How to Fix Bad OnePlus 6 Battery Life

Reboot Your OnePlus 6

Our first recommendation is probably the easiest and best tip. There are many things that can cause your battery to drain faster than expected. Sometimes the easiest way to stop a pesky problem or fix a small issue is by rebooting the phone.

Whether you want to give your phone a fresh start for the day or you noticed the battery draining too fast, give it a quick reboot. Long-press the power button and select reboot, or manually reboot your OnePlus 6.

Find Apps Eating Up Your Battery

For starters, you’ll want to find and solve any problems, like a rogue app draining your battery. You’ll want to find these before it’s too late and before your battery is dead. If you want to fix your bad OP6 battery life, keep an eye on how much juice apps use.

Read: 10 Common OnePlus 6 Problems & How to Fix Them

Whether it’s an app that came pre-installed or it’s something you downloaded from the Google Play Store. Sometimes apps just don’t work right.  Your phone will send you a notification if an app is using an abnormal amount of battery, so keep an eye out for that type of alert.

If you use an application a lot, it’s going to drain your battery. At the same time, some situations occur where an app uses more than it should, and that’s what we want to avoid. Head to Settings > Battery > and tap the battery icon. This shows you a full breakdown of apps and their battery consumption.

You should see Android System, Screen (Display), or apps you open frequently near the top of this list. If something else is at the top, that’s your problem. Click the app and select “Force Stop” or uninstall the app to prevent further issues. Take advantage of this menu in settings to help find misbehaving apps.

Disable the Ambient Display (and Lift)

The OnePlus 6 had an Always-On display feature like Samsung or Pixel phones, but OnePlus removed it the day the phone got released. This kept the screen on 24/7 and was causing abnormal battery drain. If you’re using the always-on display, turn it off, or update your phone, man.

Additionally, if you’re using the Ambient Lift Display options in settings, this could cause battery drain too. Whenever you pick up the phone, sensors recognize it and wake up the screen for you. It’s a helpful feature, but it can use way too much battery or turn on randomly in a pocket or purse. Something similar happens during incoming notifications. Try turning this off too, if you’re not satisfied with battery life.

For what it’s worth, we believe the AOD feature will return eventually in a software update, for those who miss it.

Screen Brightness & Sleep Time

With a huge 6.3-inch AMOLED screen you’ll want to pay a lot of attention to brightness and sleep timers. The average person checks their phone over 140 times a day, usually just to see the time or check a notification. This adds up throughout a day and can really lower battery life.

Make sure you hit the power/sleep button every time you finish using your phone. Most people just set the phone down when they’re done, and the screen stays on for a few minutes wasting battery. You can adjust this “sleep timer” so it shuts off faster.

Head to Settings > Display > Sleep > and set this to 30 seconds or one minute, not 5 minutes. That way when the phone isn’t in use, it dims and will go to sleep after that amount of time. Think about that 30-seconds or 1-minute of wasted screen-on time over 100 times a day. That’s a lot of wasted battery.

Use a Black Wallpaper

It seems silly and some people won’t like the idea, but using a Black wallpaper will improve your battery life. Not a lot, but every little bit counts. OLED screens are very efficient and display black colors easily. Pixels don’t need to turn on individually — or as high — to display a black image. As a result, a black image saves battery life.

After you’ve downloaded a nice wallpaper long-press a blank area of the screen and go into Wallpapers to apply it.

WiFi, 4G LTE, Bluetooth & GPS

When you use a phone for 8 hours a day, every bit can and will help. So, turn off WiFi or Bluetooth when they aren’t in use. Of course, using WiFi improves battery life over 4G cellular data, but when you aren’t connected the phone constantly searches for a network, which hurts battery life. If you’re near a Starbucks WiFi connection, use it.

For me, the most noticeable change is cutting out what apps access and use GPS. Whether that’s Google Maps or Facebook Messenger trying to find your location. Disabling GPS on multiple apps can give you an extra few hours of use every day.

