Choose from the options bellow only what is ok for you and your phone.
1. Lower the screen brightness
The brightness of the screen is likely the number one battery killer. If you would like to increase the battery life of your phone, the first thing that you should consider is lowering the screen brightness. This single action will likely have the most impact on the battery life of your Nexus 4. If you are hoping to get more than a day’s worth of battery life, you should set your brightness to “Auto brightness” or to a lower manual setting.
2. Minimize LTE/Bluetooth/GPS/NFC/Wifi usage.
Disable NFC and Bluetooth by default permanently, just enable when you used it. After the screen brightness, network connectivity probably takes up the most battery. LTE uses more battery than 3G and 3G uses more battery than 2G, but we’re going to leave LTE enabled–as the phone should still be enjoyable to use. There’s no point in buying a high end phone if you’re going to disable everything that makes it enjoyable or useful. Nevertheless, if you don’t currently need it, leave Bluetooth, GPS, NFC and Wifi off. NFC allows you to transfer files to other phones by placing the phones back to back. However, at this point in time, NFC has limited uses, therefore to turn it off, go into “Settings” then “More…” and uncheck “NFC”.
3. Disable Google Now
Google Now is kinda neat, but it’s always searching for things to show you, so you can save some battery by disabling it. We don’t use it very often, so we won’t miss it. You can disable Google Now by swiping up with the desktop with two fingers. Click on “…”, select “Settings”, select “Google Now”, toggle “On” until it switches to “Off”.
4. Enable Airplane Mode in radio dead zones
If you’re in an area that has poor or no reception, you can consider enabling Airplane mode. The weaker the cell reception, the more effort your phone has to put in to try to lock onto a signal, thus the more battery is consumed. An example of airplane mode usage, if you’re going to spend the next hour in a subway with no cell phone reception, you can put your phone in Airplane mode during the commute so that it stops trying to lock onto a cell tower for the next hour. Also, if you sit in an office all day and you have poor cell reception there, that may cause a lot of battery usage. There’s not much you can do about getting a weak signal in the office, but you should know that it’s a factor.
5. Monitor battery usage
When you’re trying to increase the battery life of your phone, one of the first things that you need to do is figure out what is consuming the most energy. Install an app such as GSam Battery Monitor (Free) or BetterBatteryStats ($2.83) and use your phone as usual and it will tell you which apps are consuming the most battery. Various apps “wake up” your phone when it’s trying to sleep, therefore preventing your phone from sleeping for an extended period of time. You have to uninstall those apps if you want decent battery life.
6. Monitor CPU usage
The Nexus 4 CPU’s are clocked at 1.5GHz, but they don’t always run at that speed. The higher the clock speed, the more responsive the system and the more energy it uses. The lower the clock speed, the less responsive the system and the less energy it uses. It’s a balancing act. CPU Spy Plus (free) keeps track of how often your phone is running at what clock speed. Ideally, you would like to see something like below, where the majority of the time, the phone is in “deep sleep” or in the 384MHz zone. The phone uses minimal amount of energy during “deep sleep” and it’s an indicator that nothing is waking it up repeatedly.
7. Disable Autosync
Autosync can use quite a lot of battery life, therefore we’re going to turn off everything in Google, except for Gmail. This way you still get your email pushed to you, but it reduces the numbers of syncs and hopefully some battery. Go through your other “accounts” and decide if you really need them to sync.
8. Use a static wallpaper
We all love live wallpapers, but they use a lot of energy unfortunately. The most battery efficient wallpaper is a static wallpaper. You can use any image or any solid color that you like as the Nexus 4 has an IPS display, so it doesn’t make a difference. If your phone has a Super AMOLED or OLED display (i.e. Galaxy SIII, Galaxy Nexus), it would be beneficial to use a black background as for those types of screens, it takes about 6x less energy to display a black pixel than a white pixel. However, since the Nexus 4 has an IPS display, the wallpaper color makes no difference. (source, source)
9. Uninstall unnecessary apps
Uninstall apps that you don’t need. The more apps you have, the more internet data requests your phone may make, also the more likely one of your apps will wake up your phone from deep sleep. If you haven’t used an app in the last month, uninstall it. Consider uninstalling Facebook, Google+, Whatsap and Skype. Those apps can consume a lot of energy.
10. Lock timeout
Set an automatic lock timeout of 15 seconds or less. Go to “Settings”, “Security” then “Automatically Lock”.
11. Disable widgets that you don’t need
The more widgets you have on your screen, the more battery will be consumed. This is especially true for widgets that refresh or fetch data often.
12. Do not use a 3rd party task killers to kill apps
Android is very good at managing resources. You will do more harm than good if you use task killers. Feel free to use the task manager that comes with Android, but avoid using 3rd party task killers (source, source)
13. Upload and sync only on Wi-Fi
If you use Google+ and Dropbox, set it so they only upload files on wifi (instead of cellular data)
14. Turn off sounds
We’ve turned off “Dial Pad Touch Sounds”, ”Touch Sounds”, ”Screen Lock Sounds” and “Sound on keypress”. To get there, go to “Settings” then “Sound” and “Settings” then “Language & Input” then “Android Keyboard”.
