The Complete Guide to Improving Android Battery Life

Once upon a time, you had to really keep an eye on your Android phone to make sure the battery wasn’t being depleted prematurely. Manually toggling connections, constantly adjusting brightness, and the like are basically all things of the past now—but there are still things you can do to maximize your handset’s battery life.

Before we get into the how, however, let’s talk about how far Android has come. Back in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google released a new feature called Doze Mode, which promised to improve battery life by “forcing” the phone into a deeper sleep when it’s not in use—leave it lying on the table or desk for a bit, and Doze would kick in, saving you precious juice.

Then, with Android Nougat, they improved this even further by making it a bit more aggressive: instead of kicking in while the phone is completely still, Doze now works while the phone is in your pocket, bag, or anywhere else it isn’t in active use. This means fewer apps will take up precious resources on your phone when you aren’t using it, translating to longer battery life.

With Android Oreo, Google implemented a new set of features called “Vitals” that, among other things, aim to intelligently limat background activity in order to save precious battery life.

And so far, it works exceptionally well. There’s just one problem: not everyone has Oreo, Nougat, or in some cases even Marshmallow. If your handset happens to be forever stuck on Lollipop or KitKat (or older), there are still some things that can you do to make sure you’re getting the most life out of the battery.

If you do have one of the newer versions of Android, however, the following will also apply, though to a somewhat lesser extent. We’ll cover some of the newer features—like Android’s built-in Battery Optimizations—further down below.

First: Know Where to Check Your Usage

Look, this may seem like common sense, but I’m going to say it anyway: if you think your battery is draining faster than normal, look at your phone’s battery stats! This is very, very simple: just pull down the notification shade, tap the cog icon (to go to the Settings menu), then scroll down to the Battery section.

One some devices—like most things from the Samsung Galaxy series, for example—this will just show you a basic screen with some estimates. While those are marginally useful, you’ll want to hit the “Battery Usage” button to see the real meat and potatoes here.

On this screen, you can see what’s chewing through your battery, complete with a nice graph and a breakdown by app or service. If there’s an app causing issues, this is where you’ll see it.

But wait, there’s more! What many users may not realize is that if you tap on the aforementioned graph, you’ll get a detailed look at when the device is awake—or “wakelocks” as they’re generally called.

There’s a really simple way to read this screen: the bars show when each particular sub-head is “on.” Since I never disable my phone’s Wi-Fi, the screenshot above shows that Wi-Fi is always on and connected. Same with Cellular network signal. But as you can see, GPS, while always on, isn’t being used.

The “Awake” indicator shows when the phone was allowed to come out of a sleep state—this is what you want to pay close attention to. If this bar is basically solid and “on” all the time, that means something is keeping your device awake all the time, which is bad. You want to see very short bursts on the “Awake” bar while the display is off. (If the screen is on—which you can easily see from its status bar below—then the phone will naturally be awake as well. It’s not going to sleep while it’s being used, after all.)

If you’re seeing something different here, then there’s a problem. And, unfortunately, there’s no easy way to diagnose wakelocks without rooting your phone, which makes it difficult for casual users to diagnose battery issues. (If you do have a rooted phone, you can use an app called Wakelock Detector to pinpoint the problem.)

Lastly, in Oreo, Google brought back the option to “show full devices usage.” That means you can switch between seeing which apps are using the battery, and hardware stats for battery usage. To show this, tap the three-dot overflow menu in the upper right corner, then select “Show full device usage.” To switch back to app view, do the same thing and select “Show app usage.”

By switching back and forth between the two, you’ll be able to better determine what (if anything) is acting out of the ordinary.

In Oreo, Nougat, and Marshmallow: Check Android’s Battery Optimization Settings

In modern versions of Android (which I generally think of as Marshmallow and newer), Android has some built-in battery optimizations. While most of these are enabled by default, it never hurts to check and make sure everything is working as it should.

To access these settings, jump back into the battery menu (Settings > Battery), then tap the three-dot overflow menu in the upper right corner. From there, select “Battery optimization.”

Disable Wireless Connections

Look, I’m not going to pretend that this is going to make a monumental difference in your mobile battery life, but I’m going to say it anyway: disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS if you don’t need them.

See, this used to be a very important step in optimizing your Android device’s battery life, but as time has gone on and Google has improved Android, it’s almost unnecessary at this point. Still, if you never use something like Bluetooth, turning it off isn’t going to hurt anything. It’s also worth mentioning that if you do disable Wi-Fi when you’re away from home, don’t forget to turn it back on—you don’t want to chew through your data plan, after all. To toggle Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, pull down the notification shade and tap the appropriate toggle, or jump into Settings and then into each service’s respective entry.

