How to Save Battery Life in iOS 9 With Low Power Mode

[MacRumors]

One frequent complaint of smartphone users is the limited amount of battery life our tech devices have. With the constant trend toward making devices thinner and lighter, battery life is a key tradeoff to be considered, and some users find their devices not lasting as long as they'd prefer.

For those pushing their devices to the limit, Apple has added a new feature to iOS 9 that is designed to help you conserve those last few drops of juice when you wont be able to charge your iPhone anytime soon. The new feature is known as Low Power Mode, and it can increase your battery life up to three hours but at the expense of some functions of your device. It is only available on iPhone devices running iOS 9.

Enabling Low Power Mode only takes a few steps.

Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Select Battery from the menu list.
Toggle Low Power Mode to the On position.
The battery icon will turn yellow to indicate that you are using Low Power Mode.
Low Power Mode reduces your iPhone's performance and cuts out some background activities. For example, mail must be fetched manually, background app refresh is disabled, and motion and brightness are reduced.

Benchmarks have shown the iPhone's CPU performance with Low Power Mode on is significantly reduced in an effort to save on power consumption, so while simple tasks may continue to work just fine on an iPhone in Low Power Mode, more demanding ones may become sluggish.

You don't have to keep Low Power Mode on all of the time; you can manually shut it off whenever you want. However, the general impression of users has been that the real-world slowdown is not so severe that you can't continue to use your iPhone.

With iOS 9, you will receive a prompt when your iOS device goes below 20 percent of its battery power left. The popup will allow you to quickly toggle Low Power Mode on so you can still use your device for only the most necessary of functions until you are able to recharge it.

This feature might be familiar to Apple Watch owners, as Power Reserve is a somewhat similar feature designed to allow the wrist-worn device to continue functioning as a basic watch as the battery drains toward zero by cutting off all other functions of the device.

Low Power Mode is a nice addition to iOS 9 for improving the performance of your iPhone's battery.

Article Link: How to Save Battery Life in iOS 9 With Low Power Mode

 

[simmonsj]

Looks like IOS9 turns low power mode off automatically.

I left my phone in low power mode last night, but charging. This morning, I missed the exact message, but it had automatically turned off low power mode and said something like "Low Power mode turned off because you now have sufficient battery charge".

Edit: Thanks to the other posters who have confirmed this happens when your phone hits 80% charge.

 

[vasili4]

Looks like IOS9 turns low power mode off automatically.

I left my phone in low power mode last night, but charging. This morning, I missed the exact message, but it had automatically turned off low power mode and said something like "Low Power mode turned off because you now have sufficient battery charge".

true. this happens at 80% battery level

 

[blackcrayon]

Looks like IOS9 turns low power mode off automatically.

I left my phone in low power mode last night, but charging. This morning, I missed the exact message, but it had automatically turned off low power mode and said something like "Low Power mode turned off because you now have sufficient battery charge".

Yeah I thought it turned it off automatically when you reached 100%, maybe it's earlier?

I'm definitely going to use this when going on day trips, etc. Usually any important communication I need like that will be in the form of a text or a phone call. I can stand to just open my email when i want it to refresh. I also see no reason why the iPad shouldn't get it.

 

[MikhailT]

Prior to iOS 9, my iPhone 5S would not survive a day and a half after just an hour of usage daily. If I turn on Low Power Mode from the start at 100% battery life, it would last about 110 hours standby with 5 hours of usage with 20% still left. Not bad at all.

Also, I agree with the others, iOS would disable Low Power Mode at 80% charge automatically. So, you have to make sure to turn it back on after each charge.

 

[KALLT]

A shame that they didn’t include an option to automatically enable it without a popup. I also think that they should have added it to the control centre.

 

[Mike MA]

I somehow find it strange not to find this feature on the iPad. Once on the road, you still have to do all the changes manually if you run out of power. I mean, most of the changed are not phone specific and some extra power is always welcome once you are travelling.

 

[Westside guy]

It's too bad you can't just pick a battery level and tell iOS to automatically turn on Low Power Mode when it hits that point.

I'll go out on a limb and predict this idea will be in a new jailbreak tweak within a few days of iOS 9 being jailbroken, because it's so bleeding obvious.

 

[JohnApples]

A shame that they didn’t include an option to automatically enable it without a popup. I also think that they should have added it to the control centre.

That's actually a great, simple idea. I would much rather have a Low Power Mode in CC than the Camera, especially since my Camera app is in my dock.

 

[NightStorm]

true. this happens at 80% battery level

Thanks; I was wondering if it would automatically turn back off at a certain percentage.

 

[rediffusion]

I wish you could set specific times of the day to automatically go into Low Battery mode (i.e. night time, when I'm at work, etc)

 

[PowerBook-G5]

Looks like IOS9 turns low power mode off automatically.

I left my phone in low power mode last night, but charging. This morning, I missed the exact message, but it had automatically turned off low power mode and said something like "Low Power mode turned off because you now have sufficient battery charge".

Edit: Thanks to the other posters who have confirmed this happens when your phone hits 80% charge.

Protip: When you see this on your lock screen and still want Low power Mode to be on, swipe to the left on the notification, then tap the option that appears (not sure what exactly it says, it's been a while). Similarly, if you see a banner notification about it, pull down on it and tap the option presented.

