DigitFreak

Tag: battery

  • 5 things you should do to improve your iOS7’s battery life

    5 things you should do to improve your iOS7’s battery life

    Apple’s new iOS 7 was released publicly few weeks ago, but it has been a tremendous pain if we count it in the discussion of battery performance.

    There’s no doubt iOS 7 is an amazing improvement over its predecessors by offering fabulous features and crazy new options to interact with the device. New gesture based techniques and wireless data transfer mechanism keep us stunned every time we use them.

    No matter how much if hate it for few things that went wrong, you still don’t want to go back to the same old chunky, fat and boring OS that has been exactly the same since the beginning.

    See Also: 5 things about iOS7 that you’ll hate and how to fix them

    So, what actually making the iOS 7 ‘wanna’ go back to the iOS 6.1? You guessed it! As discovered by Ars Technica, iOS 7 kills battery life faster than iOS 6.1 on every device you can use it on. Here are some tips to keep you happy.

     

    1. Turn Off Parallax and motion

    Do you love your new iOS 7 right? It got all those funky moves and 3D user interface that gives you a new feel and for the first time a new environment to work upon. But, these effects and animations sucks juice from your battery. We don’t actually need to turn it off completely, but you can reduce the effects to minimize the parallax usage.

    Go To Settings > General > Accessibility > Toggle Reduce Motion.

    It will stop the parallax effect, and you will notice some minor battery improvements.

    If you have noticed, the new moving backgrounds that iOS 7 offers are super cool, but they will totally kill your battery. To change your iPhone’s wallpaper, just

    Go to Settings > then Wallpapers & Brightness. Try out one of the beautiful new static wallpapers or use a photo of your own.

     

    2. Tell iOS 7 exactly what to index for spotlight

    ios7 spotlightiOS 7 enables users to search for anything from the home screen of your phone, with the new gesture-enabled “spotlight” feature. As the name suggests, the spotlight can help you search pretty much every part of your phone, from notes to music, to mail by simply activating it from the pull-down gesture on your home screen. Convenient right? but, it sucks battery because searching and indexing data requires high processing power, and thus reducing the battery juice.

    So, what really you can do to minimize this? Fortunately, you can change exactly what Spotlight looks in when you use it for search.

    Go to Settings > General > Spotlight Search

    You can specify what you want to index and search for.

     

    3.Turn Off Bluetooth, Airdrop and WiFi whenever not in use

    iphone 5 ios7 control centerIt is a general suggestion to turn off your Bluetooth, WiFi, and other non-frequent mobile modules to save some battery juice. You can keep these features turned off when not in use – and yes, you can live with it.

    iOS 7 also introduced a new Airdrop feature that allows you to quickly and easily share files with your friends’ iPhone. This is only available for iPhone 5 and newer. It is a great feature, but you don’t need to keep it on when you’re not using it. It’s not like the girl sitting beside you in a public transport is going to share some awesome shots with you. Just, minimize the chances of sharing unwanted stuff and still keeping your phone battery up to the par by simply turning it off when not in use.

    If you are a lazy one, Apple has introduced a new Control Center that you can activate by simply applying the “pull up” gesture from the bottom of your screen. It has most basic functions listed to be toggled, with ease.

     

    4.Turn you brightness down and disable Auto Downloads

    This is a classic way to save battery life, and it’s been made even easier with iOS 7. Instead of going through Settings to get to your brightness, you can change your screen’s brightness from the Control Center. Just pull up from the bottom of any screen.

    Your iPhone now downloads app updates from the App Store automatically, draining your battery. This feature also automatically downloads purchases from iTunes and the App Store you’ve made on different devices to your iPhone, which you may not want. To stop this and just update your apps and music manually:

    Go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > and scroll to Automatic Downloads. There you can turn Automatic Downloads off for music, apps and books.