Check Notification Settings

You’ve probably heard that notifications can drain your battery, but as with all things, it’s a bit more complicated than that. These days, the majority of apps use Push Notifications. Instead of constantly monitoring for new notifications (which is very taxing on the battery), push notifications use an always-listening port that’s built into Android to receive information. In other words, instead of the app connecting to the internet every several minutes to see if there’s any new information, Android is always ready to accept new information from services that are enabled on the device. This is far more battery efficient because it’s a passive service.

There are, however, still apps out there that rely on non-push notifications. The biggest offender is generally going to be email services that still rely on POP3—while these are likely few and far between at this point, they’re still out there. A few social networking apps may do something similar.

Use Greenify to Automatically Put Apps into Sleep Mode

While this is admittedly more relevant on pre-Marshmallow devices, it’s still a useful tool to have in your arsenal against terrible battery life. Greenify is an app that essentially pushes apps into a “sleep” state of sorts by using Android’s built-in way of preventing apps from running constantly in the background. It is not a task killer, even though it may sound a bit like one—it’s much more effective.

Keep the Device Out of Extreme Temperatures

This one can be a bit trickier because it’s not just a tweak or toggle—it has to do with where the device physically is. Extreme temperatures—both hot and cold!—can cause the battery to drain much faster.

For example, let’s say you live in a hot climate (like Texas, for example). It’s July and you jump in your car, toss your phone in a dock, and fire up Navigation. That means your GPS is in use, the display is on, and it has the hot sun beating down on it. That’s a recipe for disaster—the device will run hot because it’s working hard, and when you throw that hot sun into the mix it can be catastrophic to your phone’s battery life. In fact, I’ve seen devices lose charge while plugged in under this exact situation. It’s that bad.

Do Not Use Task Killers or Fall for Other Battery Myths

Lastly, it’s important to know what not to do. Lesson number one: don’t use a task killer. I don’t care what anyone says, just don’t. This is a very, very old-school way of thinking that goes back to the day when Blackberries were the hottest things on the planet and mobile operating systems were simply inefficient.

While it may seem like a good idea to stop apps from running, it’s not! A lot of times, they’ll just start right back up, which will actually kill more battery than it saves. Task Killers completely disrupt the way Android is supposed to work, so not only does this not positively impact your battery life, it negatively impacts the system as a whole. Use Greenify instead—it handles background apps much more gracefully.

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Why Can’t I Listen to Radio If My Phone Has an FM Receiver In It?

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai just publicly called on Apple to activate the FM receiver chips found in iPhones for public safety reasons. Many Android phones also contain dormant FM chips. But, if your phone has an FM receiver, why can’t you already listen to the radio on it?

There’s one quick issue with Ajit Pai’s request: As Apple noted, the iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X don’t even have an FM chip. But the iPhone 6s and older iPhones do. So why haven’t we been able to listen to the radio on these phones? Could Apple just enable radio functionality with a software update?

Why Is That FM Chip Even There?

Most people probably aren’t aware that older iPhones (and many Android phones) even have FM radio receiver chips in the first place. After all, no iPhone has ever been able to function as an FM radio, although some Android phones have.

So why did Apple choose to add that FM radio hardware in the first place, if Apple doesn’t plan on actually using it? The answer is that Apple didn’t choose to add the FM radio hardware—not really.

Despite Apple’s marketing, which would lead you to believe each part inside the iPhone was designed and manufactured by Apple itself, they aren’t. On an iPhone 6s, the LTE modem for connecting to the cellular network was created by Qualcomm. You can see this if you look at teardowns done by websites like iFixit, which rip apart devices and identify their various components.

Specifically, Apple chose to use the Qualcomm MDM9635M LTE modem for the iPhone 6s. This Qualcomm part comes with FM radio receiving functionality included, as many other Qualcomm modems do. It’s just easier for Qualcomm to include all these features in its hardware and allow device manufacturers to disable them as needed.

Apple didn’t ask for this FM radio receiver hardware and had no plans to use it, so Apple just disables and ignores it. The FM radio receiver may be more commonly activated in developing countries where the ability to listen to radio on a smartphone is in higher demand. You can find it on some Android smartphones in the US, too. But the manufacturer has to choose to enable it.

Why Apple Can’t Enable It Just By “Flipping a Switch”

Apple can’t simply roll out a quick software update that enables the FM radio functionality on the iPhone 6s and older iPhones. We don’t know all the limitations, as Apple is just pointing out that the iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X can’t support this in hardware. But, even on an iPhone 6s, Apple would have the following issues to deal with:

The FM chip may not be physically connected in a way that even makes it possible to enable. Only Apple actually knows whether this is true and how difficult it would be to connect.

