7 iPhone Battery Life Tips That Don’t Actually Work

One of the most biggest concerns that iPhone users have about their device is iPhone battery life, but here are seven iPhone battery life tips that don’t actually work, or at least will see negligible results.

We’ve discussed how to fix bad iPhone battery life in the past and offered some tips to get the most of your iPhone battery. After all, many users wish they could get some extra juice out of their smartphone before needing to plug it in, and we don’t blame them.

Read: How to Keep Your iPhone Battery in Good Health

However, there are some tips out there that simply don’t work. How these tips come to be I’m not sure, but there are some things that many users think will improve their iPhone battery life, but they actually don’t do a whole lot.

If you want to get better iPhone battery life, here are seven commonly-believed myths that won’t get you there.

Calibrating the Battery

You may have heard that completely discharging your battery to 0% and then charging it back up to 100% is a great way to keep your iPhone’s battery healthy, but it’s actually something that doesn’t aim to make your battery healthier.

What calibrating does do is simply have your iPhone display the correct battery level that’s left in the charge. After a while this can get out of sync, since your battery loses capacity ever so slightly and iOS doesn’t pick up on the capacity loss.

With that said, Battery University recommends calibrating your iPhone’s battery every few months so that the battery level in iOS is accurate. However, it won’t improve your battery life by any means.

Only Using the iPhone Charger

Many users says that it’s best to use your iPhone’s own charger to charge up the device, and while that’s somewhat correct, it’s not to get better battery life.

Every smartphone comes with its own charger, since each phone requires a different amount of amperage, wattage, etc. However, most USB wall chargers will work with most smartphones, but ideally you should use the charger that came with your iPhone to charge it, just to make sure you’re using the right amperage and wattage.

But the iPhone is smart enough to receive the juice at the necessary amperage and wattage, even if a charger brings in more than the iPhone’s own charger, so you shouldn’t have to worry about this.

And in the end, as long as you’re using a good-quality charger, it really doesn’t matter what charger you use on your iPhone.

Avoiding Leaving Your iPhone Plugged In

You may have been told that once your iPhone gets fully charged up, you should unplug it right away so that the device doesn’t overcharge. However, iPhones don’t overcharge.

The lithium-ion battery in your iPhone is smart enough that once it reaches 100%, it stops receiving a charge, similar to how a drain plug stops the flow of water.

Instead, your iPhone will “trickle charge.” This happens when the battery reaches 100% and the charger vastly slows down the voltage that it sends to your iPhone, just enough to keep it charged up without overcharging.

Turning Off Bluetooth

Like WiFi, some users believe that disabling Bluetooth can save battery, but Bluetooth is a technology that doesn’t use a lot of battery in the first place.

From the tests over at The Wirecutter, having Bluetooth on but not connected to a device “used a negligible amount of battery power over several hours,” and even when connected to a Bluetooth device that communicates with your iPhone constantly, Bluetooth uses” very little of your battery. ”

Where Bluetooth does use a lot of battery is when you’re streaming something over a Bluetooth connection and actively using that Bluetooth connection. Otherwise, there’s nothing to worry about.

Turning Off WiFi

Many users believe that disabling WiFi can improve their iPhone’s battery life, but it doesn’t make a real difference.

In fact, WiFi can improve your battery, especially if you have a strong WiFi connection. Using WiFi is better on the battery than using an LTE connection, and many apps can get your location without having to activate the GPS by using your WiFi signal.

Even, if you have a struggling WiFi connection that has trouble staying afloat, your iPhone can automatically switch back and forth between LTE and WiFi.

Sure, it certainly doesn’t hurt to turn off WiFi if you’re definitely not using it, but you don’t need to go out of your way to do it.

Turning Off Location Services

It’s no secret that GPS apps and other apps that rely on your location can suck up battery life, but it’s not as black and white as you might think.

Most apps that need your location only access Location Services sparingly and intermittently. Of course, navigation apps are the exception, but even then, most of the battery drain is because your iPhone’s screen is constantly on and never turns off.

In the end, turning off WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS can save battery life depending on how you use them, but it’s not a huge difference. In fact, according to a test done by MacWorld, having Airplane Mode enabled only increased battery life by about 30 minutes, which isn’t a lot.

Force-Quitting Apps

This has come up recently, but force-quitting apps on your iPhone can actually kill your battery life instead of improve it.

You might think that the fewer the apps that are running in the background, the better battery life you’ll get, but iOS is actually really smart at managing these apps that are in the background, so you don’t need to worry about closing them out.

In fact, manually closing out these apps really just uses up unnecessary battery life. Of course, there are exceptions, like the Facebook app and other apps that heavily use up resources while running in the background, but for the most part you don’t need to worry about constantly closing out all of your apps.