Head to settings and tap the magnifying glass. Type “Location” then enter location settings and tap the battery saver mode. GPS isn’t as accurate, but you’ll notice an increase in battery life. Your OnePlus 6 will use WiFi and your 4G LTE data connection for location data and info.

Turn Off OnePlus 6 Features You Don’t Need

When it comes down to it the screen is your biggest enemy. Then, some of the extra features or controls added by OnePlus. While some of them are great, others keep the phone awake for no reason and can hurt battery life. As you saw from our battery usage image above, the Face Unlock feature was using more battery than we expected.

So, turn off features you don’t need or don’t plan on using. While Face Unlock is nice, the fingerprint scanner is plenty fast too. It won’t hurt battery life either. Then, other things like gesture controls, Google Assistant “voice detection” and features in the Settings  > Advanced category can drain your battery too. Go to Advanced and turn off anything you don’t plan on using. Remember, everything adds up over the long haul or an entire 8-hour work day.

While it won’t give you better battery life, go to the calculator and type in “1+=”.

OnePlus 6 Battery Saver & Gaming Modes

Another idea is to take advantage of the battery saver or Gaming Do-Not-Disturb modes. Like we see with every phone, OnePlus has a pretty capable battery saver mode. It’s basically the stock Android 8 Oreo battery saver feature with improvements on Android 9. This means it will reduce performance, vibrations, screen brightness, background data, and a few other things only when necessary.

Set the phone to turn on battery saver mode around 15% remaining, or even 10%, and only get the bare minimum controls in order to keep the phone running as long as possible. You can customize when it turns on, and OnePlus lets you customize it a little bit. Like disabling the Lift to wake screen feature.

We also recommend download Snapdragon BatteryGuru. This app learns your habits as you use the device, and starts turning things like WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and other modes on or off for you. Basically, automating a bunch of small tweaks that will add up over time. This lets you focus on things other than tinkering with settings and controls.

Then, OnePlus added a “Gaming DND mode” that basically stops any and all notifications while you’re gaming. Even if you’re not gaming, this will keep the screen off when you need to save as much battery as possible by limiting all notifications or messages. Or, just switch the alert slider to off.

OnePlus 6 Android 9 Pie Battery Life Problems

We love how fast OnePlus delivered Android 9 Pie, but it’s not all praises. Some people are dealing with abnormal battery drain since getting a slice of Google’s new software. In fact, more and more reports at the forum suggest battery life needs some work. That’s why the OP6 Android Pie beta is already up to beta 6. Expect an official OnePlus 6 Android 9 Pie maintenance update (OxygenOS 9.0.x) in November-December with lots of fixes.

Those dealing with poor battery life on Android 9 will want to look at this generic Android Pie problems guide. Being early software things will get fixed, but we mention some of the biggest complaints and offer resources to fix them.

Other OnePlus 6 Battery Tips & Tricks

At the end of the day, battery life always comes down to how you use your phone. Everyone uses their phone differently. Some are hard on phones and have 5 hours screen-on time, while others use them sparingly. There is a huge thread at the OnePlus 6 forums all about battery life, and how to prolong usage. Skim over that thread and try any suggestions. The company added a lot of battery optimizations to the June 9th OxygenOS 5.1.6 update, and even more with the September and November patches.

Another app worth downloading is BetteryBatteryStats. This program shows you what apps use what, what you use the most, and will highlight any potential problems. It’s a pretty powerful app that will give you more insight into your usage habits.

Read: 10 Common OnePlus 6 Problems & Quick Fixes

For now, wait for the next few software updates from OnePlus. They’re one of the best manufacturers when it comes to fast, helpful, and timely software changes. We know they just released a new OnePlus 6T, but the phone is still new and they’ll still fully support it with fixes and software updates.

Before you go, get a screen protector for your OnePlus 6. Then, drop a comment below with any questions or concerns about the OP6 or its battery life.