The underlying chipset firmware would need to be updated.

The FM radio functionality would need testing to ensure it didn’t cause any problems with the iPhone’s cellular, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth reception.

Apple would have to add a Radio app to iOS so users could use the radio.

Enabling the FM radio, even if it were physically possible—and we don’t know if it is—would be a major project for Apple.

But Why Wasn’t It Hooked Up In The First Place?

So iPhones and various Android phones have FM radio hardware just because it’s a standard part of the modem, and they can’t easily enable it after the hardware was released. But that leads to the question: Why wasn’t it enabled in the first place?

This leads us into the realm of speculation, of course. But it’s clear that there are economic incentives for not enabling the FM radio. For Apple, the lack of FM radio functionality pushes iPhone users towards services like Apple Music, Beats 1 Radio, and iTunes. For cellular carriers, the omission of FM radio encourages customers to stream music via the cellular network and use more costly data.

Or, perhaps Apple just didn’t want to put the man-hours into supporting the hardware and software. Let’s be honest: Consumers in the USA haven’t exactly demanded FM radio functionality in their phones. It’s still possible to purchase phones with this feature, and it’s especially common in cheaper Android phones. Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 phones still include an FM radio receiver, but Samsung didn’t even bundle an app that lets you use it. If you download an FM radio receiver app from Google Play, you can listen to FM radio on the latest Galaxy phone. But this isn’t a feature even Samsung thinks is worth mentioning. If this feature was in high demand, it might be more common.

Should FM Chips Be Required and Enabled?

The big argument for enabling FM radio functionality is public safety. FM radio receiving functionality would allow people to receive emergency broadcasts in the case of natural disasters like Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, even when the cellular network goes down.

The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents radio and television broadcasters, has asked manufacturers to enable the radio functionality on their phones. Congress has held hearings on this in the past, too. But former FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler decided not to require smartphone manufacturers to include this feature, a decision even current FCC commissioner Ajit Pai agrees with.

Ultimately, people don’t seem to care much about this feature. Consumers are voting with their dollars. If the FCC commissioner and government want manufacturers to enable FM radio functionality on their phones, they’ll probably have to introduce a law or regulation requiring it.

Of course, it’s also possible that a massive change in public sentiment will lead customers to demand FM radio functionality, which is what the FCC commissioner seems to be hoping for. That just doesn’t seem very likely at the moment.

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Stop Trying to Clean Your Infected Computer! Just Nuke it and Reinstall Windows

Some people spend hours — maybe even days — trying to clean an infected Windows system and ensuring it’s actually clean and safe afterward. It’s usually not a good idea to do this — just reinstall Windows and start over.

This may seem like a daunting task, especially if you don’t have good backups of your important files. But it’s worth it to quickly obliterate an infection and ensure your system is safe.

If One Piece of Malware Slips By, Your Computer is Compromised

The key to securing your computer is ensuring it doesn’t get infected in the first place. That’s why people run antivirus applications that can check programs before they run, ideally preventing a piece of malware from running even once. If malicious software makes it through this protection, it has free rein over your system until it’s discovered and removed.

This is a problem for many different reasons. The malware can take this chance to burrow deeper into your system, hiding itself from being discovered by installing a rootkit that starts up during the boot process. It can infect various system files. It can use its access to transmit your personal data, credit card numbers, and passwords over the Internet.

Worse yet, malware can function as a Trojan horse, opening the floodgates to additional malware that it will download and install from the Internet. If you find your computer is actually infected by a piece of malware, you don’t know if that’s the only piece of malware that’s infected your computer.

Antivirus Utilities Aren’t Perfect, and Can Take Time

Antivirus utilities aren’t perfect. To really clean up a system, you’ll want to run an antivirus boot disc to scan your Windows system for malware and try to remove it all — or at least reboot into safe mode. This scan process takes some time, and it isn’t guaranteed to be 100 percent successful. If your system is infected and the anti-malware software found and removed an infection — or, even more worryingly, multiple infections — there’s no guarantee your system is completely safe.

To mitigate this problem, you might want to run multiple different antivirus programs, scanning your system with those multiple engines to get a second, third, and maybe even fourth opinions. This takes more and more time, and you’ll never be 100 percent sure everything is gone, and your system is completely secure.