 

[macduke]

I wonder how much extra battery life could be saved if it automatically turned on at 10% or 5%? Would be nice to have a setting. I'd also like a setting for low-power mode but with email fetching turned on. While they're at it, a toggle for it in control center would be great. I never turn off bluetooth any more since getting an Apple Watch, so they may as well let us customize our control center. On the 6S they could let us 3D touch the control center to switch between control schemes. Or 3D touch and swipe up from the bottom with pressure applied to bring up a different set of controls! And while they're adding all of my settings, I'd like an option to keep messages 3 or 6 months instead of just 30 days, 1 year and forever. I usually only need to reference texts from 3 months ago at the longest but don't need a year of photos/videos taking up space.

 

[DIRSGT]

While iOS9.0 will turn off "Low Power Mode" at 80% (i.e. going from say 74% to 80%), I have found that the feature will stay on if you manually activate it at say 82%. And will continue too as I have had my phone charging into the 90s. I wonder if 80% is the only trigger to turn it off automatically?

I find it to be a useful feature when i don't need the phone that much (e.g. while at work and near my desk phone). Though while making a call with the feature active caused my AT&T iPhone 5s to use the Edge network...yuck.

 

[macsba]

Wonder why this feature hasn't been added to both the iPad and iPod Touch.

 

[CEmajr]

Tested it out Saturday night when my 6 Plus fell to around 15% with no charger in sight. Got it to last another hour and even made a couple phone calls before I found someone with a charger and plugged it back in at 5%.

 

[garylapointe]

I wish you could choose the number, I'd rather have it do it at 40% (or 50%).

It's nice it turns itself off once you charge it.

Gary

 

[JulianL]

To anyone who is thinking of enabling low power mode permanently to get maximum battery life be aware that there is an annoying issue that might, depending on how you use your phone, make it almost unusable.

When in low power mode the auto-lock timer is set to 30 seconds (screen dims after 22 seconds and then switches off 8 seconds later). This setting can't be overridden. This makes the phone almost unusable for reading any complex content unless you keep tapping the screen to keep it alive. I use my phone to read ebooks where permanent low power mode would give me valuable extra battery life except that the phone is a nightmare to use when the screen dims every 22 seconds.

I've filed a feedback request with Apple asking for the option to change the auto-lock time when in low power mode. If anyone else has the same issue then please also file a feedback request with Apple. Hopefully if enough people complain Apple might change this. When they do I will keep my phone in low power mode all the time. Apple's feedback page is here...

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

I wish you could set specific times of the day to automatically go into Low Battery mode (i.e. night time, when I'm at work, etc)

Agreed, although I'd like to be able to go even further. I'd like to set the phone to aeroplane mode as well so that all the radios are switched off when I'm asleep to get absolute maximum power saving. It would also have the added benefit of preventing some call to a wrong number waking me up at 5:00am or some stupid spam text doing the same.

 

[Rosey88]

Looks like IOS9 turns low power mode off automatically.

I left my phone in low power mode last night, but charging. This morning, I missed the exact message, but it had automatically turned off low power mode and said something like "Low Power mode turned off because you now have sufficient battery charge".

Edit: Thanks to the other posters who have confirmed this happens when your phone hits 80% charge.

 

[Rosey88]

I cannot understand why Apple programmers would devise a mechanism to "make our lives more difficult" by switching this off automatically after charging. I like to keep it on all the time but instead after charging I have to go through cumbersome menus to switch it back on again. I thought there were several beta versions of ios 9 so why this annoying gripe did not come though on the trials beats me? Moreover, it is not available on Ipads for some unknown reason except Apple themselves. Android have a similar App called "Juice Defender" and this does not switch itself off after charging !!!

 

[Nevaborn]

well you get a 20% warning so I would expect it to then initiate low power mode. a customisable CC is what I really want.

 

[JulianL]

I cannot understand why Apple programmers would devise a mechanism to "make our lives more difficult" by switching this off automatically after charging. ... I thought there were several beta versions of ios 9 so why this annoying gripe did not come though on the trials beats me?

At least we have a second shot at getting this fixed; 9.1 is currently in beta. I think the rumour/speculation is that it will be officially released when the iPad Pro ships. With it being a dot release (9.1) as opposed to a dot-dot release (9.0.1) I'm hoping that Apple might include a few enhancements and not just bug fixes and extra platform (iPad Pro) support. Enhancing the usability and usefulness of low power mode would be absolutely top of my personal wish list.

 

[kd8nzg]

I like my version of low power mode, iOS 8. iOS 9 killed my battery...

 

[C DM]

I cannot understand why Apple programmers would devise a mechanism to "make our lives more difficult" by switching this off automatically after charging. I like to keep it on all the time but instead after charging I have to go through cumbersome menus to switch it back on again. I thought there were several beta versions of ios 9 so why this annoying gripe did not come though on the trials beats me? Moreover, it is not available on Ipads for some unknown reason except Apple themselves. Android have a similar App called "Juice Defender" and this does not switch itself off after charging !!!

Because the mode limits performance and disables certain features. They likely don't want people to have it enabled all the time at the cost of some performance and features that a typical user might not even realize or remember. Basically in their mind it's a feature to be used when/if needed, but not really consistently.

 

[ignatius345]

I wish you could set specific times of the day to automatically go into Low Battery mode (i.e. night time, when I'm at work, etc)

Having it activate at the same time you're on Do Not Disturb would make a lot of sense.