In this article, we are providing with the ultimate collection of tips & tricks on how to get the best possible performance and Battery life out of your Lumia (Windows Phone) devices. This is based on our continuous use of many Lumia devices running Windows Phone 8.1 with both Lumia Cyan and Lumia Denim firmwares.
Following these tips, one could easily improve the Battery life by nearly 5-10 hrs on average.
Charging the Battery:
Always charge the battery Fully, if possible. It helps the Lumia (Windows Phone) battery in managing its peek performance for longer.
Glance Screen and WiFi search settings:
- If your device support “Glance screen” and you want to use it, better put it to “peek”. This allows you to bring the Glance screen live by waving your hand over the device, when needed.
- Turn WiFi search off, when you don’t need it, by clicking on WiFi quick action button or by going to Settings—>WiFi. Trust me it helps in saving lots of battery juice.
Brightness control, Double tap to wake up, Screen time-out, Battery Saver:
- Always use native Battery saver and set it as “when battery is less than 20%”. It prolongs battery life by hours and can save you hassles when you are stuck without a battery charging source for sometime
- Go to Settings –> brightness. Make sure that Automatically adjust is switched to Off. Switch Level to low, and switch Automatically adjust to On again.
- Go to Settings –> display, and switch Battery Saver brightness to On. This allows battery saver to reduce brightness when it becomes active.
- Go to Settings –>Touch and switch off “Double tap to wake up”, if you don’t need it and you devices supports it
- Go to Settings –> Lock Screen and set screen time-out as 1 min.
Cortana, Background Tasks and Battery:
- You can put the location off when not needed, though for Cortana to work it should be on.
- Background tasks enhancement in Windows Phone 8.1 has made more tasks running in Background possible. This is a big Battery killer and more the number of background active apps, faster your battery dies. So, you can manage which tasks to be run in background by going to Settings—>Battery Saver—->usage or check the video demo and tutorial here.
- You can set Cortana and other apps to “not running in background” when “Battery Saver” kicks in. Windows Phone 8.1 comes with ability to always allow apps to run in background (always allowed), even when the “Battery Saver” is on. Go to Settings—>Battery Saver—->usage, tap on the app and uncheck “Allow this app to run in the background when Battery saver is on” or check the video demo and tutorial here.
Sounds and Notifications control:
- Go to Notification + actions in settings. Here you can control for which apps you need notifications and you can also manage sounds for push notifications.
- You can also set whether you want to play sound for Key press, camera shutter and System alerts. Check the video demo and tutorial here.
Close active apps, Switch off Bluetooth & NFC, Set Mail syncing:
- Go to Settings -> and check whether Bluetooth and NFC (Tap to send) is switched on. These should be ideally switched off, if not being used.
- Close all the apps actively running in the background, if you don’t plan to use your phone for sometime, otherwise apps like Map, Drive keep on running in background and kill the Battery. You can long press on back button to go to the Multitasking UI and either tap on X to the close the apps or simply swipe down. Check video demo & tutorial here.
- If you have many mail accounts syncing on your phone, you can kill the battery really fast. Go to Mail–>Settings–>Sync settings and set download new email or content frequency as 30 min or more. It will help a lot.
These tips should help in prolonging battery life on your Windows Phone 8.1 running device. Keep in mind one or more of above tips may be what you need for your device and thus all are important. In case you have tried everything and are still facing issues with Battery life, try a soft reset or even if that doesn’t work try a hard reset.
But we believe that above tips should help in most of the cases. So, do let us know, whether you found these tips useful and share if you have any Battery life tip of yours!!