Fix Any Infection By Reinstalling Windows

Reinstalling Windows is the solution. If a computer is seriously infected — not just by a shady Ask toolbar or the browser cookies many silly security programs consider a “threat,” but by actual malware — we recommend starting over from a fresh Windows system. To do this, you just need to use your manufacturers’ recovery partition to restore your Windows system, reinstall Windows from disc or USB drive, or use the Refresh your PC feature found in Windows 8 or 10.

When you reinstall Windows, your system files will be wiped and they’ll be replaced with known-good ones from the Windows installation disc. You’ll also have to install your programs again, which will ensure they’re safe, too. This takes a bit of time, but perhaps not as much as you’d think — especially if you have good backups. It can also save time over long, arduous slog of cleaning an infected PC and triple-checking it.

Ensure you have backups of your important files before doing this! Some methods of reinstalling Windows won’t wipe your personal files, but it’s always good to be safe.

How to Quickly Back Up Your Important Files

If you keep good backups, you’re good to go. If not, you’ll want to back up your important files first. You probably shouldn’t do this while the infected system is running. Instead, we recommend booting from a Linux live CD or USB drive and using that clean system to copy your important data files to a USB drive. Believe it or not, you can also back up your files directly from a Windows installer disc if you have one lying around!

You’ll then have a backup, and you can copy the files from your backup to your fresh Windows system after reinstalling Windows.

Ensure Your Backups Are Secure

You’ll want to ensure all your backups are clean and uninfected, of course. Generally, the files to watch out for are the .exe files and other executable programs. These can be infected by viruses and infect your system later. Microsoft Office files could also potentially have malicious macros inserted into them, but modern versions of Office are more resistant to this. Other data files like images, videos, and music generally can’t be infected.

It’s a good idea to eye and .exe files with suspicion if they came from an infected computer. Re-download them if possible to ensure they’re safe. You’ll also want to run a scan of your backup files with an anti-malware program after getting a fresh system, ensuring nothing nasty is hiding in your backups somewhere.

This may sound like a Herculean task for people who don’t keep good backups and are worried about setting up their computers from scratch. But, if you do anything sensitive with your computer, from online banking and shopping to filing taxes with your social security number, it’s better to be safe than sorry. You won’t be worrying whether your computer is still infected in a week or two.

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How to Increase Your Windows Laptop’s Battery Life

We often fixate on smartphone battery life, but most laptops still don’t have all-day battery life. Rather than always using your laptop tethered to an outlet, here are some ways to squeeze more life from your laptop’s battery.

None of these tricks will turn a laptop without much stamina into an all-day workhorse, but they’ll help you go without an outlet for a while longer. Pay particular attention to your laptop’s display — that’s the big battery sucker.

Reduce Screen Brightness

The biggest battery drain on any modern portable electronic device — whether it’s a laptop, smartphone, or tablet — is the display. Reducing your screen’s brightness is a simple way to squeeze significantly more time from your laptop’s battery.

On a typical laptop, you generally hold the Function (Fn) key and press the brightness buttons on your laptop keyboard. The lower the brightness level, the longer you can use your laptop on battery power.

You can also use the Windows Mobility Center to quickly adjust screen brightness. Open it by pressing Windows Key + X on Windows 7. On Windows 8, you can launch it from the Control Panel — Windows Key + X opens the power user menu instead.

Have Your Display Automatically Turn Off

If you step away from your laptop for a few minutes, its screen will still be on, draining power. You can set more aggressive display power settings to have the laptop dim and turn off the display when you’re not using it.

Open the Power Options dialog in the Control Panel and set your display to dim and turn off after a short period of time. You can move your mouse or press any key to turn the display right back on with no delay, so this is an easy way to save power — as long as the display doesn’t turn off while you’re using the laptop, this shouldn’t bother you too much. Media players set the display to automatically stay on while they’re running, ensuring you can still watch a video without constantly having to move your mouse or change your power settings.

Disable Bluetooth and Other Hardware Devices

Your laptop likely has a Bluetooth radio and may even have an infrared (IR) port. All of these devices use battery power simply by being enabled and powered on. You can save battery power by disabling them when you aren’t using them. To disable Bluetooth, you can often press the Function (Fn) key and press the key with the Bluetooth symbol on your laptop.

Disabling Wi-Fi can also help if you aren’t using it. For example, if you’re using your laptop on an airplane and not taking advantage of in-flight Wi-Fi, turn off your laptop’s Wi-Fi to save some power. Wi-Fi can be turned off in a similar way using the function keys on your laptop or even by disabling the Wi-Fi adapter in the Control Panel’s network connections window.

