Apps & Software
If your phone dies by mid-afternoon, a few hungry apps are usually to blame. Here is how to find them and calmly rein them in without giving up features.
Open your phone's battery screen first, before you change a single setting: on iPhone go to Settings > Battery, and on Android go to Settings > Battery > Battery usage (Samsung phones hide it under Settings > Battery and device care > Battery). That ranked list tells you exactly where your charge went, and 90% of the time the fix is limiting background refresh and location for the two or three apps sitting near the top for the wrong reasons.
The list is only useful if you interpret it. On iPhone, Settings > Battery shows a "Last 24 Hours" and "Last 10 Days" toggle, plus a per-app percentage. Tap the "Show Activity" line to split each app into on-screen time versus background time. This distinction is the whole game. An app that used 30% while you actively stared at it for two hours is behaving normally. An app that used 15% almost entirely in the background, when you barely opened it, is the one wasting your battery.
On Android, Settings > Battery > Battery usage gives a similar ranking, and tapping an app shows a "Background usage" figure. Pixel and stock Android also expose "Screen time since full charge" so you can gut-check whether the display or the apps are the real problem.
Most people blame apps when the single biggest consumer is usually the screen itself. If your battery list is topped by "Home & Lock Screen," "Screen," or simply high on-screen time, no amount of app tweaking will help much. On an OLED panel (every recent iPhone Pro, Samsung Galaxy S and most flagships), the display draws power roughly in proportion to how many pixels are lit and how bright they are, so brightness and dark mode matter more than any background setting. Fix the screen before you touch the apps.
Once you have named the guilty apps, the fixes are quick and you almost never lose a feature you cared about.
Apps that fetch data while closed are the most common silent drain. On iPhone, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Set the top switch to "Wi-Fi" instead of "Wi-Fi & Cellular," then scroll the per-app list and turn off refresh for anything that does not need live updates — a shopping app, a game, most social apps. Leave it on for messaging and email. On Android, open Settings > Apps > [app] > Battery and choose "Restricted" or "Optimized" rather than "Unrestricted." The system's Adaptive Battery feature (Settings > Battery > Adaptive Battery) already learns which apps you rarely open and throttles them, so leave that on.
An app polling GPS constantly is a steady, expensive drain. On iPhone, Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services lists every app with its current permission. Change anything set to "Always" down to "While Using the App," and turn off "Precise Location" for apps that only need your rough area, like weather or news. On Android, Settings > Location > App permissions offers the same choices: "Allow all the time," "Allow only while using," and "Ask every time." Very few apps genuinely need "always." A ride app, a navigation app, and a find-my-device tool are the honest exceptions.
Every notification briefly wakes the screen and the cellular and Wi-Fi radios. A chat app pinging you 200 times a day costs more than its icon suggests. Trim it at Settings > Notifications (iPhone) or Settings > Notifications > App settings (Android), and turn off notifications for apps you never act on. This helps your attention as much as your battery.
5G can drain faster than LTE, especially indoors where the phone hunts between bands. On iPhone, Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options > Voice & Data lets you pick "5G Auto" (Smart Data Mode), which drops to LTE when the speed gain is not worth the power. More importantly, a phone stuck on one or two bars burns power constantly amplifying its signal to reach a distant tower. In a dead zone, switching on Airplane Mode does more for your battery than any app setting.
Sometimes you just need the phone to survive until you get home. Low Power Mode (iPhone: Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode) and Battery Saver (Android: Settings > Battery > Battery Saver) are the blunt tools built for exactly this.
On iPhone, Low Power Mode pauses Background App Refresh and automatic mail fetch, drops auto-lock to 30 seconds, reduces some visual effects, and eases off 5G. iOS offers to enable it automatically when you hit 20%. Android's Battery Saver similarly restricts background work and can trigger at a threshold you set. Both are designed to be switched on when low and off later — they are not meant to run permanently.
If you need more, in order of impact: pull down the brightness slider, fully close a genuinely heavy app you are not using (video, a 3D game, turn-by-turn navigation), and if you are somewhere with weak signal, use Airplane Mode. Note the nuance: force-closing apps you are using, or swiping away every app out of habit, is counterproductive — a cold relaunch costs more power than leaving a suspended app alone, and modern iOS and Android already freeze background apps for you.
Daily drain is separate from the slow decline of the cell itself. Every phone uses a lithium-ion battery that loses capacity as it ages, and this is normal wear, not something you did wrong.
Three habits slow it down. First, avoid the extremes: try to keep the charge roughly between 20% and 80% rather than routinely draining to 0% or leaving it pinned at 100% for hours. Second, keep it cool — lithium-ion degrades quickly above about 35°C (95°F), so a phone baking on a car dashboard or in direct sun is genuinely being damaged. Third, keep the OS and apps updated, since updates frequently include efficiency fixes.
Both platforms help automatically. iPhone's Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging shows "Maximum Capacity" as a percentage of the original, and "Optimized Battery Charging" learns your routine to hold at 80% overnight and top up just before you wake. iPhone 15 and later add an explicit 80% charge limit under Settings > Battery > Charging. Android offers "Adaptive Charging" or "Battery Protection" that does the equivalent. As a rough benchmark, older iPhone batteries were rated to keep 80% capacity through about 500 full charge cycles, while iPhone 15 and newer are rated for roughly 1000. If your Maximum Capacity has fallen below about 80% and the phone is a few years old, a battery replacement — often well under the cost of a new phone — can make it feel new again.
No. Swiping apps out of the recents view repeatedly does not help and usually hurts, because relaunching an app from cold uses more power and CPU than resuming a suspended one. Both iOS and Android already freeze inactive apps. Only force-close an app that is misbehaving — overheating the phone or clearly stuck.
Only on OLED and AMOLED screens, where black pixels are switched off entirely, so a mostly-dark interface draws less power. On an older LCD phone the backlight stays fully lit regardless of colour, so dark mode makes no meaningful difference there. Lowering overall brightness helps on every screen type.
Usually weak signal or a chatty app. If the phone spends the night on one or two bars of cellular it constantly boosts its signal; enabling Wi-Fi calling or Airplane Mode at night fixes that. Otherwise check the battery screen for an app with high background usage and restrict it.
It is not harmful occasionally, but sitting at a full charge for hours in a warm bed accelerates aging over time. Turn on Optimized Battery Charging (iPhone) or the equivalent Adaptive Charging (Android) so the phone deliberately holds at 80% and finishes charging just before your usual wake time.
Kai tests far too many apps so you don't have to, and writes about the few that are genuinely worth your time and storage. A reformed app-hoarder, he's practical about features, privacy, and the difference between useful and merely shiny.
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