Episode 64: Scotty, I need more power...

Hi Everyone,

Have you ever noticed that your battery drain can be somewhat inconsistent. You get half a day’s change on one day and two days change on another. You find yourself wandering if you have a bad battery or was I just playing Bejeweled longer than I thought I was? Well, let’s look at battery power for this tip of the day.

Battery: Tips for increasing your battery life
Did you know that there are several elements that can affect your battery life? Have you ever noticed when traveling your batteries seem to last longer. You don’t always have access to Wi-Fi and if you are flying, your device is in Airplane Mode. On my last flight, I was able to watch three movies and still had more than 50% left on my iPad.

Do you have a lot of apps running in the background? Try closing your apps in the Multitasking window. Double click on the Home button, to open the Multitask bar. Click and hold on an icon. Click on the red minus to close the icon. Make sure you are not deleting apps. You will only see the Multitask bar and the icon will have a red minus and not a black circle with an x.

If you have a Bluetooth keyboard, turn it off when you are not using it. If you are continuously connected to a Bluetooth device, this will drain your battery quickly. Adjust your screen brightness. Do you really need it all the way up?

There are a ton of other factors, push email, location services, notification and more that can drain your battery. Changing your email to manual (fetch instead of push for personal accounts), turning off locations & notification services on apps you don’t use will help increase your battery life (do you really need location services on Fruit Ninja).

To keep your battery healthy, once a month, run it all the way down before your charge it up. If you still can’t make it through the day without having to put your device on a charge, come by my desk and we’ll see what is draining your battery.

Fig 64.01 (Multitasking)

Hope you enjoy these tips. Don’t forget, if you have a great tip or app, pass it on.