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battery life - page 3

Hate Apple’s new iPhone battery case? Don’t buy it

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Ugh.
Apple's new iPhone case isn't pretty, but no one's forcing you to buy one.
Photo: Apple

Yes, Apple launched a new battery case for iPhone 6s today, and yes, it’s butt-ugly.

All battery cases are, but because this one has an Apple logo on it, the Internet is getting all bent out of shape over just how ugly it is. There’s one thing nobody is mentioning, though: You don’t have to buy one if you don’t like it — and no one really cares what you think.

Pro Tip: Max out your iPhone battery life with this extreme trick

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battery
This reminds me a lot of the iPhone throttling controversy.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

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.

Chipgate debunked: All iPhone 6s models are created equal

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The A9X chip puts iPhone 6s graphics to shame.
Don't discriminate between iPhone models. Chipgate doesn't exist.
Photo: Apple

A test to pit the two different iPhone 6s models against each other — one with a TSMC chip and the other with a Samsung chip — has officially debunked Chipgate. It turns out there are no discernible differences in battery life between the two.

Consumer Reports acquired an iPhone 6s with an A9 chip made from TSMC and another from Samsung. They made sure all settings were equal on both devices including the carrier, brightness settings, wireless connections, iOS version, running apps and more. Then they got to work.

How to fix battery life issues in iOS 8.4.1

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iPhone
Battery got you down? Try these tips.
Photo: Apple

iOS 8.4.1 might have fine-tuned Apple Music, but some users are complaining about about battery issues after updating to Apple’s latest mobile operating system.

If you’re afflicted, the good news is that iOS 9 is right around the corner. The bad news? That doesn’t help you now, and iOS 9 will likely have its own host of bugs that Apple needs to address. Here are some tips to help you eke out as much battery life in iOS 8.4.1 as possible.

Phil Schiller explains 16GB iPhones, MacBooks with one USB port, design vs. battery life

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Phil Schiller
Phil Schiller answers some of our biggest questions about Apple products.
Photo: Apple

Why does the latest iPhone still ship with just 16GB of storage as standard? Why does the new MacBook have only one USB port? Why does Apple make devices thinner and thinner rather than adding bigger batteries?

At Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, marketing chief Phil Schiller sat down with The Talk Show to address some of these questions.

OS X Mavericks Will Improve Your Battery Life By As Much As 4 Hours

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ArsTechnica_BatteryLifeTest-2007MBP-2013MBA

For those of us who have been running OS X Mavericks since it was announced at WWDC in June, it’s been obvious for a while that OS X Mavericks is a complete miracle when it comes to battery life. Installing Mavericks on any MacBook is enough to eke an hour or so more battery life out of it, but especially when running on MacBooks boasting Intel’s power-sipping Haswell processors, it’s a game-changer.

What kind of battery life increases are you looking at on, say, a 2013 MacBook Air? Up to 30% improvements, according to legendary Apple OS reviewer John Siracusa.

Five Easy Ways To Master Battery Life In iOS [Feature]

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Battery Usage

Battery life! It’s a thing!

To get the most time out of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch battery, you have to manage it. There’s no substitute for figuring gout how your iPhone uses power, and then optimizing your usage and the enabled services and features on your iPhone to make sure you get the most life out of your battery.

Here are five ways you can stay firmly in charge of your battery.

Battery Draining Too Fast Lately? Facebook Apps May Be At Fault, Says Developer

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Chatactiveenglish

The iOS developer behind Home Remind has published a blog post about the Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad and Facebook Messenger. He says that according to his testing, the Facebook apps consume way more CPU time than is strictly necessary. Excessive CPU time can lead to battery drain.

The developer used Apple’s own Mac-based app, Instruments, to look at what was running on his iPhone, and found that his Facebook app was activating, doing something for ten seconds, then going back to sleep. It did this all day long during his test. He tested the Messenger app and the Facebook iPad app, and found the same pattern.

If that’s the case, the Facebook app is never truly going to sleep and then terminating like a good app. As a result, it’s using up CPU time, and a lot of your battery.

Save Battery Life With Brightness Settings On Your iPhone [iOS Tip]

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k-bigpic

Battery life, it’s the bane of every iPhone user’s existence, right? It’s hard to tell, really, reading the internet, which specific steps to take to make sure your battery is working at its most efficient, giving you the longest life without compromising performance.

One of the most misunderstood areas of managing battery life may just be the brightness settings. Here’s what Apple has to say about it.

Get Battery Usage Information Right On Your iPhone or iPad [iOS Tips]

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Battery iPhone

Battery life in the iPhone age, right? It’s a conundrum we’ve all had to adjust our behaviors for. Before the iPhone, I can remember going days, maybe even a week or so in between battery charges. The advent of an iPhone in my life brought with it a new behavior – charging it every night. I use my iPhone for almost everything these days, including getting around town, communicating with loved ones, and checking email while out and about, so it makes sense that the battery drains quickly.

There are a few third-party apps out there that keep track of your battery usage for you. Turns out, though, if you just want a quick looksee at how much life you have left in your iPhone or iPad’s battery, you can look in the iOS Settings app itself.

The 128GB Retina iPad Is The Desktop To The iPad Mini’s Laptop [Opinion]

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With Tuesday’s’s announcement of a 128GB iPad 4, Apple is clearly signaling that the iPad is not only suitable for serious work, but that it can be the primary machine for many users. Most commenters have fixated on fitting extra movies and other consumables into the extra 64GB of space, but they’re forgetting about work.

