How to Make Your Phone Battery Last Longer

There's nothing worse than watching your battery percentage drop toward zero with hours still left in your day. Whether you're on an iPhone or Android, there are proven ways to squeeze significantly more life out of every charge — and most of them take less than a minute to set up.

As a repair shop that replaces hundreds of batteries a year, we know exactly what drains them — and what doesn't. Here's our honest, practical guide.

The Quick Wins — Do These First

Settings to Enable Right Now

iPhone

• Low Power Mode — Settings → Battery → Low Power Mode. Reduces background activity, mail fetch, and visual effects. Use it whenever you're running low or need to make your charge last.
• Optimised Battery Charging — Settings → Battery → Battery Health & Charging → Optimised Battery Charging. Slows charging to 80% until you typically wake up, reducing long-term battery wear.
• Reduce motion — Settings → Accessibility → Motion → Reduce Motion. Disables parallax effects and animations that use GPU power.
• Fetch email less frequently — Settings → Mail → Accounts → Fetch New Data → set to Manual or Every Hour instead of Push.

Android (Samsung / Pixel)

• Adaptive Battery — Settings → Battery → Adaptive Battery. Learns your usage patterns and restricts battery for apps you rarely use.
• Dark Mode — on OLED screens (most modern Android flagships), dark mode genuinely saves battery because black pixels are actually off. Settings → Display → Dark Mode.
• Battery Saver / Power Saving Mode — available on all Android phones. Samsung calls it Power Saving Mode, Pixel calls it Battery Saver. Enable it at 20% or lower.
• Limit refresh rate — if your phone has a 120Hz display, switching to 60Hz saves meaningful battery. Settings → Display → Motion Smoothness → Standard.

Habits That Make a Real Difference

• Don't let it hit 0% — deep discharges stress lithium-ion batteries. Plug in before you hit 10%.
• Don't charge to 100% every time — keeping your battery between 20–80% is the sweet spot for long-term health. Many phones now have settings to stop charging at 80%.
• Keep it cool — heat is the enemy of battery life, both short-term capacity and long-term health. Don't leave your phone in a hot car, and take it out of its case when charging if it gets warm.
• Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when you're not using them — these radios constantly scan for networks and devices, which uses power even when you're not connected to anything.
• Use Wi-Fi instead of cellular when possible — Wi-Fi uses less power than a cellular data connection for the same data transfer.
• Enable Airplane Mode in low-signal areas — when your phone has one bar of service it works the radios overtime searching for a signal. If you're in a dead zone for a while, Airplane Mode prevents this drain.

What About Battery-Saving Apps?

Skip them. "Battery saver" apps on both iPhone and Android are largely useless — iOS doesn't give third-party apps the system access needed to actually manage other apps' battery use. On Android, many of these apps are themselves battery drains, or worse, adware. The built-in settings above are more effective than any app.

When to Replace Your Battery

On iPhone, go to Settings → Battery → Battery Health. If it's below 80%, Apple recommends service — and we agree. On Android, download AccuBattery to measure actual capacity vs. original.

At Empire Wireless Mobile, battery replacements start at $49 for most iPhone and Samsung models and take about 30 minutes. It's one of the best investments you can make in a phone you otherwise love.

The Bottom Line

The biggest battery drains are screen brightness, background app activity, and cellular radios. Fix those three things and you'll see a meaningful improvement immediately. For everything else, the settings above are worth a few minutes of your time.

And if your battery just doesn't hold a charge the way it used to — no amount of settings will fix a physically degraded battery. Come see us at 876 Danforth Ave, Toronto. Monday to Friday 12–7pm, Saturday 12–5pm.