My iPhone 6 Plus is a battery hog. I routinely get around 12 hours off of one full charge. I carry around external battery packs to make sure I’m not short when it matters.
I’d do pretty much anything to increase the amount of battery I have left at the end of the day, including the following fairly extreme trick.
Testing this out, I fully charged my iPhone 6 Plus twice. The first time, I used it normally, including some down time as I slept through the night. I got 12 hours and 40 minutes of battery life.
The second time, I applied the settings that David Barnard on Twitter pointed out: I turned on Airplane mode, Do Not Disturb Mode, and Low Power mode.
I did use Wi-Fi at some points during this time, and even once turned off Airplane mode to send a text or two. I got 21 hours of battery life. If I ever need to keep my iPhone charged for a long period of time, I’m doing this again.
Here’s how to enable all three systems to get this kind of battery savings:
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Airplane mode – simply swipe up from the bottom of your iPhone screen to bring up the Command Center, then tap the little airplane icon to the left of the upper row of icons. All your iPhone’s connectivity will shut down, including the ability to make phone calls, send texts, use Wi-Fi, and all your Bluetooth devices will no longer be connected to your iPhone, including your Apple Watch.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Do Not Disturb – you can find this in the Command Center also. Swipe up from the bottom of your screen and tap on the little moon icon. This will silence any calls, alerts, or notifications that you might get while your iPhone is locked.
Photo: Rob LeFebvre/Cult of Mac
Low Power Mode – this is new to iOS 9, and can be found in Settings > Battery on your iPhone. Toggle Low Power Mode to ON. Your battery icon at the top of your iPhone screen will turn yellow to let you know it’s enabled. It will reduce or completely turn off email fetch, Hey Siri, background app refresh, automatic downloads, Wi-Fi associations, and some visual effects.
You’ll note that this is a fairly extreme way to save your battery. Airplane mode keeps you completely shut off from all communication on your iPhone. That could totally be worth it if you want to arrive somewhere with some battery left, or want to wake up with a usable iPhone, though, and you’re stuck without a charger.
Even just putting your iPhone into Low Power Mode and Do Not Disturb will show you some gains in your iPhone battery life, so don’t be afraid to experiment.
Via: David Barnard
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
26 responses to “Pro Tip: Max out your iPhone battery life with this extreme trick”
You should save people the time of reading this unashamed clickbait of an article by titling it ‘Turning off your phone saves your battery’ then everybody would know what utter rubbish this was first.
I hope you feel a little disgusted with yourself for what you’ve done to your readers in the name of some ad revenue. Clear to see where your priorities lie.
Amen.
:-)
Really wish Apple (and others) would stop making phones 1mm thinner. I’d be happy to have a phone which is 3mm+. Thicker, if I didn’t have to charge so often.
That would make your phone live longer and we don’t want that, wont we? ;)
(But I agree with you.)
I get 2 days out of my 6 plus.
And thats with everything turned on.
Same here, and I’m no slouch when it comes to checking email/Facebook. I do, however, use mobile Facebook. The FB app isn’t even installed.
That’s the most shameless clickbait ever. Disgusting. And I’m clicking unfollow.
I got over 2 weeks of battery life from my iPhone 4. I pressed the power button for 15 seconds, slid to power off.. When I turned it on weeks later it still had battery left! Does this qualify me to write for Cult of mac? or do I need to include pictures?
No shit, I got over a month out of my iPad! Great tip!!
I tried your method, and it even works on non-iPhone mobiles. Great Tip!!
On my iPhone 6 plus, I regularly get over 2 days (one time even 3) of full usage with everything turned on. Secret I have discovered right from the iPhone 4 days is to stop panic charging all the time! I let my battery down to almost 2%-1% and then fully charge it to 100% – not to 80 or 95%, always 100%. I never charge unless the battery is less than 5% and never stop charging until it is 100%. I Never put it on low battery mode, never turn off anything and more than anything else, never panic charge when the “battery low” alert comes at the 20% level. At 20% I reasonably expect my battery to last me another 5-6 hours.
You turned off everything that makes your phone a phone. Just power the whole thing off completely if you don’t want to use it anyway.
“Pro Tip: Max out your iPhone battery life with this extreme trick”
Extreme is right… and silly. Doubtless one can gain a lot more battery life simply by turning off things that use up the battery unnecessarily. All those things, and now more, have been known since the second iteration of the iPhone (maybe the first as well), and are easily found with a simple search. Hint: lowering screen brightness, suspending background app updating, reducing Facebook, turning off location services (when not needed), turning off cellular when not needed, and a host of other things. However, it’s likely that no conventional battery technology will provide extended run times on these small devices when all features they provide are turned on simultaneously.
As others have noted, this is a terrible article. I don’t post often, but this annoyed me enough to login. Cultofmac is on my ad blocker whitelist. I expect better!
Hey Rob, just to be clear, was this total time off charger or was it “Usage” hours as reported in Settings>Battery?
My jaw dropped when I read this “article.”
What an incredibly stupid article. Imagine that, turning off all radios, setting the phone to keep the display and sound off for all notifications (that shouldn’t come through anyway…) and turning on a low battery mode conserves battery life. Cult of Mac is becoming more and more of a joke.
There is something missing: Set the screen brightness to manual to avoid the sensor making the screen to bright even in Low Power Mode.
And yes, it sounds like “your battery lasts longer when you don’t use your phone”, but actually it’s not thaaaaat stupid. I call it “MP3 player mode”. It saved my life several times, for example on the way home after a party-that-went-waaaaay-longer-than-expected (which is impossible to survive without music ;)). Yes, an external battery pack is always the better solution, but there will be moments when you just don’t have one.
Airplane mode? then what is the use of phone with 100% battery if it is in airplane mode? switch it off or don’t use!!!!
Top Tip… turn on Airplane Mode and use your iPhone as a paper weight… coz it’s F all good for anything else then.
Or you can just turn it off…
Just like Diego, I get 2 days of battery life with the 6 Plus. With my old 4S I also used to run out of battery within hours (like 5h) and it was due to the battery being old. After replacing the battery I got my 1 day again. Seems you have a faulty battery man.
Leave your car engine off for a month and you’ll save much more gas than the months you drive every day.
I agree what a waste of an article – turn of the phone – Cult of Mac – really I read you all the time – but your crazy stupid sometimes
I have NEVER posted a comment here but this is THE most ridiculous article I’ve ever read. As others have said, you might as well just shut the phone off.