In fact, I’d say that the iPad With Retina Display, as Apple now insists on calling it, is the new desktop machine, and the iPad mini is the new laptop. Why? Let me explain:

Latest OS X 10.8.2 Developer Build Gives MacBooks Best Battery Life Since Snow Leopard

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macbook-air-battery-2011

Everyone knows that the “upgrade” to OS X Mountain Lion severely reduced the battery life in Mac laptops by up to 38%. And while OS X 10.8.1 helped things some, the fix was still meager compared to the oceans of juice you comparatively got on the same machine running OS X Lion.

OS X 10.8.2, though? Much, much better. In fact, according to The Mac Observer, in the latest Build 12C35 of OS X 10.8.2, not only does the latest development version of Mountain Lion give users a bigger upgrade in battery life than OS X 10.8.0 or OS X 10.8.1, but their test system — a 2011 15-Inch MacBook Pro 2.0GHz i7 — now has more battery life than it did running OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, the previous champ Mac operating system when it came to conserving juice.

In fact, while their test system lost 105.5 and 80.5 minutes of battery life compared to 10.6.8 in OS X 10.8.0 and OS X 10.8.1, respectively, it actually gained eight minutes against OS X 10.6.8 in OS X 10.8.2. Now those are some impressive results. Results I’m now off to test for myself.

Source: Mac Observer

Take Control Of iPad Or iPhone Screen Auto-Dim ‘Feature’ [iOS Tips]

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Simple, yet effective.
Simple, yet effective.

iOS has a lot of great features, some of which are focused on preserving as much battery life as possible. One of them is the Auto-Lock feature, which defaults to dimming the screen of your iOS device after a really short period of time.

This obviously helps preserve battery life, as the less the screen is on at full brightness, the longer you’ll be able to use it on a single charge. If you’d like to control this, though, and even turn it off fully, it’s a simple trip into the Settings App.

Show Your Apple Wireless Accessories’ Battery Life In Your Mac’s Menu Bar With This Neat App

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original

Apple’s wireless accessories are great at conserving battery life… so great, in fact, that when they suddenly run out of juice, it can be a shock to the system, since you never knew they were hard up for electricity to begin with.

On a Mac, it’s fairly complicated to see battery life on your connected devices through System Preferences, but wouldn’t it be great if you could check them out in your menu bar, just like your Mac’s remaining battery life? Thanks to Battery Status, you can.

This Simple Terminal Command Could More Than Double Your Retina MacBook Pro’s Battery Life

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If your Retina MacBook Pro isn't delivering the battery life you expected, try this simple fix.
If your Retina MacBook Pro isn't delivering the battery life you expected, try this simple fix.

Is your Retina MacBook Pro seeing less than half the seven hours of battery life that Apple promised you? Well, this may not be because you keep watching high-resolution videos over and over again on its Retina display (though that is certainly not helping). Instead, it could be thanks to a corrupt file created by Migration Assistant that needs removing with a simple terminal command.

Here’s how to do it and boost your Retina MacBook Pro’s battery life.

Tips And Tricks For Saving Battery Life On Your iPhone And iPad

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Red battery warning got you down?
Red battery warning got you down?

Good battery life is essential for a mobile device to succeed in the post-PC era, and Apple’s iOS devices continue to pack upgraded internals and improved battery technology into every product iteration. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users can use a handful of tips and tricks for conserving precious battery on the go. Many of the tips are pretty basic, but every little bit counts when you’re trying to make it through the day on one charge.

Here’s a roundup of tips and tricks for saving battery life on your favorite iOS device:

New iPad Can Last For Over 25 Hours As LTE Personal Hotspot

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The Verizon iPad will let you create a Personal Hotspot to share your LTE connection with other devices.
The Verizon iPad will let you create a Personal Hotspot to share your LTE connection.

With all of the questions surrounding the new iPad’s battery life and heat temperatures, users will be comforted to learn that Apple’s latest tablet can serve as a mobile LTE hotspot for a staggering 25.3 hours. That means you could technically use your iPad’s Personal Hotspot feature for more than a day on a single charge.

How To Make Siri Give Info About Your iPhone’s Battery Life [Jailbreak]

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Never run out of precious battery life again.
Never run out of precious battery life again.

Jailbreakers enjoy all kinds of cool Siri add-ons, and a tweak called BatteryLevelAE lets you use Apple’s digital assistant to give you helpful information about your iPhone’s battery life. In a world where we’re always on the go, keeping track of your iPhone’s battery can sometimes be the last thing on our minds. That’s why BatterLevelAE makes it easy for you — just ask Siri.

Only 50% Of iPhone 4S Owners Say iOS 5.1 Has Improved Their Battery Life

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iPhone-battery-low
Even under iOS 5.1 the iPhone 4S struggles to stay awake.

On Monday, we asked iPhone 4S readers how Apple’s latest iOS 5.1 software has impacted their battery life. The new handset is notoriously poor at staying alive for a whole day, but those pesky bugs affecting its battery life were, according to Apple, quashed in the recent software update.

Nearly 6,000 readers voted in our poll, and here are the results.

Apple Is Working To Revolutionize Batteries In Time For LTE iPhone 5

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post-141580-image-5d458f2123ef7eb62f17cc642e439d5b-jpg

Two of the reasons Apple’s iPhone is yet to adopt LTE connectivity is that existing LTE chips are just too large for the iPhone’s slender form factor, and they eat up so much power your new iPhone 4S wouldn’t even last the six hours that you currently get if it was hooked up to an LTE network.

However, a new Apple patent application reveals that the Cupertino company has already set about revolutionizing its batteries to make them thinner and more efficient — possibly making way for LTE connectivity in the iPhone 5.