- Joined
- Oct 6, 2011
- Messages
- 5,782
- Reaction score
- 2,133
The Galaxy S6 Edge has to be my favorite flagship of 2015! I have not always been a huge fan of Samsung devices, but this year they really got it right! That being said no phone is perfect not even the S6 / S6 Edge. What is the downfall of the S6? Its the measly 2550mah non removable battery. We wanted a slimmer more premium device, and that came at the cost of a smaller battery. I can't say that I would have been happier with a bigger battery if it meant a thicker phone with a plastic removable back. This is the cost of good design. However the smaller battery means that we have to be mindful of how we expend our juice, especially for those of us coming from a much larger device like the Note 4 or the Nexus 6. Below are some quick tips that should improve your S6 battery life. Many of these tips will work for any smartphone as well.
1. Use power saving mode. This is a feature that is built in specifically for helping you make your battery life last as long as possible. The S6 comes with two modes, power saving and ultra power saving. Power saving limits the max cpu performance, reduces screen brightness, turns off touchkey backlights, turns off vibration feedback, and reduces screen timeout time. Ultra Power Saving Mode is a bit more extreme. It applys a grayscale theme and limits the number of usable apps. It also turns off location services, turns off mobile data when the screen is off, turns off bluetooth and wifi. These modes are especially great for when you drop below 25% but still need to make it through the day.
2. Probably the easiest and best way to save battery life is to adjust your screen brightness. Most of you probably have your brightness set to auto brightness which means your screens brightness adjust to the surrounding light, becoming brighter when its bright and dimmer when the area you are in is darker. I always keep all of my phone's screens at less than 30% at all times. I find that I can still see my display outside in the sunlight at 30%. If I am indoors i turn the brightness down further. This doesn't bother me as it is more comfortable for me to view my screen at a lower brightness. Full brightness just burns my eyeballs!
3. Use the "Battery" menu in settings to monitor your phone's use of the battery. If you find there is an app that is constantly eating up a high percentage of your daily battery power it may be time to get rid of that app, or update it or do some investigating into why it eats up so much battery.
4. Disable preinstalled apps. Verizon is pretty bad about filling up their devices with useless bloatware. Android now has the option built in to disable these apps. While this won't free up any memory on your phone it will keep those apps from running in the background.
5. If you are still finding that you run out of battery power super early you will want to make use of the adaptive fast charging. Luckily Samsung decided to include their fast charger unlike HTC. Fast charging will charge your phone to 50% in half an hour. This is not ideal since batteries have a certain amount of charge cycles before they go dead and by charging more than once a day you are essentially killing the life of your battery over the long haul. Still it is better than having a dead phone by 5pm.
Can you think of any other battery saving tips. What has been your experience with battery life on the latest batch of flagship devices?
