Why Does My Phone Battery Die So Fast? (11 Ways To Fix This ...

We’ve all experienced our phone dying at the worst possible moment. You’ve been on the call with a rep hashing out an account issue. Right as you’re concluding, your phone powers down, invalidating everything you were just about to finalize. The frustration is real. And much worse is when it powers down right as you’re making an emergency call.
Mobile phones have become indispensable. Most people now grab their phones before their wallets. Out of necessity, we’ve become accustomed to constant awareness of our phone’s battery percentage. For many of us, it’s imperative that we have adequate battery power through most of the day.
Unfortunately, some models have a longer battery life than others. And we can’t escape the cruel reality that some manufacturers design their phones purposefully to lose battery performance over time to necessitate the purchase of a newer model. Despite battery-saving habits and portable chargers, sometimes your phone simply dies too fast. The culprit can be different from person to person. Fortunately, whatever the reason is for your device, there are proven tricks that help smartphones maintain battery life.
Take a look at these tips and try some of them. One, two, or all of them are bound to work.
1. Get A Cell Signal Booster
The worse your cell signal is, the harder your phone works. In an effort to best perform the tasks you give it, your smartphone is designed to customize its internal effort according to signal quality at any given moment. That means that when you have full bars, battery life is used at maximum efficiency. When you have one or two bars, your phone expends more power to work as optimally as it can.
So the moral of this story is that your phone battery will last longer the more it’s connected to a quality signal. In other words, poor signal drains your battery. When the signal is bad, your device is searching nonstop for a better one. This perpetual searching uses more juice than downloading a movie, FaceTime and Zoom sessions, or even live streaming.
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Of all your phone’s factory settings that significantly affect battery life, keeping your screen on maximum brightness is high on the list. Getting in the habit of keeping your brightness low (or at least lower than usual) will really slow down battery drainage. Most new models have a feature called Auto-Brightness. In many ways it’s convenient. But it truly eats up your battery. It’s better to manually adjust screen brightness when necessary rather than leaving Auto-Brightness on.
Take a look at your phone’s auto-lock settings. The iPhone default, for example, is 2 minutes before the screen goes black. Change it to any amount of time lower than 2 minutes and you’ll conserve the battery. Even changing your bright-colored wallpaper to a darker one will extend battery life.
3. Don’t Leave Your Apps Open
Some of the hungriest battery guzzlers are unclosed apps. We often leave them open in the background without swiping them closed. At the end of the day, some of us have a dozen unclosed apps left open from a day’s worth of smartphone use. This is a surefire way to drain your battery. If you aren’t already, get in the habit of closing apps after use.
Also be cognizant of which apps you’re using if your phone’s battery is already low. YouTube, Netflix, and other video streaming apps use the most juice. Also, you know all those free versions of games you can download? The ones that are full of ads unless you upgrade to the paid version? Those games use up a lot of battery life, as well. If you play it enough, it’s probably worth it to pay for the full version if battery life is a problem for you.
4. Update Your Phone
When prompted, always download the software updates. With each one, you’ll see an on-screen explanation of what specifically is included in that particular version. But even if it doesn’t say it, software companies are always trying to improve overall functionality, including battery life. And these efforts are integrated into your phone with each update. If you ignore these notifications and don’t put them through, you’re giving your phone battery and other internal components a handicap. We've seen this completely fix the why does my phone battery die so fast problem.
5. Don’t Leave Bluetooth and Wifi On Indefinitely
We mentioned in section 1 that a lot of battery power is used up when your phone is actively trying to find and connect to a WiFi network. Like when you’re in the car without a cell phone signal booster. Especially if you’re driving a long distance. Or if you’re in a place where you know there’s no WiFi for you to connect to. There’s no point in leaving WiFi on during these situations. It’s only going to drain your battery.
The same goes for the Bluetooth feature. If you’re not using it, don’t leave it on. When it’s left on, it’s working, trying to find a Bluetooth device to connect to. This uses up power unnecessarily.