15. Turn off Vibrate and Haptic Feedback
Vibration and haptic feedback takes a lot of battery. Therefore, you can consider turning them off. You can turn off “Vibrate on Touch” and ”Vibrate on keypress”. We’ll leave “Vibrate on notification” and “Vibrate on notification” enabled, but it’s up to you. Go to “Settings” then “Sound” and “Settings” then “Language & Input” then “Android Keyboard”.
16. Install an ad blocking app
There are various apps that can block most ads in Android. I use something called AdFree (free), but a good alternative is AdAway (free) and Adblock Plus. These apps require root access to run. They will update the HOST file in Android, therefore blocking most ads from loading. Less internet requests should mean less battery usage. Google removed all 3 apps from the Google Play store (March 2013), therefore I updated the links to their homepages. You can just “sideload” the apps.
17. Set the date and time manually
This is probably overkill, but you can disable automatic date & time and time zone and set the time, date and time zone yourself in order to reduce internet updates. Go into “Settings” then “Date & time”
18. Turn Android debugging off
The argument goes that by enabling USB debugging, it starts the ADB server daemon and it’s waiting for requests. We’re not sure if there is any negative battery impact by leaving it enabled, but just to make sure, we’ll disable USB debugging. Go into “Settings” then “Developer Options”
19. Turn auto rotate screen off
You can also consider disabling auto-rate. When auto-rotate is enabled, internal sensors are activated to keep track of its angle. You may save some battery by disabling it.
20. Disable location settings
You can disable “Access to my location”, therefore apps won’t be able to use GPS or google’s location services via Wi-fi and cellular towers. If you need to use Google Maps or Navigation, just enable GPS as usual.
21. Install an efficient launcher
Nova Launcher Prime is coded very efficiently and one of the most popular. It can potentially save some battery life. Other alternative launchers can be found.
22. Disable animations
No matter which launcher you’re using, try to disable the scroll effect animations when changing home screens and between app drawer screens. The less animation, the better.
23. Reduce the number of home screens
If you can, reduce the number of home screens. We only have 1 blank home screen.
24. Add a “Go to sleep” button
Add a “Go to sleep” button to your Quick settings panel. Instead of pushing the power button and hoping that the phone goes to sleep, you can direct the phone to go to sleep via the Quick settings panel. To add the button (assuming you’re using CyanogenMod +10.1), go into “Settings”, then “System” then “Quick Settings panel” then “Tiles and layout” then push “+” to add the “Go to sleep” button.
25. Disable backup my data
You can disable “backup up my data” as well. Before you do a factory reset, you should turn this back on in order to resync your data.
26. Log out of Google Talk
Google Talk logs you in by default, therefore it keeps a constant data connection. If you don’t use Google Talk often, sign out.
27. Turn off LED notifications
Some say that the little LED light prevents the phone from sleeping. You can experiment and decide for yourself. Go into “Settings” then “System” then “Notification Light”.
28. Turn off battery life if low.
There’s no reason to have a light blink when your battery is low. The light will only make you drain more battery. Therefore, go into “Settings”, then “System” then “Battery Light”.
29. Disable notifications in Facebook
You should disable Messenger location services (which tells people where you are via GPS when you send someone a facebook message) and you can consider disabling notifications. You won’t receive facebook notifications anymore, but you can still update facebook manually when you’re in the facebook app. A lot of people advise against use the facebook app entirely if one is concerned with battery life and to only use the facebook mobile website, but we think that if you disable messenger location services and notifications, it should be okay to use. In the facebook app, go to “Account” then “App Settings”.
30. Disable Cloud Print and HP Print Service Plugin
By default these options are activated.
31. Install and use Snapdragon BatteryGuru free from Play Store.
Snapdragon BatteryGuru is a battery life saver app that extends battery performance and improves overall user experience by intelligently making changes that optimize device functionality in phones with Snapdragon mobile processors.
Go in 'Settings' and enable 'Low Power Mode', this option activates when power level goes under 20% and reduce:
- screen brightness
- screen timeout
- stopp app refresh
- disable mobile data
- disable Wi-Fi
- disable Bluetooth
- disable vibrate on touch
Go in 'Apps' tab and choose applications to refresh 'only when you open it'.
32. Install and use 'Night Mode' app free from Play Store.
Use it to put the phone to sleep during a night time interval (ex. from 23:00 to 06:00) and it will:
- disable notification light;
- disable haptic feedback;
- disable notification sounds;
- disable ringtone sounds;
- disable vibration and sounds;
- minimize brightness.
7:06 AM
danyrolux
