Recently, I noticed that my phone battery was not keeping its charge as long as I thought it should. It’s an older model so I knew a decision was needed — new battery or new phone. To give myself more time to think about what to do, I researched ways to conserve my battery charge. I learned that as time goes on the battery will hold less and less charge. It’s called standby loss. Even when I’m not actually using my phone, activity is happening in the background.

Here are some steps I have taken to prolong the life of my phone’s current battery.

1. I’ve become diligent about installing software updates. The updates usually have bug fixes that often help save battery life.

2. Turning off active tracking features such as Bluetooth and Location Services is helpful. When these options are on, my phone is looking for something to connect to, and that takes power both to look for and actually connect to an app or other device. However, there is a downside to this action. If your phone is connected to the communication system in your car, it is using Bluetooth. If it’s turned off, hands-free use of the phone can’t happen. Also, Location Services needs to be turned on for the Maps app as well as some other apps like Yelp or a compass. The best solution is to go to Location Services in Settings and choose which apps absolutely require that Location Services be active.

3. Lowering the brightness of my screen as much as possible also helps. The screen takes a lot of battery power. I also make sure the time before my screen goes to sleep or goes to Auto-Lock is as short as possible. Once again, these options will be found in Settings.

4. In the past I have been pretty sloppy about closing down all my apps after using them, especially if they update in the background. Now, I make it a habit to take time every night to close all of my open apps.

5. My phone dings or trills when I get a text, email, or Food Network update. All of those notifications eat up battery power. I’ve reviewed my Notifications settings and pared them down to a minimum.

6. I make sure my WiFi is activated on my phone so that I am not using cellular or network data when searching the internet. That’s easy to do at home because I’ve set my phone’s WiFi feature to automatically pick up my home network. I have to work harder to remember to connect to a restaurant’s or library’s network when I am out an about.

One last thing to think about…

Letting my phone get to 0% power is a strain on the battery. Once I hit 40%, I plug in and charge it up.

These actions appear to be helping my battery last longer, however, I will still need to make a decision about a new phone in the future. I’ve started to think about which bells and whistles I want!

BoomerTECH Adventures (boomertechadventures.com) provides expert guidance and resources to help Boomers and older adults develop competence and confidence using their Apple devices. Boomers themselves, BoomerTECH Adventures rely on their skills as educators to create experiences that meet individual needs through videos, Zoom presentations, tech tips, and timely blog posts.