool: Lithium-ion batteries wear out faster in warm temperatures, which is another reason not to leave them plugged in too long. To get the most out of your battery, avoid leaving your phone in direct sunlight or trying to charge it in the microwave.