The new iOS 7 from Apple has a lot of great new features such as faster downloads, but an unwelcome one for some has been the faster battery drain. But besides the obvious culprits such as AirDrop or the Notification Center, there are some hidden settings that are draining your battery life as well, according to CNET on Friday, Sept. 27.
If you're seeing a fast-draining battery, or just want to maximize your phone's battery life, techie Sharon Vaknin at cnet.com offers up these changes to your device's settings:
Background app refreshing: While this neat feature finally lets background apps remain active while multitasking, the trouble is that by default all apps are set to refresh, needlessly depleting precious battery power.
- The fix for this is to go to Settings, General, Background App Refresh. Once there, you can choose to disable the setting altogether, or pick and choose which apps you want refreshed and which you don't.
Automatic updates: Again a nice time-saver, iOS 7's automatic updates keep your apps up-to-date so you don't have to do so manually. According to Apple, this feature is designed to be power-efficient, but it's still best to disable it if you anticipate being without a recharge for an extended period of time.
- To do this, return to Settings, iTunes and Apple Store, and disable the Updates option there. But just don't forget to check the App Store for new app versions, and or turn it back on at some point.
Frequent Locations (and other location services): A big battery hog for any device comes with the use of location-based apps and services. Typically that applies to your mapping apps, but hidden in the Settings are a whole slew of location services that could be acting as more of a battery drain than they're worth.
- Return to Settings, Privacy, Location Services. Scroll to System Services. Though some options here are designed to improve your experience, they come at the cost of your privacy, as well as your battery. Disable any options you don't actually need, (Vaknin says like iAds). Then, go do the same for the Frequent Locations feature, and disable that, too.
Speaking of location-based apps, did you hear about the new one that lets you swap leftover food with strangers who live nearby. Click here to read all about the new LeftoverSwap app.
Spotlight: Being able use your device to search for almost anything in your device is a big help, but that means Spotlight is constantly on the crawl for new data, and then indexing it. Another big battery life-sucking example here.
Note: If you happen to rely heavily on Spotlight, you should skip this tip, but if you can live with a partially indexed phone, un-index some items here.
Go to Settings, General, Spotlight Search, and un-check the items you don't absolutely need indexed.
Make sure to head to CNET for more tips such as maximizing iOS 7 on an older device, and to find out four things you may not have known about the newest operating system from Apple.