Tweak Your Power Plan

Windows offers power plans that can quickly change your laptop’s power settings to different profiles. For example, you can have your computer in Balanced mode most of the time and switch to Power saver mode when you need every bit of power you can get. Each power plan’s settings can be modified individually. You’ll find power plans in the Control Panel’s Power Options window.

To modify advanced power options, click the Change plan settings link and select Change advanced power settings.

You can change a variety of settings here, including setting your laptop to power off its hard drive more quickly and telling your computer to slow down the processor rather than turning on the fan if it becomes hot. Both of these behaviors will save power. The default settings should be fairly optimal if you select Power saver mode, but you can make the settings even more aggressive in some areas.

Use the Windows Power Troubleshooter

Windows 7 and 8 include a power troubleshooting tool that will scan your system for common battery drains and automatically fix them. To load this tool, open the Troubleshooting pane in the Control Panel — perform a search for Troubleshooting to find it.

Select the View All option in the Troubleshooting pane and launch the Power troubleshooter.

Windows will look for common issues and automatically fix them. This is a quick way to check if a laptop’s settings are optimal without digging through many different options dialogs.

Slim Down Startup Programs, Use Lighter Software

To save power, make your computer do less in general:

l Don’t use a screensaver. They’re unnecessary on modern displays and will drain your battery to do nothing useful when your display could be off and saving power.

l Run fewer programs in the background. Examine your system tray for programs you don’t need and uninstall them or disable them and prevent them from automatically starting with your computer.

l Reduce CPU usage. If you use heavy programs that have your CPU doing a lot of work all of the time, your CPU will use more power and your battery will drain faster. Running fewer programs in the background can help with this, as can selecting lightweight programs that are easy on system resources.

l Avoid maxing out your RAM. If your computer fills its RAM and needs more memory, it will move data to the page file on its hard drive, and this extra hard drive usage can drain battery. This shouldn’t be a problem on modern computers with a decent amount of RAM. If your laptop’s RAM is full, try to make more RAM available — close programs running in the background or even upgrade your laptop’s RAM.

The less your computer has to do, the more power it can save. You can find more information about CPU and RAM usage in your Task Manager.

Hibernate Instead of Sleep

When your laptop goes to sleep, it uses a small amount of power to power its RAM and keep its system state loaded in memory, allowing it to wake up and resume in just a few seconds. When your laptop hibernates, it saves its system state to disk and powers off, using almost no power.

If you’re not going to be using your laptop for a few hours, place it into hibernate mode rather than sleep mode to conserve even more battery power. Sleep mode doesn’t use a lot of battery power, but hibernate uses as much as having the computer powered off.

If you’ve had your laptop for a while and the battery is holding less power than it used to — but you’re not ready to upgrade to a new laptop just yet — you can try replacing your laptop’s battery with a new one for even longer battery life.

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Why Android Phones Slow Down Over Time and How to Speed Them Up

Do Android phones and tablets slow down over time? Many people seem to think so. We’ll look at the reasons why devices slow down and how to battle slow downs.

This problem isn’t necessarily unique to Android — try using an iPad 3 with iOS 7 and feel how slow it’s become — but it does seem to be reported by many Android users.

Operating System Updates and Heavier Apps

Your Android phone doesn’t have the same software it had a year ago. If you’ve received Android operating system updates, they may not be as nicely optimized for your device and may have slowed it down. Or, your carrier or manufacturer may have added additional bloatware apps in an update, which run in the background and slow things down.

Even if you haven’t seen a single update, the apps running on your device are newer. Whether you’re using newer apps or updated versions of the same apps you were using a year ago, apps seem to become heavier over time. As developers gain access to faster smartphone hardware, games and other apps may be optimized for this faster hardware and perform worse on older devices. This seems to happen on every platform. As the years go by, websites become heavier, desktop applications want more RAM, and PC games become more demanding.

How to Fix It: There’s not much you can do here. If your operating system seems slow, you may want to install a custom ROM like CyanogenMod that doesn’t have the bloatware and slow manufacturer skins many devices include. If your apps seem slow, try hunting for more lightweight apps.

Background Processes

You’ve probably installed more apps as you continue to use your device. Some apps open at startup and run in the background, consuming CPU resources and taking up your device’s memory. If you’ve installed a lot of apps that run in the background, they can slow down your device. Android offers real multitasking, so apps can run in the background.

If you’re using an animated live wallpaper and have a large amount of widgets on your home screen, these will take up CPU, graphics, and memory resources. Slim your home screen down and you’ll see an improvement.

