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iPhone/iOS 5 battery saver tips

Everyone wishes they could get more out of the battery built into their iPhone or iPad. Apple has set up the operating system with convenience in mind, and some of these settings don't necessarily give the best battery life possible. Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do to help you squeeze more out of each charge. Let’s take a look at a few things you can do.
By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer
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Everyone wishes they could get more out of the battery built into their iPhone or iPad. Apple has set up the operating system with convenience in mind, and some of these settings don't necessarily give the best battery life possible. 

Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do to help you squeeze more out of each charge. Let’s take a look at a few things you can do.
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Drop the screen brightness

One of the easiest ways to improve battery life on the iPhone is to drop the screen brightness. When I updated my iPhone 4 from iOS 4 to iOS 5, Apple jacked the brightness up to an unnecessary ’supernova’ level. Unless I’m outdoors, I usually keep my screen pretty dim.

Settings > Brightness

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Auto-Lock the screen

Another tip that makes a big difference is to lock the screen after a short interval. This helps conserve battery life because it turns the screen off when your handset is not in use. Set it to go off after a minute or two.

Settings > General > Auto-Lock

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Selectively turn off/on radios - WiFi

If you don’t need WiFi or Bluetooth or 3G, turn off the radios!

Settings > WiFi

While you’re here, disable Ask to Join Networks unless you use this feature often (just turn it on when you need to find a new network).

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Selectively turn off/on radios - 3G

If you don’t need WiFi or Bluetooth or 3G, turn off the radios!

Settings > General > Network

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Selectively turn off/on radios - Bluetooth

If you don’t need WiFi or Bluetooth or 3G, turn off the radios!

Settings > General > Bluetooth

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Enter the Airplane mode

If you want to disable all the radios on your iPhone, the easiest way to do this is using Airplane Mode:

Settings

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Location, location, location! #1

iO 5 bought with is a lot of Locations Services features, but all of these features have a negative effect on battery life.

Settings > General > Location Services

Either disable the whole lot, or selectively enable it for a specific set of apps. The more apps that can use Location Services, the more juice they’ll use.

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Location, location, location! #1

iOS 5 has some hidden tweaks too (hidden because you have to scroll to the bottom of the Locations Services screen and click on System Services to find them).

You can keep Location Based iAds and Setting Time Zone off permanently (your time is set by the local carrier automatically anyway).

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Notifications #1

Another revamped feature in iOS 5 is notifications. The new Notification Center in iOS 5 gives you a greater overview of what’s happening, but that comes at the cost of greater battery consumption.

Settings > Notifications

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Notifications #2

My advice here is two-fold. First, disable notification for any apps that you don’t care about by clicking on the individual apps and switching off Notification Center.

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Notifications #3

Second, control which apps are visible on the Lock Screen by switching off View in Lock Screen … the more you have showing, the more often your screen will flick into life, draining precious battery power.

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Disable diagnostics

Another possible battery-eating culprit in iOS 5 is Diagnostic & Usage data:

Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage

Set this to Don’t Send.

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Don’t go to the cloud

iCloud syncing takes a lot of juice too. Turn off what you’re not using at:

Settings > iCloud

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