🔋 Make Your Phone Battery Last All Day: Simple Settings That Help

Show Notes

Few things are more frustrating than watching your phone battery drop faster than it should. You leave the house with plenty of charge, only to find yourself hunting for a charger before the day is even half over.

In this episode of Your Tech Makeover, Frank Bravo explains why this happens and reveals the hidden settings and habits that quietly drain your battery throughout the day. The good news? Most of these problems have simple fixes that take only a minute or two to change.

Instead of blaming an “old battery,” Frank walks through the real reasons devices lose power so quickly and the practical adjustments that can help your phone, and even your laptop, last much longer between charges.

Whether you use an iPhone, Android device, or laptop, these tips can help you get through the day with power to spare.

⚡ In this episode, you’ll learn:

🔋 Why weak cellular signal can quietly drain your battery

📍 How location services may be running far more often than you realize

🔄 Why background app refresh and constant notifications add up

🌞 How screen brightness and always-on displays affect battery life

📱 Why certain apps (like camera and navigation) use more power than you expect

🔍 How to check what’s actually draining your battery on your device

⚡ Simple habits that help extend battery life every day

🔋 Why keeping your battery between 20% and 80% can help protect long-term battery health

💡 Quick takeaways

If you want to improve your battery life right away, start with these simple changes:

• Limit background app refresh to just a few important apps

• Change most location permissions to “While Using”

• Turn on auto-brightness and shorten your screen timeout

• Set your device’s charging limit to 80% when possible

These small adjustments can make a surprisingly big difference in how long your battery lasts during the day.

🤝 Support the show

If you enjoy Your Tech Makeover and want to help keep the podcast going, you can support the show by visiting YourTechMakeover.com or clicking the support link in the show notes.

As a thank-you, listeners who contribute $25 or more will receive $25 off a one-on-one tech consultation with Frank, where you can get help simplifying your own devices and digital life.

🔗 Mentioned in this episode

• Low Power Mode / Battery Saver (iPhone and Android)

• Battery Usage settings on iPhone and Android

• Background App Refresh controls

• Location Services permissions

• Charging limits and battery health settings

If you’ve ever wondered why your battery seems to disappear faster than it should, this episode will help you understand what’s happening, and more importantly, what you can do about it.

📧 Have a question or an idea for a future episode?

Email Frank at [e-mail]

🌐 Learn more at YourTechMakeover.com

🚨 Get the newsletter on Substack at YourTechMakeover.Substack.com

👨‍💻 More about Frank at BravoITC.com

What is Your Tech Makeover?

Everyone has tech issues, and they’re usually because things are more complicated than they need to be.
Your Tech Makeover helps everyday people simplify and get more out of the technology in their lives.
Host Frank Bravo shares practical tech tips and easy-to-understand explanations about smartphones, smart homes, cloud storage, passwords, Wi-Fi, AI tools, and other everyday technology.
If you want technology to feel simpler instead of more frustrating, this podcast is for you.

00;00;00;07 - 00;00;19;23
Have you ever left the house on what feels like a totally safe battery level for your phone? Like 85 or 90%? And then somehow, by lunchtime, you're already in panic mode because you're at 30%. You didn't watch videos, you didn't play games, and actually, you barely even touched the phone. And yet here we are. Today we're going to talk about the hidden battery drains on your devices.

00;00;19;29 - 00;00;39;04
Those quiet little settings and habits that slowly and sometimes aggressively chew through your battery without asking permission because you things are more annoying than your phone dying at exactly the wrong moment.

00;00;39;06 - 00;01;03;25
Welcome to your Tech Makeover, the podcast that gives you tips and tricks that help you simplify and get more out of the technology in your life. I'm your host, Frank Bravo. Today's topic is hidden battery drains on your devices. This episode builds on the troubleshooting 101 episode I did last year because instead of fixing problems after they happen, we're going to focus on items that will help you prevent them before they happen in the first place.

00;01;03;27 - 00;01;24;29
Most people assume dying batteries mean one of two things. Either your phone is old or the battery itself is just getting bad. Sometimes that's true, but for often the problem is death by a thousand tiny cuts. And it's not usually one big thing. It's a lot of small things quietly running in the background, stacking up over the course of the day.