Apps running in the background can also consume resources. To check what apps are using background processes, visit the Apps screen in the Settings app and swipe over to the Running category. If you don’t use an app that’s running in the background, uninstall it. If you can’t uninstall it because it came with your device, disable it. Don’t just end the service — it will automatically restart.

How to Fix It: Disable live wallpapers, remove widgets, and uninstall or disable heavy apps you don’t use. In fact, you may want to uninstall all the apps you never use.

A Nearly Full File System

Solid-state drives slow down as you fill them up, so writing to the file system may be very slow if it’s almost full. This will cause Android and apps to appear to be much slower. The Storage screen in the Settings app will show you how full your device’s storage is and what’s using the space.

Cache files can consume quite a bit of storage space if allowed to grow unchecked, so clearing cache files can free up disk space and make your file system perform better. To clear cached data for all installed apps at once, open the Settings app, tap Storage, scroll down, tap Cached data, and tap OK.

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How to Fix It: Uninstall apps you don’t use, delete files you don’t need, and clear app caches to free up space. You can also just perform a factory reset and only install the apps you need to end up with a like-new device.

No Solid-State Drive TRIM

The lack of proper TRIM support was the main thing that caused Google’s original Nexus 7 tablet to slow down over time. This was fixed in Android 4.3, which added proper TRIM support. On Nexus devices, updating to Android 4.3 will fix this problem.

If you have an older device that doesn’t have Android 4.3 and has slowed down over time, you can perform TRIM by rooting it and using the LagFix app. This app runs the same fstrim command Android 4.3 runs in the background. TRIM is necessary because of how solid-state drives work — solid-state drives slow down over time because flash memory cells must be cleared before they can be written to again. TRIM preemptively clears cells that contain data from deleted files, ensuring things will be as fast as possible when Android needs to write to those cells in the future.

How to Fix It: Root your device and run LagFix if you’re using an older device. This happens automatically on devices running Android version 4.3 and newer.

Performing a factory reset and installing only the apps you use will help by removing all those old apps and files in one fell swoop. A factory reset won’t fix bloatware included with your device or run TRIM on your device’s storage, but it can help — just like reinstalling Windows can help fix a slow PC.

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How to Enable Wi-Fi Calling on an Android Phone

If you’re on a carrier that supports it, Wi-Fi calling is a great feature to have. It will allow your smartphone to use the best connection in your house to make and receive calls and text messages. It also allows for higher quality audio, and it’s perfect if you don’t get good signal in your house.

While this has been a feature found on Android for many years, it’s still shocking how many people don’t know it exists. This is in part due to slow carrier adoption, but also just a general lack of coverage for the feature and its usefulness. T-Mobile is probably the biggest proponent of Wi-Fi calling at this point, though the four major carriers—Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon—all support the feature. Unfortunately, if you’re saving money by using an MVNO, you likely won’t have it as an option. That’s a bummer.

Most modern Android phones should support Wi-Fi calling, but it can be hit and miss. For example, while the Galaxy S7 generally offers support for Wi-Fi calling, my international version of the phone doesn’t offer the feature. Basically, it has to be supported by both the phone and the carrier.

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Ergo, if you go digging around and try to find the setting we’re going to talk about below and it’s not there, either your carrier doesn’t offer it, or it’s not available on your particular phone.

How to Enable Android’s Native Wi-Fi Calling

Even if you’re using a phone and carrier combo that supports Wi-Fi Calling, it’s probably not enabled by default. To turn it on, you’ll need to jump into the Settings menu. I’m using a Google Pixel running Android 8.0 (Oreo) here, so the process may vary slightly on your phone.

While you can go through all the steps to tap your way into the Wi-Fi Calling menu (which you’ll find instructions for in the “Just the Steps” box to the right), the easiest thing to do is just search for it. Pull down the notification shade and tap the gear icon to get started.

From there, tap the magnifying glass, then type “wifi calling.” If it’s available in your situation, it should show up here.

In my scenario, Android didn’t throw me directly into the Wi-FI Calling menu, but rather into the advanced section of Wi-Fi settings, where Wi-Fi Calling is found. Go ahead and tap the Wi-Fi Calling option to jump into its section of the menu.

Boom, there you go—slide the toggle to turn it. You can also select whether you want the phone to prefer WI-Fi networks or mobile networks for calls. Whenever it has both, it will use your preferred option, then seamlessly switch to the other when one becomes unavailable.

