If your phone is begging for a charger by mid-afternoon, the battery itself may not be the main problem. Phones ship with settings that favor looks and convenience over endurance: a bright screen that stays on, apps that refresh in the background, radios that keep hunting for a signal. Each one costs a little, and together they add up.
Below are nine settings worth checking on both iPhone and Android, what each one does, and how to change it without losing the features you actually use. Menu names shift between software versions and phone makers, so we describe each setting by what it does. If you cannot find one, type its name into the search bar at the top of your Settings app.
First, see what is actually using your battery
Before you change anything, open the battery screen in Settings. Both iPhone and Android show which apps and features have used the most power over the last day or so, and how much of that happened in the background. That list tells you where to start. If an app you barely open sits near the top, it is your first suspect.
Check the screen again a few days after you make changes. Battery life depends on signal strength, temperature, battery age and how you use the phone, so a single day can mislead you. Look for a pattern over several days rather than one number.
The screen: the biggest single drain
On most phones the display is one of the largest power users, so screen settings are where small changes go furthest. These four are worth checking first, and none of them makes the phone harder to use.
1. Brightness fixed at high, with auto-brightness off
A screen locked at high brightness burns power in a dim room where you do not need it. Turn on automatic (or adaptive) brightness so the phone dims itself indoors and brightens outside. On iPhone, the auto-brightness switch sits in the Accessibility settings rather than the display menu, which is why many people never find it.
2. A long screen timeout
Screen timeout, called Auto-Lock on iPhone, decides how long the display stays lit after your last touch. If it is set to five minutes or “never”, every time you put the phone down face up, the screen keeps glowing for nothing. Thirty seconds to one minute is plenty for most people.
3. Always-on display
Many recent phones can show the time and notifications on a dimmed lock screen all day. It is designed to use little power, but it is still a screen that never fully switches off. If you rarely glance at it, turn it off. On iPhone you can also hide the wallpaper on the always-on screen, which keeps it darker.
4. Maximum refresh rate
Phones with 90Hz or 120Hz screens redraw the image more often, which makes scrolling look smooth. Most adjust the rate automatically, but you can cap it. On Android, look for a “smooth display” or “motion smoothness” option and choose the standard rate. On iPhone models with a high-refresh screen, an accessibility setting called Limit Frame Rate caps it at 60Hz. Try it for a day; some people notice the difference, many do not.
Background activity you never see
The next three settings drain power while the phone sits in your pocket. Because nothing looks different on screen, they are easy to miss.
5. Background refresh for every app
Background refresh lets apps fetch new content while you are not using them, so a news app is up to date when you open it. That is handy for messaging and maps, and pointless for a game or a shop you visit once a month. On iPhone, go through the Background App Refresh list and switch off anything that does not need it. On Android, each app has a battery setting with options such as unrestricted, optimized and restricted; restricted suits apps you rarely use.
6. Location set to “always”
An app that can check your location at any time may wake the GPS and radios throughout the day. Open your location permissions and change most apps to “while using the app” or “ask next time”. Shopping and photo apps rarely need constant access, and you can turn off precise location for apps that only need to know your city. On Android, also look at the Wi-Fi scanning and Bluetooth scanning options, which let the phone search for nearby networks to improve location accuracy even when Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is off.
7. Notifications that light up the screen
Every notification can wake the display, buzz and pull in data. Dozens a day from shopping apps and games add up. Go through your notification settings and switch off apps that mostly send promotions. For the rest, deliver them quietly, bundle them into a scheduled summary on iPhone, or use a Do Not Disturb or focus mode during the hours you do not need them.
Connections and syncing
The last two settings keep your phone’s radios busy. They matter most if you spend time in places with patchy coverage or have several email accounts.
8. 5G in places with a weak signal
When coverage is patchy, a phone works harder to hold a connection and may switch back and forth between network types. If you live or work somewhere with weak 5G, use the automatic 5G setting on iPhone, which falls back to 4G/LTE when 5G offers no clear benefit, or set your preferred network to 4G/LTE on Android. Check with your carrier first if your plan or calling features depend on 5G.
9. Constant syncing of email and photos
Email accounts set to check for new mail every few minutes, and photo libraries that back up over cellular data, keep the radios working. Set non-urgent email accounts to fetch less often or only when you open the app, and let photo backups wait until you are on Wi-Fi. Your photos still back up; they just do it when it costs you less.
Popular tips you can skip
Some well-known battery tips do little. Swiping away apps from the app switcher is the classic example. Apple’s own guidance is to force-close an app only when it is unresponsive, and Android is built to manage background apps itself. Reopening an app from scratch can even use more power than resuming it, so close an app only when it misbehaves.
Dark mode helps mainly on phones with OLED screens, where black pixels are switched off; on LCD screens the gain is small. Keyboard vibration uses a little power, so turn it off if you do not care for it, but do not expect a big change. Low Power Mode or Battery Saver is best treated as an emergency switch: it pauses background activity and trims performance when you need to stretch the last 20 percent.
Quick checklist
Set aside ten minutes, perhaps as part of a weekly Sunday reset, and work through this list. Then give the changes a few days before you judge the results.
- Open the battery screen and note the top three apps.
- Turn on auto-brightness and set screen timeout to 30–60 seconds.
- Turn off always-on display if you rarely use it.
- Try the standard refresh rate for a day.
- Restrict background activity for apps you rarely open.
- Change “always” location access to “while using”.
- Silence promotional notifications.
- Use automatic 5G, or 4G/LTE where coverage is weak.
- Back up photos on Wi-Fi and fetch non-urgent email less often.
If battery life is still poor after a week, check the battery health screen, which iPhones and some Android phones offer in settings or a diagnostics app. A worn battery that has lost much of its capacity may need replacing, and no setting will fix that. While you are in your settings, it is also a good moment to set up passkeys for safer sign-ins, and you will find more practical guides in our tech section.
