Longer Android battery life – top tips from Vodafone

Here’s how to activate Android features that can extend your battery life and increase the lifespan of your device.

At Vodafone, we’re building digital societies where everyone is connected – but that should not come at a cost to the planet.

Smartphones are a critical part of our business. Unfortunately, smartphone batteries do not last forever. They are complicated bits of technology, designed to last a specific number of charge cycles – the number of charge times from zero-power to full-power before their capacity falls to below 80%.

Luckily for Android users, there are a series of features that can be activated to help extend battery life between charges and increase the lifespan of a device. This ultimately means fewer old phones being recycled and less new phones being produced, helping create a more sustainable, circular economy for the smartphone market.

Here are some simple features you can activate to help extend Android battery life.

How to use Android Adaptive Battery & Brightness to save battery life

Android’s Adaptive Battery feature learns how you use your device and prioritises battery power for the apps and services you care about. This limits the drain on your battery from apps you don’t use as often, even when your phone is locked or put away.

Adaptive Brightness works in a similar way, automatically adjusting your screen brightness to match your environment (e.g. outdoors, indoors, day, night) and activity (e.g. gaming, streaming, searching).

Together, these features help monitor your device activity and help optimise its health. Here’s how to switch them on:

How to turn on Dark Theme for Android and Google Maps

The empty white space within apps on your phone display can drain battery power. Android’s Dark Theme helps solve that problem by turning your phone and app backgrounds black.

Here’s how to turn it on:

Android’s Battery Saver

This feature allows you to manually control when your phone reserves its battery power – particularly useful if your battery is getting low and you don’t have access to a charger.

You can adjust the settings to suit your preferences.

Here’s how to activate it:

Doze Mode (automatic)

Doze Mode helps extend battery life by managing how apps behave when a device is not connected to a charger.

Doze Mode does this by reducing battery consumption when a device remains unused for a long period of time.

Your device enters this mode automatically when it’s not being used.

Small steps can make a big difference when it comes to looking after our planet. Activating simple features on a smartphone to extend battery life can help increase its total lifespan. This in turn can help reduce global demand for new smartphones to be produced and contribute to a more sustainable, circular economy for mobile devices.

When does my phone battery need to be recycled?

Common signs your phone battery may be on the decline include:

Vodafone is committed to addressing the climate emergency and mitigating the environmental impact of our business growth wherever possible.

Google, Android, Google Play and Google Chrome are trademarks of Google LLC.