No Native Wi-Fi Calling? No Problem—Just Use an App

Just because your carrier and/or phone doesn’t technically support Wi-Fi Calling natively doesn’t mean you can’t use another form of the feature if you’d like. There are plenty of apps out there that will let you make calls, here are a few of the most popular ones:

Ÿ Facebook Messenger

Ÿ Google Hangouts (you’ll need the Hangouts Dialer app)

Ÿ Google Voice

Ÿ Google Duo

Ÿ Skype (Note: Costs money)

Basically, any of those apps will let you make calls over Wi-Fi, but they won’t use your actual phone number, nor will they call out to a traditional phone in most cases. Instead, you’ll actually place calls from account to account; for example, if you use Facebook Messenger, you actually just “call” the person on their Facebook account instead of putting in a phone number. The same goes for free Skype accounts, though you can pay money to call normal phone numbers.

Google Hangouts and Voice are other exceptions—they essentially work together to make calls. You’ll need a Google Voice number, as well as the Hangouts Dialer to make calls, in which case you should be able to call out to any traditional phone number. The problem will come when you want to receive calls using these tools—you’ll have to do quite a bit of extra setup for that.

Truth be told, Facebook Messenger is probably the best way to go, assuming the person you’re trying to chat is also on Facebook (and your friends list). It’s very easy to use and offers good call quality.

It’s also worth noting that these services will also work with mobile data, so you don’t have to be on Wi-Fi to use them. That’s cool.

Wi-FI Calling is a very cool service, and it’s definitely something you should enable if your carrier and phone support it. You’ll get higher quality calls and essentially no “dead zones” where calls will fall off or mute.

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The Complete Guide to Improving Android Battery Life

Once upon a time, you had to really keep an eye on your Android phone to make sure the battery wasn’t being depleted prematurely. Manually toggling connections, constantly adjusting brightness, and the like are basically all things of the past now—but there are still things you can do to maximize your handset’s battery life.

Before we get into the how, however, let’s talk about how far Android has come. Back in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google released a new feature called Doze Mode, which promised to improve battery life by “forcing” the phone into a deeper sleep when it’s not in use—leave it lying on the table or desk for a bit, and Doze would kick in, saving you precious juice.

Then, with Android Nougat, they improved this even further by making it a bit more aggressive: instead of kicking in while the phone is completely still, Doze now works while the phone is in your pocket, bag, or anywhere else it isn’t in active use. This means fewer apps will take up precious resources on your phone when you aren’t using it, translating to longer battery life.

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With Android Oreo, Google implemented a new set of features called “Vitals” that, among other things, aim to intelligently limat background activity in order to save precious battery life.

And so far, it works exceptionally well. There’s just one problem: not everyone has Oreo, Nougat, or in some cases even Marshmallow. If your handset happens to be forever stuck on Lollipop or KitKat (or older), there are still some things that can you do to make sure you’re getting the most life out of the battery.

If you do have one of the newer versions of Android, however, the following will also apply, though to a somewhat lesser extent. We’ll cover some of the newer features—like Android’s built-in Battery Optimizations—further down below.

First: Know Where to Check Your Usage

Look, this may seem like common sense, but I’m going to say it anyway: if you think your battery is draining faster than normal, look at your phone’s battery stats! This is very, very simple: just pull down the notification shade, tap the cog icon (to go to the Settings menu), then scroll down to the Battery section.

One some devices—like most things from the Samsung Galaxy series, for example—this will just show you a basic screen with some estimates. While those are marginally useful, you’ll want to hit the “Battery Usage” button to see the real meat and potatoes here.

On this screen, you can see what’s chewing through your battery, complete with a nice graph and a breakdown by app or service. If there’s an app causing issues, this is where you’ll see it.

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But wait, there’s more! What many users may not realize is that if you tap on the aforementioned graph, you’ll get a detailed look at when the device is awake—or “wakelocks” as they’re generally called.

There’s a really simple way to read this screen: the bars show when each particular sub-head is “on.” Since I never disable my phone’s Wi-Fi, the screenshot above shows that Wi-Fi is always on and connected. Same with Cellular network signal. But as you can see, GPS, while always on, isn’t being used.

The “Awake” indicator shows when the phone was allowed to come out of a sleep state—this is what you want to pay close attention to. If this bar is basically solid and “on” all the time, that means something is keeping your device awake all the time, which is bad. You want to see very short bursts on the “Awake” bar while the display is off. (If the screen is on—which you can easily see from its status bar below—then the phone will naturally be awake as well. It’s not going to sleep while it’s being used, after all.)

If you’re seeing something different here, then there’s a problem. And, unfortunately, there’s no easy way to diagnose wakelocks without rooting your phone, which makes it difficult for casual users to diagnose battery issues.