     

    5. Turn Off Frequent Locations

    ios7 location servicesYour iOS 7 powered device now tracks your every move to “provide locations related information.” It might be useful for some, but I always prefer to minimize the tracking events by my digital devices. I am sure most of the DigitFreak followers believes the same.

    Tracking your device and location, drains the battery and yet it is not very much beneficial for you unless you are a sole traveler and are really keen to know your history of daily activities.

    Go to Settings > Privacy > then Location Services. There, scroll all the way to the bottom and hit System Services.

    There you can also turn off Location Based iAds (ads from Apple based on your frequent locations). Then go to Frequent Locations and turn that off, too.

  • [How to] Some common pratices to Keep your Laptop healthy

    You love your Gadgets and so does your gadgets in return, by providing the best platform they can. Every Gadget you use does their job, what they are best at and it is your responsibility to keep them healthy.

    Laptops are more delicate objects which performs jobs which are impossible without them. You get most of your work done by it and it never complains, except in some situation where you are the only one “guilty”. You have to take care of it at all situations and not to act lazy.

    Here are some common pratices you can adapt to  take care of your Laptop (or any other similar Gadget):

    • Keep it clean: When you get your new gadget you keep it as if it’s a “King of the world” and after few months it’s your “servant”? You have to change this attitude. Your gadget is your property and it is your responsibility to keep it clean. Always clean your gadgets twice a month for longer life span, cleaner you keep it longer it will be available for you and do your dirty jobs done.  Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol.  This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.
    • Do not use improper sanitation: ok, i am getting little into vacubular disaster, but you have to understand how delicate your gadgets are. They seem tough from outside but are never from inside. Never use manufactured detergents or any other similar household cleaner which contains acetone, ammonia, or alcohol, it can ruin the beautiful coating on your laptop or any other gadget.
    • React to the accidents immediately: You dropped your laptop, spilled water on it, bumped it on the desk or it is just banged against the wall, always react to such situations immediately. When you bump your laptop on the floor or spilled water on it, immediately remove the battery and check if anything damaged from the outside or clean the water immediately and make it dry (using your hair dryer or just the natural sunlight will do). Never act lazy. Some people suggests that you can place your laptop in a bag of rice, which helps soaking the water.
    • Never leave your laptop unattended for longer: You don’t use your laptop at regular intervals, well that could be the problem, specially when you live at someplace where climate is not stable (sudden temprature drops or environment change). Never leave your laptop in too cold or too hot situation, it might crash your harddisk. Yes you heard it right. Your hard drive can expand and fail in the heat and freeze in the cold if left unattended. Just like liquid, heat, cold, and your laptop are not good bedfellows. Not only do hot and freezing temps suck the life out of your battery, but they also cause damage to your internal components.
    • Always use Shutdown button: Some people just put their laptop on hibernation or standby mode. Well these options can come handy at some situations when you are in a hurry, but making it a habbit isn’t a good step for your laptop. Always use proper “Shut Down” process after work, which can help protect your internal delicate components.
    • Use Anti-Virus: Some people thinks if they are not using the internet or are just so careful they won’t need an Anti-virus to protect their laptop or computers. Well, this assumption is totally wrong. You must have a gatekeeper to protect your castle, it is not like your home where you live. Your computer stores sensitive data and some personal stuffs which you won’t like the world to see. For such purpose their must be a proper Anti-virus installed on your computer or laptop (DigitFreak suggests “Kaspersky Internet security 2012”). Some virus or malwares are capable of destroying your hard disk or other internal componetns, so better protect it. 
    • Defrag regularly:  The faster your hard drive does its work – less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery.  Make your hard drive as efficient as possible by defragging it regularly. (but not while it’s on battery of course!) Mac OSX is better built to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for Apple systems.
    • Dim your screen: Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen.  Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance.  Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.
    • Protect your investment:  If you’re going to be lugging a laptop around, make sure it’s protected in a padded case.
    • Cut down external devices: USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery.  Remove or shut them down when not in use.  It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop battery.