10 Things You Don't Realize Are Killing Your Battery

The more light your phone is emitting, the more battery life it's zapping. Either turn the brightness down in your settings, or switch on "Auto-Brightness" if your phone has it, it'll naturally adjust your screen brightness depending on your surrounding.

You might not realize, but some apps drain your battery much faster than others. Go into your battery usage settings to find out which are the biggest culprits and make sure you close them when you're not using them.

It's so-and-so's birthday. Thingy liked your Instagram post. Switch off the notifications you don't desperately need to see every five minutes, or at least switch your settings so your phone doesn't vibrate or flash with every notification.

Believe it or not, setting your phone to vibrate with every text, call, or notification drains much more battery than when it's on silent or loud mode. Ditch the buzz if you want to extend that battery life.

It's incredibly easy to forget to switch your WiFi off, but every second it's on, your phone is constantly searching for an available WiFi connection. This zaps your battery alarmingly quickly, so try and remember to switch it off or use an app like "If This Then That (opens in new tab)" to set your WiFi to automatically turn on or off when you enter specific locations (home, work, etc).

If you know you're not going to be using your phone for a while (watching a movie, having an exam, etc.) or you're going somewhere you know won't have signal, switching to airplane mode will switch off all connections and background data meaning your precious battery will be just as high as it was before you switched airplane mode on.

Anyone with a smartphone will know that barely a day goes by when one of your apps doesn't need updating. Switching to manual rather than automatic updates will mean you're in complete control over when to perform the battery-draining task of updating.

A big update might drain your power in the short term, but don't use that as an excuse to skip it. Often updates include fixes to bugs that drain your battery, so you're much better off for keeping up to date.

Bit of a slave to Google Maps? You might be surprised by how many other apps are tracking your location data, and therefore more battery. Switch or adjust these settings on iPhone via Settings, >Privacy, >Location Services. Or on Android, go into Location in settings and either switch off or change to a lower accuracy mode.

Snazzy tech wizards have designed lots of apps aimed at improving your battery life, from letting you quit unused apps, or automatically cleaning your phone to help it run smoother. Battery Doctor (opens in new tab) is a hugely popular app, or you can search "battery" in your phone's app store to find other highly rated apps.