How to increase your battery life on iPhone 5 and iOS 6

iOS 6 has been devoured by the Apple community with 15% of the estimated 400 million iOSdevice users downloading the new update within the first 24 hours of release. There were immediate and justified rumblings regarding the inaccurate and sometimes comical iMaps but just as swiftly the focus turned to battery life, and this may amaze you, but the focus has shifted to battery life with the update of every single iOS to date. However, never fear we have some quick fixes on how you can get the most from the battery life on the new iOS 6 platforms, which for most of you, at least until Apple sort the map situation out is the biggest problem.

Four tips on how to increase the battery life of your iPhone 5 and iOS6:

1. Quick Fixes – Turn Off What You Aren’t Using

You’d be surprised how many of your apps are draining your battery life without you even realizing it. Whether the power hungry apps are running in the background or you’ve opted into Location Services or Push Notifications for apps that need not know your location, nor push unwanted information onto you. Disabling these features is a quick and easy fix. If you are concerned about your battery consumption make changes to the following 6core battery drainers and you’ll be running at a smoother speed in no time.

•  Turn off Push Notifications: It’s time to comb through your apps and turn off the ones that you don’t need automated notifications for – again you’ll probably be surprised at how many apps have this feature enabled. Here’s how you do it: Settings – Notifications and turn off all apps you don’t need regular updates for.

•   Turn off Location Services: Again here you’ll find a surprising percentage of apps you never even realized had location services enabled. Simply turn off the ones you don’t require the service for by going to: Settings – Privacy – Location Services.

•   Turn Off the Siri Raise to Speak feature: This is a nifty feature but it has proven to be a huge battery drainer on iOS 6. Turn it off until they sort out the teething issues by going to: Settings – General – Siri.

•   Turn off Bluetooth: When iCloud rolled out Bluetooth became a widely redundant feature for most iOS devices. Now we are made even more aware of the fact that we are connected to Bluetooth via the little indicator now added to all iPhones with an iOS6 update. If you don’t use it for any of the following reasons , turn it off: Settings – Bluetooth

•   Kill Background Apps: Activate the multitasking dock by double clicking your home button and kill any apps that consume a lot of energy running in the background.

2: You’re Using It More

The first tip is blatantly obvious and in many cases the main cause for concern. With a new iOS update you are bound to experiment with the new features, and for most of us, we will do this in a single sitting. iOS 6 has more battery consuming features than any update before it and if you find yourself in the situation where you are playing your favourite song over your speakers while checking out the new Flyover map feature, and you decide to tell Siri to call someone via FaceTime over 3G, or the even more power hungry LTE on the iPhone 5 and you release that you’ve been doing this for 4 hours strait – you can’t really be surprised when your battery ends up drained. Like many iOS updates, concerns with battery life generally die down after the first week of release, as we get into more normative routines on how we use it. However, for many of you this doesn’t appear to be the case with iOS 6, so read on for the best ways to increase your battery life.

3: How to Fix Serious iOS 6 Battery Issues

The average Twitter user has a tendency to exaggerate, but when thousands flood the social network with #iOS 6 Battery inspired woes – you know the issue is a big one. These updates are currently coming in by the second, and use descriptive language ranging from: draining, poor, and quick to the more aggressive: bleeding, killing and vampiric to describe the effects of iOS 6 on battery life. If as some claim, the iOS 6 update only allows you, “20 minutes of Wi-Fi browsing” or forces you to, “charge your phone 3 times a day.” You have a serious problem and we have a few serious suggestions for fixes.

•  Reset Your Power Cycle: Let your iOS 6 devices run out of battery without recharging. Once it has shut down, plug it back in and recharge it to full capacity. This is something you should let your device do regardless of issues at least once a month to ensue a healthy battery cycle.

•   Restart Your Device: This is the simplest of fixes, hold the power button and slide the red bar across to power down. It might not solve the issue, but there is no reason not to try.

•   Reset Your Device: Another incredibly simple tip, simply hold the power button down and ignore the red sliding bar until your device automatically shuts down. This will turn off all running processes and allow you to monitor and evaluate which of them could be causing the issue.

•   Restore:This is both time consuming and annoying but you have the option of restoring your device as new, and it may be your best bet. Restoring the device will allow you to clean up some of the core bugs in your iOS6 update. For detailed information on how to do this visit the Apple support website.

•   Downgrade back to iOS 5.1.1: Apple certainly don’t make this option easy for you, and the most comprehensive explanation of how to do this can be found on the Mac Life website. However, please bear in mind that according to those who have attempted this you may require a jailbroken device, a version of iTunes no later than 10.7 and you’ll have to save SSHL blobs (if none of these things make sense to you, please don’t attempt this method).

•   Visit the Apple Store: This should really be your last resort, at least for the time being. Between the campers for the iPhone 5 release and the iOS 6 problems your local Apple store is likely to be busier than a music festival – and a lot less fun. However, if you can stomach it, your local “genius” is always there to help and for devices with severe issues it’s not uncommon to receive excellent advice, fixes, or even a completely new model.

4: Lightening Fast Fixes (The Basics)

•  Set the Auto-Lock: Unless you spend a significant time pondering your screen, there really is no reason not to set your Auto-Lock to 1 minute by going to: Settings – General – Auto-Lock.

•   Turn Down the Screen Brightness: 50% is usually sufficient, higher than this and your asking for a constant drain: Settings – Brightness & Wallpaper.

•   Turn off WI-Fi / 3G / LTE when not in use: If you aren’t using them, you don’t need the resources they waste. It may be annoying but turning them off will give you a battery boost.

•   Turn off Sounds: The non-essential ones at least – you can save a little juice by turning off unessential keyboard and notification tones.

•   Buy an External Battery: The fact that you can buy them on eBay for pocket change means that if you are a heavy user who needs a really quick fix, this may be your best immediate bet.

•   Plug it in: Yes we release you are not an idiot, but between the excitement of the new release and all of the pesky adaptors you will need for the new iPhone 5’s Lightning connector – you may find that you are simply plugging your device in a lot less than you used to.