Improving Apple's Battery Life

With your recent update to iOS7 on your iPhone or iPad you probably have seen a degrade in the performance of your battery. Well the good news is that it is not just you - but almost everyone who took the time to perform the update. There are a couple of adjustments you can make if you want to improve the batter life of your Apple device.

Background App Refresh
The battery-draining culprit that perhaps bears the most responsibility is a new feature called Background App Refresh, whose default is set to "on" in iOS 7. It lets apps run in the background while you multitask and continually refreshes content when running on Wi-Fi or a cellular network. To disable this feature, visit Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Here, you can turn off the entire function or just disable that apps you don't need to refresh on an automatic basis.

Location Tracking Apps
Many apps — from Google Maps to Twitter and even the iOS camera — are tracking your location at all times. You can turn off Location Services completely (Settings > Privacy > Location Services) or disable certain apps one by one. We recommend the latter option, so you can still leave on key location-based functions such as Find My Phone if it's ever lost.

There's more, too. Selecting the System Services option under Location Services will reveal a collection of other app features that are stealing away battery life, including "Popular Near Me" and "Frequent Locations."

Parallax - No Not the Star Trek: Voyager episode!
Apple has added a bunch of new animations and a parallax feature — which makes it seem like the wallpaper can move behind the apps — but they eat away at your power slightly faster. Some people have complained the movements are dizzying anyway, so there's no harm in turning it off. To do so, visit Settings > General > Accessibility and click Reduce Motion to "on."

If you are curious about the Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Parallax" you can learn more here.



In "Parallax" while investigating an apparent distress call, Voyager becomes trapped inside the event horizon of a quantum singularity.



Automatic Updating
iOS 7 lets you automatically download new app updates whenever they're ready without visiting the App Store to do it yourself. It's a smart function, but the last thing you want to do is run app updates when your battery is down to fumes. To disable this, visit Settings > iTunes and Apple Store and uncheck the Updates option.

Turn Off Air Drop
AirDrop lets you share files with other users on the same network, but when you're not using it (or Bluetooth, for that matter), do your battery a favor and shut it off. Slide open the Control Center and switch it off there.

Turn Down the Brightness
This has long been a helpful way to save battery life on any device and iOS 7 is no exception. Use the Control Center or visit Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness and disable Auto-Brightness and decrease the setting manually.

If you have any more suggestions for saving battery life on your mobile device please send them to me.