How to save battery on iPhone and Android

With increasingly powerful processors, better screens and more advanced applications is also a major challenge for today's smart phones, battery life.
Do you use your phone a lot you often need to charge it at least once a day, at least if you have not made any efforts to save a little on electricity consumption.
In this article we will look at what you can do to get the battery to last longer, both on iPhone and Android based phones. Of course, the concepts also for other phones, so it may well be that you can pick up some tips even if your phone is running a different operating system.

Dim

The screen is one of the most battery pull on smartphones. Many have unnecessarily high brightness and can get by with far less. Both iPhone and Android have support for automatic dimming based on the light that is around, but the brightness is often more than you need.

Here's how:
On the iPhone you'll find the brightness settings under Settings => Brightness. Drag the slider to the left as far as you can until you find the brightness is too weak. Possibly you can get by with about 30% of the brightness in most lighting conditions.
In Android is it under Settings => Display => Brightness. The procedure is the same. An additional tip is to add the power control widget on the home screen where you'll find a button to switch between three different brightness levels. Thus, you can use your phone with low brightness and easy to screw it up eg. when outdoors.
Power control widget is the default in Android and placed on the home screen, hold your finger down on an empty field, select widgets and scroll down to the power control. It occupies one row and four columns.

Switch off WLAN

This is also a measure that can save you a lot of battery - you obviously can not turn off the wireless network when you sit at home and pull the phone out of his pocket every 3 minute, but when you are not near a wireless network, drag fact WLAN bit more battery because the constant scanning for available networks.

Here's how:
On the iPhone turn on and off via WiFi settings => wireless network.
On Android, go to Settings => Wireless & networks. Again we tipping the power control widget (or similar widgets) that easily allows you to turn wireless on and off.

Turn off Bluetooth

Unless you frequently use hands, it is probably rather

Here's how:
iPhone: Settings => general, turn off Bluetooth
Android Settings => Wireless & networks, cross off Bluetooth. Or - use the power

Turn off 3G

3G uses more battery than EDGE, so if you are willing to loosen up the browsing speed, you can get the battery to last significantly longer if you turn off 3G. As with WiFi goes with most battery if the phone is in a place with poor / no 3G coverage, since it then tries to connect to the 3G network.
Here's how:
iPhone: Settings => General => network, disable 3G
Android Settings => Wireless & networks => mobile network, change the network mode to GSM only. Application Switch network type provides a shortcut to this menu directly from the home screen.

Disable GPS

Again, a function that draws a lot of battery, and that you may not spend as much unless you are keen on location-based web services .

Here's how:
iPhone: Settings => general, disable location services
Android Settings => location, disable the "use GPS satellites", or use strømsparingswidgeten to turn on and off.

On the iPhone, you can save a lot of battery via the Settings menu.

Turn off push

You do not need to be connected online continuously. Can you live without push notifications of new emails, Facebook messages and that kind of, you will also be able to get a little more out of the battery.
Just at this point the two phones a bit different - Android has full multitasking (the ability to run multiple applications simultaneously), enabling push is done at the application level, while the iPhone's push capability is primarily built for it until recently did not support multitasking.
In Android is it thus controlled by each application (eg. Chrometophone, as we mentioned when we talked about when we went through the news Froyo ).

Here's how:
iPhone users can disable push notifications via Settings => Notification. E-mail application has a setting for push that is available via Settings => Mail, Contacts, Calendars => fetch new data.

Do not check email as often

In the email applications on their respective phones can even specify how often the phone to retrieve new email. If you do not need to be constantly updated on the front, you can benefit from using a higher interval.
Here's how:
iPhone: Settings => e-mail, contacts, calendars => fetch new data, set the interval
Android for Gmail, you can turn off auto sync via Settings => accounts / sync. In "normal" email program: menu button, more, settings, send and receive schedule. Strømsparingswidgeten we have visited on a few occasions has a button to turn on and off sync across the board.

Turn off faster

Do you tend to just put the phone down when you're done - without pressing the button to turn off the screen? If so, it goes a little unnecessary battery also there. You can even set a time after which the screen turns off automatically.
Here's how:
iPhone: Settings => General => Autolock
Android Settings => Display => Screen Saver

Watch what you use your phone

Playing a 3D driving game is obviously more difficult for the battery than writing an SMS, and especially when you are low on battery, you should take care not to overload your processor too much if the phone will keep the whole way home. Android users can check what has used the battery via Settings => about phone => Battery => Battery use.
Android users should also make sure to finish the programs properly so they do not run on in the background (often via menu button), or possibly shut down the application via Settings => Applications => running services. There are also applications that can kill running processes, eg. Advanced task killer .

Use black

Have your phone an LED screen, it uses less power to display black pixels than showing white. Therefore, you may seek to use a dark background, use dark skins in various applications, use a black version of Google etc.
Struggling often with limited battery capacity can of course also consider buying an external battery (or an extra battery if your phone allows you to replace the battery. DealExtreme and eBay are great places to start.

Sources: Apple , about.com , Softonic