Mikes note: if you really want to save battery life, just DON'T USE YOUR PHONE :). Come on people, stop complaining and playing with SIRI, the battery isn't that bad.
According to our polls, quite a lot of you say your battery life taken a hit with iOS 5, or that your new iPhone 4S battery life simply isn't up to snuff. Anytime a new software version is released or a new devices comes to market, it seems battery life becomes an issue. Luckily, that also means we're getting better at troubleshooting it! Here are some things you can try to make sure your iOS 5 or iPhone 4S battery is lasting as long as it should, and some tweaks you can make to get it to last as long as possible.
First: Assess your usage!
Okay, this sounds funny, but make sure you're not just using your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch more than you used to. Any time we get a new version of iOS, or a new device our tendency is to never put it down. Now, with location based Reminders, Siri, and other power hungry features, we might simply be using our device more than we have in a while.
Before you do any drastic battery life fixes, put your device down and see how fast the battery really is draining.
Fixing Battery Life
If, in general, your battery life is consistently short and you're basically just watching the indicator drain down before your eyes, here are some things to try, in order of how easy they are to do.
- Restart/reset your device. If you haven't rebooted in a while, give it a try. There could be a rogue process or something else doing what it shouldn't be doing, and a restart can often fix that. (Here's how to reboot](http://www.tipb.com/2010/12/17/beginner-tip-power-reset-ios-device-hit-problem/))
- Power cycle. About once a month, and certainly if you're having problems, you should completely drain your iPhone or iPad's battery — drain it until it shuts down on its own — and then charge it back up to full.
- Restore your device as new. The single biggest cause of battery life problems with iOS 5 occurs when they are restored from backup and not set up as new devices. Whether it's cruft or corruption, a clean install as a new device — incredible pain in the butt though it may be — is usually the best fix for any battery life issues. This is the nuclear option. You will have to set up absolutely everything again, and you will lose all your saved data like game levels, but in most cases your battery life will be better than ever. (Here's how]
- Go to the Apple Store. Sometimes you do get a lemon, or your iPhone or iPad develops a real problem that only Apple can solve by either swapping it for another device or otherwise figuring out a fix.
Saving battery life
Anything running on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad uses up the battery, so we're going to go into the Settings app and turn some things down, and turn others off altogether. The more you turn off, the longer your batter will last — but of course the less you'll be able to do. It's a balancing act but one that can help you squeeze out a little extra juice when you really need it.
- Turn off Siri's Raise to Speak. Go to Settings, General, Siri. Readers keep telling us this has helped them with battery life due to accelerometer issues.
- Turn of Ping. Go to Settings, General, Restrictions, (Enable Restrictions). Again, readers say this prevents undue push. And who uses Ping anyway?
- Turn off Location Services. Go to Settings, Location Services, and turn off any app you really don't need tracking or using your location.
- Turn off Push Notifications. Likewise, go to Settings, Notifications, and turn off any app you don't care to be alerted about.
- Kill power hungry apps. Double-click the Home Button to activate the multitasking dock, hold your finger on an app to enter "jiggly" mode, and kill any apps that might be running in the background, especially VoIP (like Skype), streaming audio (like Pandora), or navigation (like TomTom). (Here's how)
Here are some old standbys as well:
- Set Auto-Lock to 1 minute
- Turn off any extra sounds, like keyboard clicks
- Turn off the iPod EQ
- Use headphones instead of the speaker if you have to listen to audio or music
- Turn down the screen brightness
- Turn off Bluetooth when not using it
- Turn off Wi-Fi when not using it
- Turn off 3G when not using it (Not possible on iPhone 4S)
- Set all email, calendar, and contacts accounts to "Fetch" (turn off Push)
Bonus tip: If you're really desperate, put your iPhone in Airplane Mode and save the radios for when you need them. If you're really desperate, you can also turn your iPhone completely off until you need it (it will still use a tiny amount of power but far, far less than anything else).
Plug in your device
Like our friend Phil Nickinson from Android Central always says, don't be ashamed to plug in your device. If you're using your iPhone or iPad a lot, plug it in to recharge whenever you can. At home, at work, in the car, there are plenty of opportunities to top up your battery.
More help
So how did these tips work out for you? Give us your feedback, and any other tips for saving iOS 5 or iPhone 4S battery life you might have, in the comments! If anything has worked especially well for you, we'll add it to the list!
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