Tweaks to Increase Your Android's Battery Life and Increase Performance Part 2

Continuing on my older post on how to greatly increase the battery life and performance of your Android phone, I'm going to write a second edition to that article that goes in to a little more depth.


Tip #1: Remove Unused Widgets
1. Press and hold your finger on the widget you wish to remove from your screen.
2. After it unlocks itself from the page, you can swing it up or down (depending on your phone) to the trash can to remove it. NOTE: This does not delete the widget off of your phone, it simply does not show it anymore.

Widgets are a huge power sink for your phone, whether you use them or not. Any widgets that you don't commonly use, take off of your home screens to greatly save both battery and performance.

Tip #2: Take Extra Social Media Site's off of your Contact Sync List
1. Go to your contacts list.
2. Hit the Menu button on your phone.
3. Click 'Accounts', or on some phones you will have to click 'More' and then 'Accounts'.
4. Click on Twitter, GroupME, or whatever other social media apps you use.
5. Remove the option to 'Sync Contacts'. You only really need one social media website syncing your contacts (most people use Facebook or Google+).

This will save your battery a ton from not having to sync all your contacts every so often.

Tip #3: Change your background to something a little darker
1. Go to your home screen.
2.Hit the 'Menu' button on your phone.
3. Click 'Wallpaper'.
4. Select a wallpaper from your Gallery or from your phone. Make sure to select a darker one.

On most displays, the color black uses the least amount of light to draw on the display. So having a darker, blacker display wallpaper means that the screen is using less back light to create your background. This saves you power.

Tip #4: Clear Your App Cache Once In a While
1. Download the application App2SD from the marketplace.
2. Launch the application.
3. When it opens up and compiles your application list for the first time, hit the 'Menu' button.
4. Select 'Clear Cache'.
5. Confirm when the window pops up.

Applications use their cache to keep frequently used and accessed data. By wiping this every once in a while, you remove all of the data that those applications have stored. By doing this, you free up phone memory that can be used elsewhere for other things and keeps your phone in good health. The applications will continue to store things in their cache, so I suggest wiping it once a week at least.

Tip #5: Use Wi-Fi When at Home

1. Go to 'Settings'.
2. Click 'Wireless and Network'.
3. Click Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi Settings. If you did option 1, skip to number 5.
4. After Wi-Fi Settings, click on Wi-Fi to check the box and turn on Wi-Fi.

It is a fact that when your phone searches for a Wi-Fi signal and tries to keep you connected to that signal, it uses about 50% less battery than when it is trying to search and stay connected to a 3G signal, and about 150% less battery than when it is trying to search and stay connected to a 4G signal.

Tip #6: Update Your Applications

1. Launch the Market application.
2. Click the 'Menu' button on your phone.
3. Click 'My Apps'.
4. Apps that need to be updated will be moved to a category called 'Updates' or 'Manual Updates'.
5. Click on each app that needs to be updated individually, and then click on 'Update' and then click 'Accept and Download' if you accept the Market terms.


Applications release updates to themselves to improve their efficiency on battery and to work out any bugs there may have been in the application. Doing this not only makes your phone more efficient, but it also makes sure you are getting the most optimized version of the application.