Tweaks to Increase Your Android's Battery Life and Increase Performance Part 1

One of the biggest complaints about Android is its battery life. However the battery is only less than exemplary if you don't know how to properly control it. Here are some tips that have taken me months to find out and I'm going to share them with all of my readers.



Tip #1: Turn off Automatic Brightness, set static
1. Go in to Settings.
2. Click on Display.
3. Click Brightness
4. Un-check automatic brightness, and set it at a static amount (slightly less than half way).

This will make its o your phone's light sensor isn't constantly being ran and using your phones battery. Now your phone will by default have the same brightness no matter what environment you are in. Even if your screen is on average at a brighter setting now, you will still save battery since the scanner isn't always running.

Tip #2: Turn off Animations
1. Go in to Settings.
2. Click on Display.
3. Click on Animations
4. Select "No Animations".

This will make your phone seem snappier because rather than spending time to load animations and display them, your phone instantly goes to what you ask it to do. It will rely less on your phone to render new graphics, so it will actually be a performance enhance as well, not just a 'fake' performance enhancer.

Tip #3: Turn Screen Timeout to 30 seconds
1. Go in to Settings.
2. Click on Display.
3. Click on Screen Timout.
4. Select 30 seconds.

This will automatically lock your screen if you don't touch it within 30 seconds. You would be surprised how many times you lay your phone down on your lap while on the computer and forget to lock it.

Tip #4: Turn off Wi-Fi when you're not at home
1. Go in to Settings.
2. Click on Wireless & Network Settings.
3. Un-check Wifi.

This will disable your Wi-Fi connection and will use your phone's network settings (either 3G or 4G). This will save you battery life by not having your phone search for wireless signal all the time.

Tip #5: Turn Bluetooth off
1. Go in to Settings.
2. Click on Wireless & Network Settings.
3. Un-check Bluetooth.

This will disable your phone from searching for bluetooth devices, saving it battery life.

Tip #6: Clear your phone's browser cache
1. Go in to Settings.
2. Click Applications.
3. Click Manage Applications.
4. Click the All tab at the top.
5. Locate whatever browser you use (the default one, named Browser, or a downloaded one like Skyfire, Opera, Firefox, etc).
6. Click on your browser on the list.
7. Click Clear Cache.

This removes all the data you downloaded when you were surfing the web. Every picture, every word your browser loaded is saved in that cache. Now it's gone, and your phone is much happier and cleaner. This effects performance.

Tip #7: Change the frequency that Facebook tries to Sync your device to 4 hours
1. Open the Facebook application.
2. Go to the home Facebook page (the one where you can see icons for News Feed, Profile, Messages, Chat, etc).
3. Hit the Menu button on your Android Device at the bottom of the actual device.
4. At the top, click on Refresh Interval.
5. Select 4 hours.

This changes how often Facebook tries to talk to your phone. Outside of Facebook Chats, which are always pushed immediately to your phone, Facebook will try to sync your contacts once every 4 hours now rather than once every hour (the default). This saves you battery life and performance when it is trying to sync.