How to get better iPhone 6S battery life

Got some iPhone battery problems or want to get more juice from your phone? We’ve got you covered

Apple is currently looking into a bug that sees some iPhone 6S handsets offering a false battery reading when switching time zones.

Naturally,
Apple is working on a fix for this bug, but in the meantime it
recommends restarting your iPhone, going into Settings > Date &
Time, and making sure that Set Automatically is turned on.

Beyond
that, there are a number of ways to extend the battery life of your
iPhone 6S – or any iPhone, for that matter. Here are ten of the best.

Next, take a look at our iOS 9 feature video:

Drop the brightness

The
display is the most power-hungry component in any smartphone.The
easiest way to lower your iPhone’s power consumption, then, is to drop
its screen brightness.

Modern iPhones are perfectly legible (at
least indoors) with the brightness set to the half way point. You really
don’t need it cranked right up to max unless you’re outside in bright
sunlight.

To do this, just bring up the Action Centre with an
upward swipe from the bottom of the screen, then adjust the top slider
accordingly.

Related: iPhone 7 rumours

Make sure your phone gets enough sleep

Are
you someone who simply puts their phone back in their pocket when
they’re finished with it, relying on the auto-sleep function to initiate
sleep mode? Shame on you.

Get in the habit of hitting the
power/sleep key as soon as you’ve finished with it. It’s the same
principle as the aforementioned screen brightness point – it’s all about
minismising that power-hungry display’s impact on battery life.

You
can also lessen the amount of time it takes for your iPhone to
auto-sleep by going into Settings>General>Auto-Lock and dropping
the time down to 30 seconds.

Locate problem apps

If you find that your phone is mysteriously losing power all of a sudden, there’s a very good chance it’s down to an app.

The
good news is that identifying the culprit from here is a simple task.
Just go into Settings > Battery and examine the Battery Usage section.

This will show you the apps that have consumed the most power over the past 24 hours or seven days.

Reign in those thirsty apps

Located the problem app? Good. Now you need to set about reigning its mad power grab in.

Many
of the most popular social network apps keep running in the background
so that you can stay up to date on what your contacts are doing. When
you think about it, though, you can usually wait for such updates until
the odd moments when you have a spare few minutes to check. And at such
points you probably initiate a manual refresh anyway, right?

Related: iPhone 6C release date

With
that in mind, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and
disable the ability to operate in the background for any power-hungry
apps.

Use Wi-Fi over mobile data

The UK is getting better and better when it comes to mobile network connectivity. No, really, it is.

But
generally speaking, mobile data is a bigger power hog than Wi-Fi. As
such, you should try and hook up to Wi-Fi whenever possible.

This
can vary, of course, depending on the strength of the connection in
questions. But as a rule of thumb, Wi-Fi is easier on your battery than
mobile data.

Do you really need to be found?

Your iPhone will track you wherever you are, but most of the time you don’t really need that level of location awareness.

A lot is involved with keeping track of your location. It involves a combination of GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular data.

Head
into Privacy > Location Services and deactivate the iPhone’s tracking
function. It’s possible to set exceptions for your chosen navigation
app, too.

Use Low Power Mode

When iOS 9 turned up late last year, it brought with it an explicit mode to help eke out battery life. Are you using it?

Low Power Mode will turn off a bunch of power-intensive functions to help get you through to your next charging opportunity.

Just go into the Battery menu and flick that Low Power Mode toggle to ‘on’.

Related: Samsung Galaxy S7 rumours

Deactivate notifications

If
you’re like us, you probably find it really annoying to have your
iPhone constantly pinging you with notifications about every last thing.
So why let it?

Lessening the number of notifications will make
for a more pleasant and peaceful life, but it will also go much easier
on your iPhone’s battery life.

Go to Settings > Notifications, select the apps you don’t need to hear from and deactivate the Allow Notifications toggle.

Check emails manually

Linked
to that last notifications point, do you really need your chosen email
app to pull in new emails quite so often? In fact, do you need it to do
so at all? It would save a fair amount of power if you didn’t.

Many
people now treat email as an ‘as and when’ kind of thing, only
responding when they get a spare minute to do so. So why not turn off
the iPhone email app’s auto-pull function and simply manually check when
you get a spare five minutes?

Just go to Settings > Mail,
Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and turn the top Push toggle off.
Any additional accounts should be switched to Manual.

Stop playing around

Are you an avid iPhone gamer? We hear you. It can be the best way to while away a boring commute.

But
playing games – particularly graphically demanding 3D ones – is the
single best way to burn through your iPhone’s battery life in
super-quick time. Gaming pushes your phone’s CPU and GPU to their limits
like no other task, which is why your phone gets hot. No, it’s not
because you’re really good.

Heat means power consumption. If
you’re struggling to get through a full day on your iPhone, it’s time to
examine your gaming habits and consider going cold turkey. Buy a pack
of cards or something.

Got any iPhone battery saving tips of your own? Let us know in the comments section below