iPhone X: Prolong & Preserving battery life and How to avoid battery draining
So finally you get your hands on the new long-awaited iPhone X, well congratulations! For those who have preordered but haven’t got their hands into the new iPhone X, be patient ya.
As a new iPhone, iPhone X – like all other new iPhone and phones, has this question that pops up into everybody’s minds, “How long does the iPhone X battery last?”, or for those who have gotten their hands on and given it a try “why my new iPhone X battery draining so fast?”.
So today, I would like to give some tips and tricks you can do on your new iPhone X to save, prolong, preserve the iPhone X battery. Here they are.
Disclaimer: All tips and tricks presented here is to save, prolong and preserve your iPhone X battery life. The tips and tricks consist of turning off, switching off, or reducing some capability of your iPhone X so that it won’t draw as much power as it normally does. Turning off or switching off or reducing some capability of the iPhone X may disrupt some services (such as unable to get real time email, unable to make phone call, etc) which may render you un-contactable, miss opportunities and worst case cost you your life. Follow the tips and tricks presented here at your own risk.
Under no circumstances will I be held responsible or liable in any way for any claims, damages, losses, expenses, costs or liabilities whatsoever (including, without limitation, any direct or indirect damages for loss of profits, business interruption or loss of information) resulting or arising directly or indirectly from the use of this article and its contents.
1. Reduce the screen brightness.
iPhone X is using OLED screen which does help during the bright sunlight for you to still be able to see the screen, so do consider reduce the screen brightness whenever possible as long as it’s still comfortable for your eyes to see the screen. Because the screen and its brightness level are the highest factor eating your iPhone X battery life. By reducing the screen brightness, not only it save and prolong your iPhone X battery life, it also save your eyes from getting too much light coming to them.
Here’s how to reduce the screen brightness on iPhone X:
a. Slide down to bring up the Control Center.
b. Find the screen brightness control (the one with sun logo), tap on it to reduce the screen brightness.
2. Shorten the Auto-Lock period.
Did you ever notice if you left your iPhone X turned ON, how long will the screen keep turning ON until finally turn OFF? If it’s more than one minute, do consider to shorten the auto-lock period to max 1 minute.
Auto-Lock is iOS feature which will auto-lock your iPhone X (as well as turning OFF the screen) whenever your iPhone X is idle for the x time you set. The shorter you set, the more battery life you can save.
Here’s how to set Auto-Lock on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Display & Brightness.
b. Find and Locate Auto-Lock.
c. Choose either 30 seconds or maximum 1 minute, unless you have good reason to keep your iPhone screen alive and idle for more than 1 minute.
Your app, such as YouTube or Netflix won’t get disrupted by setting the Auto-Lock to 30 seconds or 1 minute, because watching YouTube or Netflix on your iPhone X are not considered as “idle state” thus the screen won’t turn OFF while you are actively watching them.
For security reason as well, in case you left your iPhone X idling somewhere, people won’t be able to use it after auto-lock has been activated and the screen turned OFF.
Find other awesome articles, tips, tricks related to Life and Tech, iOS & Android quick review on:
3. Turn OFF AirDrop if you don’t use it
On iOS 11, Apple made AirDrop to be always turned ON by default, since I don’t think you’ll use it every time, do consider turning it OFF. Apart from saving your iPhone X battery life, turning AirDrop OFF also save you from people who try to send some funny picture to your iPhone X.
Here’s how to turn AirDrop OFF on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > General > AirDrop.
b. Tap on Receiving Off.
4. Turn OFF Wi-Fi or Bluetooth if you don’t use them
Similar to AirDrop, are you always connected to Wi-Fi and always make use of your Bluetooth (eg: connect to Apple Watch)? Well, if you don’t always connected to Wi-Fi or not always use your Bluetooth, do consider turning them OFF.
Try not to turn OFF Wi-Fi and Bluetooth via the iOS 11 Control Center, because on iOS 11, turning them off via Control Center won’t turn off your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth completely. What it does is simply disconnect you. I have seen it and experienced it since using the first iOS 11 Public Beta.
Here’s how to completely turn off your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on iPhone X:
To turn off Wi-Fi completely
a. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi
b. Find Wi-Fi, slide it off.
