IPhone (Remote to your life) battery still not performing like it should? Latest Motus (Genius Bar) Tips to save you the Trip…

I just got back from the Apple store in Soho today and thought I’d write an untraditional blog post, meaning it’s not directly related to AdTech.  This is for the “remote control to your life”, at least that’s what Gary Vaynerchuck likes to call it.  If your remote battery (iPhone) is not lasting very long, it becomes that much harder to control your life ;-).  My remote is an iPhone 6s plus, which I love.  Mainly because of the big screen, the now antiquated audio jack and iOS 10.3.3 (well that went away after an unexpected and unwanted update to 11.2.1).    Honestly, 10.3.3 is the more stable, less battery hogging and snappier OS for the iPhone 6s plus, at least for now.

So to make a long story short, I stopped by my local Apple store to check on new video equipment and got an appointment with a very knowledgeable tech at the Genius Bar.  I wasn’t alone ranting about battery performance on pre iPhone 8 devices.  Nearly all the people at my table were there to take advantage of the $29 battery replacement offer that just came out.  I asked the tech if there was anything wrong with my battery and if there’s anything I could do to make it run as long as it did on a single charge as it did with iOS 10.3.3.   He did a battery diagnosis which showed that my battery is relatively healthy holding a 93% of charge on the battery.  The way I understood it is that a new iPhone starts with 100% (he said some may have more than 100% capacity which is weird) and then as your phone ages, the battery capacity decreases (almost as fast as a new car depreciates off the dealer lot.. ok he didn’t say that).  He also said that in iPhone 6’s and after there is software that slows the phone down once your battery reaches a certain percentage.  Hence if your phone has lower capacity it reaches the threshold for throttling the processing power faster and that’s why they’re offering these great deals on replacement batteries to maintain the performance of your phone… at least that’s the way I understood it.

Since it was identified that my battery is relatively healthy.. I was really curious if there’s anything I could do to optimize my battery performance short of downgrading to iOS 10.3.3 which isn’t an option anymore unless you jailbreak the device.  Here are some tweaks you could do to decrease the load on your battery and make your phone last longer on a single charge… dramatically longer.

 

Here they are, directly from the Genius Bar to your Ears.. no appointment necessary.

1. Did you know you can turn off Bluetooth indefinitely?   Yep, not just for 24hours.   It’s a battery hog and here’s how: Settings ->Bluetooth.
2. Did you know that by default almost all your apps are tracking your GPS location regardless if you have them on?  Well you can turn that off and they still will work.  Here’s how: Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services.
3. Did you know that all your apps are refreshing in the background.  They’re constantly checking the Appstore if there’s a newer version and that’s a battery hog.  Unless you always want the latest version (you can do it yourself manually), you can save yourself a lot of bandwidth power by turning that off.  Here’s how: Settings-> General-> Background App Refresh ->Turn it off.
4. Did you know that you can still adjust your screen brightness and you don’t have to leave it on auto adjustment mode?  The function is buried all the way in the least expected place to turn that feature off, which is on by default.  Here’s how:   Settings-> General->Accessibility ->Display Accommodations
5. Here’s the grand finale.. Did you know that you can turn Low Power Mode on All The Time and it won’t dramatically affect your phone experience or affect getting notifications from text messages, email (Gmail) or other apps?  Typically it will kick in when you reach the lower limits of your battery charge, but with this simple switch you can have the benefits of optimized battery performance All The Time.  Here’s how: Settings -> Battery-> Switch on Low Power Mode.

 

I hope this saves you a trip to the Genius Bar and gives you more enjoyment out of your non iPhone X iPhone (you know, the one you wish worked as it did when you just bought it, about a year ago ;-).    If you know of other tips and tricks to save battery drain on the iPhone please share them in the comments below.

Thanks!