Android Longer Battery Life Guide

Hello 🤭. In this guide, you will be informed about how to have longer battery life on your Android device. Let's begin!

Factors That Cause Your Battery to Drain Faster

• Location services
• Auto Sync
• Bluetooth
• Keeping mobile data and Wi-Fi enabled at the same time
• Keeping brightness too bright
• Keeping apps running in the background
• Watching videos at high resolutions
• Performing resource intensive tasks a lot - such as gaming, especially gaming with high settings
• Of course these are known factors and managing them should be your first step for a longer lasting battery. Now let's get into more detailed parts.

Major Suggestion - Install A Custom ROM (Optional)

• First of all, I definitely suggest you to install a custom ROM because stock ROMs are full of bloatware (unwanted apps) and custom ROMs are more lightweight and generally barebone. The ROMs I can suggest are LineageOS and CrDroid.
• If you want to keep using your current ROM, you can skip to the next step.
• Assuming you installed one of these ROMs or any other Vanilla ROM, I am continuing with my next suggestion after installing a Vanilla ROM: MicroG

MicroG

• MicroG is an open source re-implementation of Google services and libraries that respects your privacy and consumes way less CPU and other resources compared to Google services and libraries which granted almost twice better battery life on my Xiaomi Redmi Note 8. All you have to do is installing .apk files from the website. It is so easy! Also, Huawei devices can use MicroG! For further information, you can follow my MicroG Guide.

Other Suggestions - For Everyone Regardless of the ROM

• My first suggestion is reducing screen resolution. It doesn't help with battery life drastically but it sure helps. However, it drastically improves performance since your CPU and GPU work under less loads. So, it's good both ways.
  • If your manufacturer lets you to reduce screen resolution, choose the reduced screen resolution. If not, you can still make it using ADB but you need a computer and your phone must be rooted for it. However, AOSP ROMs don't require root for it.
    • You can install, set up and connect your phone to ADB following this guide
    • After connecting, google your phone model and check its native resolution. For my case, my phone Xiaomi Redmi Note 8's native resolution is 1080x2340 which makes it 1080p, so I'll reduce to 720p to balance quality and battery life.
    • After the step, execute this command to change screen resolution:
      • adb shell wm size [resolution] - for Xiaomi Redmi Note 8, 720x1565 is an ideal value for resolution. You can experiment it to make it fit your screen.
    • After reducing resolution, you can notice that items on your screen now look way bigger. So, we should change DPI (dots per inch) to balance it executing this command:
      • adb shell wm density [DPI value] - for Xiaomi Redmi Note 8, 270 is an ideal value for DPI. You can experiment it for your screen.
    • If the commands fail on your phone, you should root your phone first, and execute the commands below in order.
      • adb shell
      • su - during this command, you will be asked to grant Shell root permissions in your phone. You should grant the permission.
      • wm size [resolution]
      • wm density [DPI value]
• My second suggestion is using battery saver mode. However, if it doesn't specify that the battery saver restricts CPU cores, you don't have to enable it since it only restricts background processes which doesn't help with battery life at all.
  • For example, many Samsung phones' battery savers restrict CPU cores while Redmi Note 8's battery saver only restricts background processes. So, if your battery saver restricts CPU cores, use it.
  • If not, you can still restrict CPU and GPU usage using a kernel manager. However, your device must be rooted!. If you won't root your device, unfortunately you can't restrict CPU and GPU usage for a better battery life.
    • If your device is rooted, install a kernel manager. My suggestion is SmartPack Kernel Manager from F-Droid. Simply open the app, grant root/superuser permissions and choose the lowest values for your CPU and GPU (you don't have to choose the lowest values if you don't want to maximize battery life because you need performance too). Make sure to enable Apply on boot options for both sections.
• The last important suggestion is checking your battery health and if it's lower than 80%, replacing the battery. You can see your battery health installing AccuBattery and charging your phone from 14% (or lower) to 100%.
• Other suggestions I can make are basic things like using wallpapers with darker colors, limiting battery usage for apps (app battery optimizations), using web versions of some apps you use by adding the websites to home screen as a shortcut and avoiding factors that cause your battery to drain faster etc. Also, keep your battery level between 20% and 80%, it is scientifically proved that Li-Ion batteries work the most efficient when battery levels are kept between 20% and 80%. It also helps with your battery health to not reduce.

Conclusion

This guide was about how to get a longer battery life on your Android device. I hope it has been useful for you. Have a nice day! 🐧