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Legion103

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 13, 2012
565
385
I usually have Twitter, Messages, Phone running in the background, yet my phone drains pretty quickly...

Is there a way to longate my battery life on iOS 7?

Thanks
 
The best trick for keeping a battery healthy is unplugging power as soon as you hit 100%.

Tricks for elongating runtime on a given cell (as you've suggested) is about reducing load. Turn off as many antenna as you can, turn down screen brightness, and have as little going in the foreground and background as possible.
 
I keep brightness to about 50%
Manual fetch of all emails
No background updates of apps (iOS7)
Minimize notifications to only apps I really need
basic stuff....

I can go from 5am to 1am without issues and barely coming close to draining my 4s.

And I am a heavy user of my phone.
 
My battery life is significantly less than prior to the upgrade.

I've turned off wallpaper movement, reduced brightness and turned off apps that I don't think need to run in the background.

I'm sure Apple will work on a solution quickly.

The new UI is growing on me for anyone keeping score. Shifting from the haters camp.

I wish this forum could have some balance in terms of positive and negative discussions.
 
iPhone 4s

My iPhone's battery life suffers when I'm out of cell range (like all day at work). Otherwise, it's around 40% at the end of the day.
 
it doesn't work like this.

Sorry for the confusion, let me try again. There are three main things that reduce lithium ion cell life:

  • Number of cyces (500 is ideal)
  • Age since manufacter (they start to deteriorate before coming out of the factory)
  • Time spent away from ideal/storage voltage (4.0 volts)

There’s not much to be done about cycles, its simply how much you need the device. There’s nothing to be done about age, its simply how long you’ve had it + how old it was when you bought it. But that last one can be helped. Lithium ion cells operate between about 3.0 and 4.2 volts. Depending on the nature of the particular chemestry and design of the device, 0% may be anywhere between 2.5v and 3.5v. 100% is 4.2v across most systems and chemestries. But all lithium ion cells prefer being around 4.0v most of the time. Above this voltage reduces cell life and below this voltage reduces cell life. Charging a cell to 4.1v instead of 4.2v, for example, can double the cell’s life while only sacrificing about 10% of the cell’s per charge runtime.

The problem is that Apple doesn’t offer a ‘charge to 4.0v’ option, nor even the ability to know which % shown equals 4.0v. When you plug it in before a trip, it charges to 4.2. When you leave your iPad plugged in over the weekend, it charges to and stays at 4.2 for a weekend. When you leave your MacBook plugged for an entire month, it charges to and stays at 4.2 for an entire month. The more you do this, the sooner and farther your cell's capacity will fall. To reduce exposure to 4.2v, I unplug my devices as soon as they are charged. Natural use then reduces time above 4.0 and increases time near 4.0.

The best trick for keeping a battery healthy is unplugging power as soon as you hit 100%.
 
Sorry for the confusion, let me try again. There are three main things that reduce lithium ion cell life:

  • Number of cyces (500 is ideal)
  • Age since manufacter (they start to deteriorate before coming out of the factory)
  • Time spent away from ideal/storage voltage (4.0 volts)

There’s not much to be done about cycles, its simply how much you need the device. There’s nothing to be done about age, its simply how long you’ve had it + how old it was when you bought it. But that last one can be helped. Lithium ion cells operate between about 3.0 and 4.2 volts. Depending on the nature of the particular chemestry and design of the device, 0% may be anywhere between 2.5v and 3.5v. 100% is 4.2v across most systems and chemestries. But all lithium ion cells prefer being around 4.0v most of the time. Above this voltage reduces cell life and below this voltage reduces cell life. Charging a cell to 4.1v instead of 4.2v, for example, can double the cell’s life while only sacrificing about 10% of the cell’s per charge runtime.