To turn off Bluetooth completely
a. Go to Settings > Bluetooth
b. Find Bluetooth, slide it off.
5. Disable location or kill app that keeps tracking you for real time if you don’t use them
Check your location service for any apps or system services that keeps using or retrieving your location. Turn them completely off or switch them to “while using”. This will save you a lot of battery power.
Here’s how to check and switch location service on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services.
b. The easy way is to completely turn off location services, however I do not recommend that. Find apps and system services that keep using your location, if you feel that app/system services are not that important, change the location services access to “Never” or “While Using”.
6. Kill apps with background activity especially if you don’t use them
If you open so many apps, chances are some of them are actually still running on the background, even though you are not actively using them, apps like Google Photos, Uber are actively running in the background even though you are no longer using them.
Here’s how to find out which apps with background activity that sucking your iPhone X battery:
a. Go to Settings > Battery.
b. Wait for a while until you see list of apps draining your battery. Check which app draining your battery a lot.
c. Turn off, sign out from the app or kill the app completely if you don’t plan to use it for the time being. Try also to update your app the its latest version, because the previous version way of work, may not be fully suitable or aligned with the new iOS.
7. Still use 3G? Switch to LTE/4G whenever possible or use Wi-Fi at home/work places
If your area is fully covered by LTE/4G or even better Wi-Fi, switch to them. Newer technologies such as 4G/LTE come with better power consumptions. Assuming both LTE/4G signal is as best as 3G signal, having LTE/4G will save your iPhone X battery life because LTE/4G download faster which translates to less power used to download certain contents.
These are the recommended sequence of connectivity you should choose to prioritize to best preserve iPhone X battery life:
Wi-Fi (best) > LTE/4G (better) > 3G (good) > 2G (not good).
Here’s how to enable 4G/LTE on your iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Cellular.
b. Find Cellular Data Options and tap on it.
c. Find Enable 4G or Enable LTE and tap on it.
d. Choose both Voice & Data whenever possible to activate 4G/LTE on both voice call and data.
Here’s how to enable Wi-Fi on your iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi
b. Find Wi-Fi, slide it on.
8. Turn off push notifications and push email
Do you need to know each and every time your friends post something on their Instagram, Facebook or whatever social media they are using? Do you also need to know and directly read each and every time there’s email coming to your inbox?
If you don’t really need them to be notified to you real time, you can consider to turn them off to save your iPhone X battery life. In case you are not aware of, your iPhone X screen will turn on for each of notifications you get, so imagine if you have a lot of people in your social media and email who likes to post/send email, you’ll get a lot of notifications coming and a lot of times your iPhone X screen will turn on.
Here’s how to turn push notifications OFF:
a. Go to Settings > Notifications.
b. On the application list, tap them one by one and on Allow Notifications do consider to turn it off.
Here’s how to turn push email OFF:
a. Go to Settings > Accounts & Passwords.
b. Scroll down until you find Fetch New Data. Tap on it.
c. The easiest way is to slide off the Push menu – however doing this, you won’t get any real time push notification for any incoming mail, or
d. You can see and check your email list and consider to switch from Push to either Fetch (good battery life) or Manual (even better battery life).
9. Turn off flash when taking photo or switch to auto (do not turn flash to always ON)
Although it’s not by default turned ON, but on several occasions I saw there are quite many number of people who are in bright daylight when taking photos, their phone flashlight was turned ON. It’s not entirely silly but it’s a waste of battery life.
Save your iPhone X battery by turning off the camera flashlight if you are not really need it or make it Auto.
Here’s how to switch OFF iPhone X camera flash or make it Auto:
a. Find, locate and open your iOS Camera app.
b. Find and locate the flash icon (find thunderbolt icon – located on top left on the iPhone X screen)
c. Tap the flash icon and choose:
OFF – if you don’t want to make use of flash when taking photos
Auto – if you want iOS to determine for you when flash light is required when taking photos
ON – if you want to always use flash light when taking photos – avoid to use this setting
10. Disable Raise to Wake
When you are holding your iPhone X and brought the screen directly to your face, the iPhone screen automatically turned ON without you pressing any button and then Face ID is activated automatically and looking for your face to log you in. Nice feature right? Well it comes with some consequences to your battery life. What makes your iPhone X battery life become even more worse is that when you put the iPhone X on your couch, bag or pocket in upright position, most of the time with Raise to Wake turned ON, the iPhone X screen will keep turning ON and OFF.
