By C. Samuel Belton
CTEC Major
If you are anything like me, you are at least mildly worried about having enough battery life on your phone to last the entire day, or at least until the next time you find time to charge it. Because all modern smartphones run on lithium-ion batteries, it doesn’t matter whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone, this article will arm you with practices to defend against that pesky battery life meter.

The first place to check on your phone is the running background apps. Most apps will not automatically close themselves when you go back to your home screen. This is because apps that your phone receives data from, such as Twitter, like to be able to notify you through your phone’s tone or vibration to indicate that something has happened within the app, such as you receiving a direct message. It is still possible for apps to do this while closed through push notifications, but with the app actually running you will receive your direct message essentially instantly as long as you have service. While that is a great convenience for many people, the app sitting in the background patiently waiting for a message it can give you ends up eating up battery life that you might have otherwise been able to save, especially if it is running while you are not actively using it. Because of this, to help maximize your battery life, it is best to make sure to close out of all background apps that you don’t actually need to have open.

In the same vein of background apps sitting open, waiting to receive something it can tell you about, there are services like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Location Services that consume battery when they are turned on. Wi-Fi, when enabled for example, will have your phone constantly scan for wireless networks to connect to. Now if you know that a background app sitting around waiting for something to happen drains battery life then you know the Wi-Fi service has to be also, and Bluetooth works exactly the same way except that it is looking for Bluetooth devices that it can pair to itself and not Wi-Fi network connections.

Location Services is a little different, because it has your phone send along GPS information every so often to applications. So while it won’t inherently drain your battery by itself, any app that is using it will cause your battery life to drain more than if it was disabled. Some apps will not work without Location Services running, and that is because they were built entirely on the idea to know where you are. An example of this is Google Maps. How would the lady giving you driving directions know when to tell you “recalculating” if it didn’t know precisely where you are? Most apps do not need Location Services to serve their purpose, but they like to use it anyway. Facebook for example will let you update statuses and post messages that will show people what city or town you are in or were in at the time of the post. While non-GPS apps may only occasionally use Location Services to update where you are, it does use a bit of battery every time that it uses it. Because of this, in the name of lively batteries it is best to turn it off when you do not need it.

Lastly, it is best to make sure you are keeping your phone OS (iOS or Android) updated. When there is an OS update for your phone, your mobile carrier (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) should send you a message letting you know. You are usually able to update your phone earlier than your carrier notifies you, but when they send you that message that means that they should be ready to give you support if you update and have problems. OS updates are one of the big defenses against people that may use vulnerabilities to get personal information about you, but they are also a chance for Apple and Google to optimize some of the processes running way in the background that you never see. In the process of software development the main objective is making sure the software functions exactly as it should, and all the optimization comes at the end and is an ongoing process. One day some developer at Apple might find out that she can change one little piece of code and it makes the OS use less battery power than it has to. If that is the case and it doesn’t break anything else then it is likely going to be in the next iOS update.

I hope learning these practices helps you better get through the day with a little less worry about your battery life. Maybe one day worrying about it will be a thing of the past.

C. Samuel Belton was a member of the Computer Technology Senior Seminar course in Fall Semester 14 and is planning on a career in Information Security. The online version of this article is located at http://samuelbelton.com/beacon