The problem is that Apple doesn’t offer a ‘charge to 4.0v’ option, nor even the ability to know which % shown equals 4.0v. When you plug it in before a trip, it charges to 4.2. When you leave your iPad plugged in over the weekend, it charges to and stays at 4.2 for a weekend. When you leave your MacBook plugged for an entire month, it charges to and stays at 4.2 for an entire month. The more you do this, the sooner and farther your cell's capacity will fall. To reduce exposure to 4.2v, I unplug my devices as soon as they are charged. Natural use then reduces time above 4.0 and increases time near 4.0.

The best trick for keeping a battery healthy is unplugging power as soon as you hit 100%.

It's a strange one that, because I swear my battery will last the day longer if I let it charge for an extra 20 minutes after 100%.

Thanks for the info. My iP5 needs to last me until the 6 comes out, so I will follow your advice.
 
It's a strange one that, because I swear my battery will last the day longer if I let it charge for an extra 20 minutes after 100%.

Thanks for the info. My iP5 needs to last me until the 6 comes out, so I will follow your advice.

If we did what the battery most wanted, we'd never get any work done. So it's about finding a balance, what is reasonable for you that isn't to unhealthy for the battery.

One of the reasons apple recommends fully cycling the battery on occasion, is that the calibration may be off. If 100% on menu bar is not 100% of what the cells will take, then continuing to put in power, will yield more runtime - for the next cycle. But it also pushes the cells to a higher voltage, so 200 cycles later, it may not hold as much.

That said, the key strategy here is reducing the HOURS/DAYs kept at high or low voltage. If you're watching the MINUTES at these points, you're already way ahead of the game.
 
The best trick for keeping a battery healthy is unplugging power as soon as you hit 100%.

Tricks for elongating runtime on a given cell (as you've suggested) is about reducing load. Turn off as many antenna as you can, turn down screen brightness, and have as little going in the foreground and background as possible.

I want to believe this...but... its not always possible to do this. Most of us charge overnight or when the unit will be sitting idle for a while. I always thought Apple and probably others made "smarter" batteries that would be unaffected but being plugged for a long time.

So, its charge it to 100%...and then yank the plug right away? Hmmm....
 
My advice from experience is don't use your iPhone. Only way to save your battery life for now. I wish this was not the case.
 
Turn off background app refresh.

Waiting a few seconds for apps to load when I want to read something is infinitely better than my phone dying half way through the day!
 
1.Disable background app refresh
2.Reduce motion -On
3. Static wallpaper

And 2 culprits which I have narrowed down from beta 1 to GM is turn off push notification of facebook messenger and sign out of facebook integration.

All other notifications are on, brightness auto and 50%, location on for main apps I need.

This is the setup I am using until apple patch it with next update, having a great battery life.

This is with about 35 mins calls with Bluetooth in car and rest is browsing on wifi.
 

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Don't use a Dynamic Wallpaper, limit Background App Refresh, and on older devices, turn off Frequent Locations. Parallax seems to have no hit on my old 4S and my current 5s.

The 5s's (and possibly the 5's) battery can handle Frequent Locations it seems but if you turn on "improve maps" I've noticed that my battery goes down the drain.

As for charging habits. I leave my phone plugged in overnight. iOS gently discharges and charges the battery even when it's plugged in and showing 100%. I have never taken my devices off the charger as soon as they hit 100% and they still give me fantastic battery life for the life of the device.

Just charge it when you need to, don't worry about ruining anything. You won't.
 
The best trick for keeping a battery healthy is unplugging power as soon as you hit 100%.

Tricks for elongating runtime on a given cell (as you've suggested) is about reducing load. Turn off as many antenna as you can, turn down screen brightness, and have as little going in the foreground and background as possible.

This doesn't matter. The firmware automatically cycles it up and down after hitting 100%. It has no ill affects on the phones battery life. This may have caused issues with charging systems years ago but not for a long time and certainly not with lithium-polymer batteries used today.
 
Quitting apps properly, not just exiting them.
Makes a huge difference with GPS apps, Apple Maps, Google Maps etc.
 
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