Samsung Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge Tips and Tricks to Improve Battery Life

[dgstorm]

Here's a handy list of tweaks you can use to improve the battery life of your Samsung Galaxy S6 and/or S6 Edge. Some of these are fairly obvious and will work on any smartphone, but several of these are especially useful on the S6 series. Enjoy!

1. Lower the brightness of your display
2. Don't use a wallpaper that has a great deal of white in the background (white colors use the most power)
3. Don't use live wallpapers
4. Try using negative colors - found in Settings > Accessibility > Vision > Negative colors.
5. Turn off "Smart Stay" feature - this feature is pretty handy (your phone uses the camera to keep the display on while you are looking at it), but it does use up the juice
6. Switch to greyscale. This is if you want to be extra frugal. Go to Accessibility > Vision > Greyscale.
7. Turn off motions and gestures (if you don't care about the motion controls, this can save your battery) - Settings menu > Motions and gestures
8. Turn off always on WiFi scanning - Settings > Wi-Fi > More > Always allow scanning.

For those who want to truly maximize battery life, you can also turn on Restrict Performance. To do this go to Battery > Power saving mode. This severely hampers many of the features of your smartphone, so only do so when absolutely necessary. Here's what it turns off: limits CPU speeds, reduces screen brightness and frame rate, turns off the LED lights behind the capacitive keys on the lower bezel, gets rid of vibration feedback, and lowers the display timeout clock.

That's it for now. Feel free to add any tips that we might have missed to this thread, and let us know how you are enjoying your Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge.

 

[PereDroid]

In other words "Don't use all the features that helped you decide to get an S6 in the first place!".

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Turn you screen off when you set the phone down.

This one bothers me so much. I set my screen timeout to the max that it'll allow me to, but faithfully shut the screen off when I set it on a table/other surface, or put it in my pocket.

So often, I see someone with a(ny) smartphone use it, then set it down and let the screen timeout do the work of turning the screen off for them. The screen is a HUGE battery user. Why would you set the phone down somewhere, not using it, and let the biggest hog have all the juice it wants?

I've never ran any serious tests to see if/how much battery my method saves, but I like to assume it adds up over a full day of use.

 

[PereDroid]

I have my phone set to timeout in 15 seconds but to "STAY ON WHEN I'M LOOKING AT IT". I turn off the screen 98% of the time but if I don't for some reason.... 15 sec.

 

[wicked]

I have my phone set to timeout in 15 seconds but to "STAY ON WHEN I'M LOOKING AT IT". I turn off the screen 98% of the time but if I don't for some reason.... 15 sec.

Same here.

 

[cr6]

I'll have to try that. I have mine set to one minute, but yeah, I always hit the power button when setting my phone down. I figured the "smart stay" feature would use more battery with it being on, so I haven't utilized it since the first couple of weeks back when I bought my S3. Now I'm curious.

S5 tap'n

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I'll have to try that. I have mine set to one minute, but yeah, I always hit the power button when setting my phone down. I figured the "smart stay" feature would use more battery with it being on, so I haven't utilized it since the first couple of weeks back when I bought my S3. Now I'm curious.

S5 tap'n

I always assumed using that feature took a bit of battery as well. Maybe I'll try it too...

 

[akhenax]

Every since "Every Stripe" Live Wallpapers, I can't stand looking at a static image any longer.
I do like the option of using Negative colors. I wish that was a feature that was inherent in Android. In fact, any display that uses Amoled, should have this feature.

Oh and +1 on the 15 secs.