Good news is there’s a way to turn off Raise to Wake. To note, turning OFF raise to wake will not turning off your Face ID. Face ID will still work as per normal, however you need to press power button each and every time you want to see your iPhone X screen.
Here’s how to turn OFF Raise to Wake on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Display & Brightness.
b. Find and locate Raise to Wake and switch it OFF.
By switching Raise to Wake to off, next time you want to use your iPhone X, you need to press the Power Button to turn the phone on.
11. Activate Low Power Mode
iOS will normally prompt you to activate Low Power Mode when your iPhone X battery reach 20% or lower. But do you know that you can actually activate Low Power Mode manually even you have 100% of battery?
Here’s how to activate Low Power Mode on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Battery.
b. Locate and find Low Power Mode and switch it ON.
Alternatively and much easier to do:
Slide down to bring the Control Center, then tap on the Low Power Mode icon to activate Low Power Mode.
What’s the impact and implications of turning ON Low Power Mode:
No mail fetch, no Hey Siri, no background app refresh, no automatic download and some nice visual effects are reduced or turned OFF.
12. Turn ON Airplane Mode
Either you are playing offline game or getting ready to sleep, turning ON Airplane Mode does help preserving your iPhone X battery.
The caveat will be you won’t get phone call, messages or real time notification.
Here’s how to activate Airplane Mode on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Battery.
b. Find Airplane Mode and switch it ON.
Updates on 30th November 2017:
13. Use Black Color Background Wallpaper
iPhone X screen is based on OLED technology. OLED screen has technology for which any black color shown on the screen, it will just totally turn the pixel off hence the deep black color and at the same time saving energy in the process.
So if you are using a full black wallpaper, your iPhone X will have higher battery saving rate compare to those that is using colorful wallpaper.
Here’s how to change your wallpaper on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > Wallpaper.
b. On Wallpaper page, tap on Choose a New Wallpaper.
c. Then tap on Stills, and find the full black wallpaper at the bottom.
d. Tap on the full back wallpaper, then choose Still and tap on Set.
e. Choose Set Both for greater battery saving and preserving.
14. Turn OFF Background App Refresh
As highlighted by Redditor beyondthetech (the reddit link is here), he is right when telling turning OFF background app refresh should help preserve iPhone X battery life. Thus I added here on my list for iPhone X (I did discuss about it before here but it’s not about battery saving instead tweak to make older iPhone running faster ).
Well, in short, turning OFF background app refresh does indeed save and preserve the iPhone X battery life. However there are save caveats turning it OFF: any background activities will not run. Things like leaving Google Photos to backup your photos on the background, leaving the Maps position your whereabouts on the map, these things will no longer work when the app is in the background. However, in case you are worry turning off background app refresh will turning off notifications as well, then worry no more. Any notifications such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, are still coming even though you are turning off background app refresh.
Here’s how to turn OFF Background App Refresh on iPhone X:
a. Go to Settings > General > (scroll down until you find) Background App Refresh.
b. On Background App Refresh menu, tap on Background App Refresh.
c. Tap OFF to fully turn off the Background App Refresh.
Bring it all together
So that’s 14 of them which hopefully help you preserve, save and prolong your iPhone X battery life. Good thing is that all these tips and tricks also works for any other iPhone as well. Do you have something else to add on the list? Do let me know by leaving your comments down below on comment section. Cheers!
How to navigate easily on iPhone X, read here.
One frustrating thing I keep seeing on people who are using iPhone X, read here.
Bring back Home Button on iPhone X, do read here.
10 things iPhone X is the first of its kind, do read here.
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I would have thought that the most obvious one would be turning off Background App Refresh for all apps, or at least for the ones you don’t care about if you’re not actively using it.
Yes. That would be one. However this background app refresh thingy is not so upfront and deep buried inside the Settings, so less chance for average person to dig around and find it.