I’m personally not a fan of turning off key features to save battery life. That’s like not driving to save gas, or unplugging your internet to avoid viruses. Well…maybe it’s not that extreme, but I just don’t know why we would want to spend money on this bad@$$ phone just to decide that it’s best to turn off some of the best features.
Regardless, battery life is very important to lots of people. And until someone makes a battery that doesn’t die, we’ll all do what we can to get around our battery woes.
Here’s a quick list I put together of some things you can do to improve battery life a little bit with iOS 7.
1. Turn off Wi-Fi searching
Wifi capable devices are constantly searching for Wifi networks to connect to. This is not an exception for the iPhone as the device is always trying to find a Wifi network to connect to. You’ve no doubt seen the pesky pop up informing you of “Networks in range”.
Go into Settings > Wifi:
Turn off the switch to “Ask to Join Networks”
A quick note on this: Turning this off will disable the “open network” messages from popping up. I am not certain that this “stops” the device from actively searching for wireless networks though.
My recommendation for managing Wifi: Turn wifi OFF when you know you will not be connected to a Wifi network. Turn it back on when you are in Wifi range. This is super-simple now and done with a tap of one button from the new control center.
Remember this though: Absolutely use Wifi whenever you can!!! Using Wifi always saves battery over using cellular data.
2. Fine-tune location services
Location services are what iOS uses to get information like the weather, navigation/maps/GPS data, traffic information, photo geodata, geo-reminders, and other location specific information. Disabling it completely results in a huge disconnect from useful data and features. Instead of turning it off altogether, just fine-tune the apps that truly need location services.
Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services
This lists all applications currently installed that use location services. Turn off anything that does not need to know location.
BEWARE! Turning off location services can make an application stop working. For example, turning off location services on a Run-tracking app will stop that app from being able to track your route.
My advice is to leave apps on if they are for: Weather, social networking, navigation, photo taking, and any apps that use locations to trigger other events (i.e. walk-in coupons, shopping apps, etc…)
3. Fine-tune Background App Refresh
iOS 7 expanded background app functionality. In plain English, this basically means that essentially any app can function when it’s not on your screen. Facebook might update your feed, AP Mobile and CNN might update the main news stories page, your task list might refresh itself looking for status. All these tasks are great when you go into the app and the latest info is right there. However….
It uses the battery.
Turn off all background refreshes for apps you do not care to have “up-to-the-minute” refreshes on. If you’re perfectly fine with refreshing Evernote when you open it as opposed to letting it update on it’s own, then turn off background refresh for it. If you don’t mind the brief 30 seconds it takes to refresh your Facebook feed when you launch the app, turn off background updates. Don’t care about having the latest weather report ‘instantly’ when launching the app? Turn off background refresh.
4. Turn off parallax/motion effects
This may have the least affect on the OS, but if you are not a fan of the motion effects of iOS 7, just turn it off. You may also save some battery juice in the process.
Go to: Settings > General > Accessibility > turn “Reduce Motion” to “On”.
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