00;01;25;01 - 00;01;44;10
So let's talk about some real world examples. I once left the house to run a quick errand. I charge my phone to 80%, which is what I normally do. Nothing fancy planned. About 45 minutes later, I checked the battery and it was already down to the low 70s. There was no videos, no calls, no dumb doomscrolling. I had a short drive.

00;01;44;10 - 00;02;07;10
So you know, the maps didn't take up a lot. So what happened? In my case, it was a weak cell single, so the phone kept searching. Location services were running in the background. The Bluetooth from the car drove a little bit of that, and I used the camera earlier, and I never fully closed it individually. Those things are not a big deal, but together they are battery murder.

00;02;07;12 - 00;02;26;03
So let's talk first about the weak single hidden drain that happens when you don't have good cell service. This is the one that surprises people the most. Your phone actually works harder when the signal is bad. If you're in a parking garage, an elevator, maybe a big box store, or a fridge in on a fringe area, not in a fridge.

00;02;26;03 - 00;02;48;02
If you're in a fridge, it wouldn't work well either, but. And you shouldn't do that. So your phone keeps trying and failing, and it has a hard time reconnecting to the cellular network. That constant retrying drains the battery so fast. So what's the fix? If you know you're in an area with no signal, it's best to turn it on airplane mode.

00;02;48;05 - 00;03;10;19
Obviously, this restricts you from getting calls and messages, but at least your battery will be better. You can always turn Wi-Fi on if you have Wi-Fi. Act local to where you are. So if you need to send a message, those messages will come through. I know it feels kind of counterintuitive, but you'll often gain battery instead of losing it while you're in this mode.

00;03;10;21 - 00;03;31;17
Shout out to listeners like you who helped make your tech makeover possible. Your support helps keep this podcast going, and I truly appreciate it. Want to contribute? Just click the link in the show notes or visit your tech make over.com plus as a special thank you supporters who give $25 or more, we'll get $25 off a one time consultation with me to help you simplify your tech.

00;03;31;20 - 00;03;54;01
Thanks for being part of the your tech make over community. Now back to what I was saying. So what about location services that never stop? Location access is one of the biggest battery offenders after the go looking for the cell service. Especially when apps are allowed to track all the time. Most apps don't need 24 over seven location services, they just want it.

00;03;54;03 - 00;04;16;18
So one easy fix is to go into your location settings on your phone, find the apps, and change them to be only while using maps, rideshare apps. And sure, you know those kind of apps can stay on for precise locations. But things like social media, shopping apps, and weather widgets not so much. The weather is not going to be significantly different 50ft from where you are.

00;04;16;20 - 00;04;42;29
So why let it be precise? That one change alone can definitely improve your battery life. What about apps that refresh in the background and those notifications that show up all the time? Every time an app refreshes in the background, it checks for new information and that wakes your phone up a bit. Every notification lights the screen, pings the radio to make sure that it gets the right information and pulls power from the batteries.

00;04;43;01 - 00;05;06;06
A multiple of those things happening all day long really does eat up your battery life. So you can fix this by asking yourself one question do I really need this app updating itself when I'm not using it? You might want to go in and turn on turn off. I should say you want to turn off your background refreshes for most of your apps and trim the notifications to things that really matter.

00;05;06;07 - 00;05;27;21
There's things like messages and calendar alerts and maybe a few other essentials. Your battery and your sanity will really thank you for it. Did you know that of all the things that eat up battery the fastest, it's going to be your screen and how bright that screen is? Think about it. It's a huge display being powdered by this little battery.

00;05;27;28 - 00;05;50;06
It's really no contest. High brightness, long screen timeouts. And these are always on displays. Also, slowly bleed the power all day long. One solution is to turn on auto brightness. This is the setting that I have turned on. You can have it lower the screen timeout as well to even as low as 30s, so that if you stop using your phone, it will quickly go to sleep.

00;05;50;08 - 00;06;07;23
And if your phone supports an always on display, try turning it off for a few days and see if you notice about a difference in your batteries. It's a super cool feature and you know I use it all the time, but most people don't miss it nearly as much as they think they might not. Now let's finally talk about some apps.

