This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Maintaining an iPhone’s Power
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Obviously, an iPhone with a dead battery isn’t good for much. As you use your iPhone, you should keep an eye on its battery status. As long as the Battery icon is at least partially filled, you’re okay. As the iPhone gets low on power, the Battery Status icon becomes almost empty. Two separate warnings alert you when the battery lowers to 20% and then again at 10%.
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When you see the low-power warnings, you can tap Low Power Mode to have your iPhone run in this mode that reduces power use to extend the life of your battery. It does this by slowing down the phone’s processor, stopping automatic downloads, stopping email push, and shutting down any other processes that consume lots of power. Although this reduces the performance of your phone, it can significantly extend the time until your iPhone runs out of power. While in Low Power Mode, the Battery Status icon is yellow.
If you keep going, whether you choose to run in Low Power Mode or not, the iPhone eventually runs out of power and shuts down. Once it shuts down because of a low battery, you won’t be able to unlock or use it until you connect it to a charger and the battery has recharged enough for the phone to operate, which can take a few minutes. If you try to use it before it has enough power, you see the red, empty Battery icon on the screen.
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Fortunately, it’s easy to avoid running out of power by keeping your iPhone charged. Connect the iPhone to the charger or a computer using the USB cable, and it charges automatically. Or, if you have an iPhone 8, 8 Plus, or X, you can place the phone backside down on a Qi wireless charger to charge it. While the phone is charging, you see the Phone Charging icon in the upper-right corner of the screen, and if you wake the iPhone, a large Battery icon showing the relative state of the battery appears on its screen. When charging is complete, the Battery Status icon replaces the Phone Charging icon in the upper-right corner of the screen, the large Battery icon disappears, and you see the iPhone’s wallpaper if it’s locked, or you see whatever screen you happen to be using if it isn’t locked.
If your iPhone moved into Low Power Mode automatically before you started charging it, it also moves out of Low Power Mode automatically when it has been recharged sufficiently. When this happens, you see an onscreen message saying that Low Power Mode has been turned off.
Setting Low Power Mode and Getting Information About Battery Use
You can configure and get information about your iPhone’s battery by doing the following:
Open the Settings app and tap Battery.
To manually activate Low Power Mode, set its switch to on (green); to leave it in automatic mode, skip to step 4.
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To return your phone to normal operation, set the Low Power Mode switch to off (white).
To see the percentage of charge remaining along with the Battery icon, slide the Battery Percentage switch to on (green). The percentage of charge remaining appears to the left of the Battery Status icon at the top of the screen. (This happens automatically when you put the iPhone into Low Power Mode.)
Swipe up the screen to see the BATTERY USAGE section. This provides information about the percentage of power that apps have used over the last 2 hours, which can come in handy when you want to make your battery last longer (see the next task for details).
Tap the Clock icon to see the amount of time the app has been running to use the percentage of power it has consumed. You see this both for on-screen or background activity.
Swipe all the way up the screen to see information about the time since the last full charge that your iPhone has been in use or has been in standby.
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Making the Battery Last Longer
If your iPhone’s battery doesn’t seem to last very long, the issue is likely that a service is very active and is requiring near-constant activity. Common causes of this problem are Push being turned on for an account that has a lot of activity, an application using GPS capabilities, and so on. Try these steps to find and stop the source of the power drain:
Use steps 5 and 6 in the previous task to identify apps using a large percentage of power.
If you identify a power-hungry app that you don’t want to use any more, press the Touch ID/ Home button twice (all models except iPhone X) or swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause toward the middle of the screen (iPhone X) to open the App Switcher.
Swipe to the left or right on the App Switcher until the power-hog’s screen is front and center.
Swipe up on the app’s screen to shut it down. You can use your iPhone to see if that was the cause of the rapid power drain. If so, you’re done. If not, you can continue with these steps to conserve power.
Open the Settings app and tap Accounts & Passwords.
Tap Fetch New Data (if you have a lot of accounts, you might need to swipe up the screen to see it).
Slide the status switch for Push to off (white). This disables Push functionality. To update your information, set a Fetch schedule using the controls on the bottom of the Fetch New Data screen or just open an app, such as Mail.
Turn off any transmitting and receiving functions that you aren’t using, such as Bluetooth. Using the Control Center is a handy way to do this quickly.
Use your iPhone to see if the battery lasts longer. If it does, you know one of the changes you made was the reason; you can either leave the offending source of power drain shut down or just be aware when you are using it. If the battery still doesn’t last very long, it might have a problem and you should contact Apple for assistance.
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