Tip: Conserving iPhone Battery Power

By James Alan Miller on May 2, 2008 12:09 PM

Last week, I was on a business trip in rural Georgia without my iPhone charger. By changing a few settings, I was able to conserve power and keep my iPhone running until I returned home.

First, I kept my calls to a minimum and stopped using the iPod and Web features of the phone.

Next, I changed my iPhone settings to optimize battery life. Here's what I did:

Changed Mail Auto-Check: Normally I my iPhone checks for mail every 30 minutes. To conserve your battery, turn off the mail auto check (Settings > Mail > Auto-Check and tap Manual), or increase the auto-check interval to every hour (Settings > Mail > Auto-Check and tap Every hour).

Reduced the number of mail accounts your iPhone checks. You can turn off a mail account, or delete it. Then you can set your emails up so that all of your accounts forward to one account that is checked on your iPhone. (See you email service provider's instructions)

Turned off Wi-Fi: If you are not using Wi-Fi, or are in an area where Wi_Fi is unavailable, turn it off. (Settings>Wi-Fi>Off).

Turned off Bluetooth: Turn off Bluetooth. (Settings > General > Bluetooth > Off).

Decreased Brightness. You can either dim the phone's brightness. (Settings > Brightness, drag the slider to the left). Also you can turn on your phone's auto-brightness adjustment so that it will only use the amount of brightness necessary (Settings > Brightness and set Auto-Brightness to On).

Turned off EQ: Using the equalizer on song playbacks can decrease battery life. ( Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Off)