00;06;07;25 - 00;06;29;01
Some apps are just power hungry by nature. You know, things like the camera app and navigation games for sure. Again, because of the display usage and video editing tools, they all suck a lot of power. And if you open them and forget about them, sometimes they can keep sensors and processors active in the background a lot longer than you realize it.

00;06;29;04 - 00;06;45;17
The easiest way to take care of this is to make sure that when you're done with maps, you stop the navigation and close that app when you're done taking a photo. It is a good idea to close that camera app just so that you are sure that the camera is not taking up information or taking a battery life.

00;06;45;19 - 00;07;06;29
And if you're editing videos of your photos, make sure you plug in, because that is probably the best way to do it. And even if you're playing games, if it's a very high, intense processor type game, you may want to consider plugging in while you're playing that game. You don't need to obsessively close everything every time, but a little awareness goes a long way.

00;07;07;01 - 00;07;28;22
So how do you know what's eating up the battery on your device? If you want to fast battery check up, there's a few ways that you can do that on a phone on an iPhone. We can go to the settings and then to the battery section and look for what's actually draining your power on your device. On an Android device, you want to check the battery usage and turn on adaptive battery or battery saver.

00;07;28;24 - 00;07;48;06
You know, we've talked a lot about phones, but laptops are also another thing that obviously have batteries that eat up very quickly, and that screen on the laptop is definitely something that will eat up the battery very fast. So on a laptop, you might want to dim the screen a little bit. If you're on battery, you may want to turn off Bluetooth if you're not needing it.

00;07;48;06 - 00;08;07;13
And if you're using a browser, especially Chrome, you want to make sure that you're closing tabs that you're not using. And if you do need to keep your browser tabs open, make sure none of them are running videos in the background that you may not even know to know about. You don't need to memorize the menus, just look for the biggest offenders and address those first.

00;08;07;15 - 00;08;28;01
So what habits can you follow to help make the biggest difference on your batteries? Well, a couple of them I just mentioned. But another thing would be to always top off your battery when you're near a charger, instead of letting it drop low every day. That will help keep the battery happy. You also want to make sure you keep a small power bank in your bag, not for emergencies, but for peace of mind.

00;08;28;02 - 00;08;48;27
I know that when I travel, I always carry a small power bank just in case. And if you can use low power mode or battery saver before your battery hits single digits, low power mode isn't a failure. It's a tool, and there's a lot of times where I'll turn that on. It makes the computer. It makes the phone a little bit more less intense.

00;08;48;27 - 00;09;08;23
On what kind of things update in the background. And by far, one of the biggest things you can do to keep your battery happy is keep it charged between 20 and 80%. That's the sweet spot for most batteries. There are tools built into our device that will allow that to work easily, and you should go make sure you have those turned off.

00;09;08;26 - 00;09;29;12
There's been a lot written recently about this not being a real thing, but I still kind of like that idea 20 to 80% and charge it to 100% when you absolutely need that little extra amount. If you don't do anything else from this episode, here are four things that you should really think about doing. One is limit the background app refreshes.

00;09;29;20 - 00;09;51;24
It's just your handy apps that you know you need background refresh. Do that said, the location services to only while using for the most apps. Make sure you turn on auto brightness or and you know shorten that screen timeout so that it goes dark sooner and then the charging limits that we just talked about. Those four things alone will help you have more battery by the end of the day.

00;09;51;27 - 00;10;12;19
The big takeaway here is very simple. Battery problems are usually about settings and habits, not just ag hardware, small tweaks. They really stack up and you don't need to change everything to see real improvement in your battery life. So which battery drain surprises you the most and which one are you going to go change right now today? Let me know.

00;10;12;19 - 00;10;29;20
And as always, if you have ideas for topics you'd like me to cover, please feel free to contact me via email at Frank at your Tech makeover.com. That's it for now. Thanks for listening to your tech makeover. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss an episode.

00;10;29;22 - 00;10;51;05
If you're on Substack, make sure you subscribe to our Substack so that you can get more information about the topics that I cover delivered directly into your inbox in your email. And if you want to check out your tech, make over RT.com. That's where you can see more information about each of the episodes. And if you want to find out more about me, please visit Bravo itc.com.

00;10;51;08 - 00;10;55;11
Until next time, I'm Frank Bravo and this has been your tech makeover.