If you want to go even further with conserving battery power, get deliberate with airplane mode. This feature turns off pretty much everything on your phone that works in the background. In airplane mode, you won’t be able to send or receive calls or texts. The WiFi and Bluetooth features are disengaged. Apps and other data features that operate automatically in the background are turned off. This saves so much battery power. When you’re out in the wilderness, or in an underground tunnel, or anywhere else where you know you won’t be using your phone at all, turn on airplane mode to significantly save battery power.
6. Turn Off Location Services
As helpful as GPS capabilities are, this is a smartphone feature that certainly doesn’t need to be turned on indefinitely. Especially if your phone’s battery struggles, you should put a higher priority on saving power than location services. You’ll conserve lots of phone energy by only using location services when absolutely necessary, like when you need to follow navigation directions.
7. Alter Your Mail App Settings
This is a battery-saving technique that gets overlooked by people who ask "Why does my phone battery die so fast?". Every major email app - Gmail, Outlook, Mail - all have a default setting that downloads new messages immediately. This is referred to as a push method, in app-speak. Sure, this setting helps you see incoming emails right away, which is a convenience many people like. However, it represents heavy lifting for your battery.
Go into your mail settings and change push to fetch. You can customize the fetch setting to check for new emails every 15 min, 30 min, or 60 min. Or you can set it manual which means it only downloads new messages when you open the app. This takes a big weight off of your battery.
8. Disable As Many Notifications As You Can
We all have a love/hate relationship with smartphone notifications. They do a great job at keeping us up-to-date with…well…everything. They also distract the heck out of us, even if we don’t realize it. But another thing they do is seriously impact battery life. The more notifications you turn off, the longer your battery will last. If there are some notifications that you just can’t live without, that's fine. But we recommend whittling it all down to a few personal essentials. Turn off everything else. You’ll be surprised at how much more focused you are.
9. Avoid Extreme Temperatures
This tip is common sense, but we’ll mention it anyway. Don’t leave your phone in the hot (or cold) car while you go into the store. Most electronic devices, including smartphones, are very sensitive to extreme temperatures. As your phone begins to warm up, for example, it has internal cooling sensors that activate. This takes a lot of battery power. And, of course, once the phone gets too hot or too cold, it’ll shut down automatically. Or die permanently.
Also, don’t set your phone down next to you as you’re sunbathing. Or next to the campfire. You get the idea. Your phone’s battery doesn’t like extreme temperatures. If exposed for enough time, the battery will die - both figuratively and literally.
10. Explore Battery Information In Settings
Locate the section within the Settings app that displays information about the battery. Most smartphones will give you a breakdown of which apps use the most battery power as well as which ones are open in that moment. It’ll also show you how much time you spend using each app. You may find out something that surprises you. Gathering all of this information will be very helpful to making battery-saving decisions.
11. Carry A Portable Charger With You
If you’ve tried everything we’ve mentioned here and your battery is still dying quickly, it’s time to get a portable charger. Or, you can simply skip all these steps and keep your phone connected to your portable charger all day long. It can get annoying for some, but a lot of people go this route and it works for them. Portable chargers come in many shapes, sizes, and prices. Choose one that fits your needs and your budget. You can even get purses, wallets, and phone cases with built-in charging ports.
Why Does My Phone Battery Die So Fast? (11 Ways To Fix This - Including With A Signal Booster) - Conclusion
There are myriad ways that your battery could be running out of power faster than it should. This list will help you troubleshoot your smartphone. One last thing worth mentioning: have you heard someone say that leaving your phone plugged in overnight isn’t good for it? Though this was true in years past, there is little-to-no evidence that this practice negatively affects newest-model phones in 2020. In fact, most new devices have an auto-shutoff feature that internally stops the charging process once it reaches 100%, even though it’s still connected to the charger.