Lastly, in Oreo, Google brought back the option to “show full devices usage.” That means you can switch between seeing which apps are using the battery, and hardware stats for battery usage. To show this, tap the three-dot overflow menu in the upper right corner, then select “Show full device usage.” To switch back to app view, do the same thing and select “Show app usage.”

By switching back and forth between the two, you’ll be able to better determine what (if anything) is acting out of the ordinary.

In Oreo, Nougat, and Marshmallow: Check Android’s Battery Optimization Settings

In modern versions of Android (which I generally think of as Marshmallow and newer), Android has some built-in battery optimizations. While most of these are enabled by default, it never hurts to check and make sure everything is working as it should.

To access these settings, jump back into the battery menu (Settings > Battery), then tap the three-dot overflow menu in the upper right corner. From there, select “Battery optimization.”

By default, this will show apps that aren’t optimized out of the gate. Some of these won’t be able to be optimized, which is why they’re not optimized in the first place. Others may have the option available but may be disable for practical purposes—like Android Wear in my case here. Optimizations for that particular apps are disabled so the watch will always stay connected to my phone.

If you want to see a list of all apps (both optimized and unoptimized), just tap the dropdown and choose “All apps.”

I recommend just looking through this list and seeing if there’s anything that can be tweaked. Maybe there won’t be, but it never hurts to look.

Disable Wireless Connections

Look, I’m not going to pretend that this is going to make a monumental difference in your mobile battery life, but I’m going to say it anyway: disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS if you don’t need them.

See, this used to be a very important step in optimizing your Android device’s battery life, but as time has gone on and Google has improved Android, it’s almost unnecessary at this point. Still, if you never use something like Bluetooth, turning it off isn’t going to hurt anything. It’s also worth mentioning that if you do disable Wi-Fi when you’re away from home, don’t forget to turn it back on—you don’t want to chew through your data plan, after all. To toggle Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, pull down the notification shade and tap the appropriate toggle, or jump into Settings and then into each service’s respective entry.

With GPS, things aren’t as cut and dry and “on” and “off.” Back in the day, this was a monstrous battery hog, so Google optimized the absolute snot out of it—nowadays, it’s pretty much only used when it absolutely has to be, and only for as long as it needs to be. For example, your weather apps may briefly check for current location when you open the app so it can provide the most accurate forecast. If you’re using Navigation, on the other hand, GPS will stay on the entire time, because, you know…directions.

All that said, you can still actually control how GPS works. For example, you can allow the phone to use “High Accuracy” mode, which will find your location using a combination of GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi/cellular networks. This uses the most battery, but it’s also the most accurate.

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So, if you head into Settings > Location, you can control this. Just tap on the “Mode” entry to see the available options. Remember, the less battery it uses, the less accurate it is! If you don’t use GPS or location services very often, go ahead and try one of the less-accurate and more battery-efficient modes. If you notice anything funky after that, then you may have been using an app that relies on a more accurate location service, so you’ll either have to deal with some jankiness or revert back to a higher accuracy mode.

Check Notification Settings

You’ve probably heard that notifications can drain your battery, but as with all things, it’s a bit more complicated than that. These days, the majority of apps use Push Notifications. Instead of constantly monitoring for new notifications (which is very taxing on the battery), push notifications use an always-listening port that’s built into Android to receive information. In other words, instead of the app connecting to the internet every several minutes to see if there’s any new information, Android is always ready to accept new information from services that are enabled on the device. This is far more battery efficient because it’s a passive service.

There are, however, still apps out there that rely on non-push notifications. The biggest offender is generally going to be email services that still rely on POP3—while these are likely few and far between at this point, they’re still out there. A few social networking apps may do something similar.

The easiest way to tell if this is the case with an app is to check its notification options: if you have to specify a “refresh” or “update” interval, the app or service isn’t using push notifications, and you’re probably best off turning off notifications for that app entirely. Your battery will thank you.

Use Greenify to Automatically Put Apps into Sleep Mode

While this is admittedly more relevant on pre-Marshmallow devices, it’s still a useful tool to have in your arsenal against terrible battery life. Greenify is an app that essentially pushes apps into a “sleep” state of sorts by using Android’s built-in way of preventing apps from running constantly in the background. It is not a task killer, even though it may sound a bit like one—it’s much more effective.

To set up Greenify, first install the app from Google Play—if you’d like to support the developer’s work, then you can also opt for the $2.99 “Donation Package.” It’s worth mentioning that Greenify is more useful on rooted handsets, but it can also be used on non-rooted phones—the difference is that everything is automated on a rooted device, where you’ll have to “manually” greenify apps on non-rooted devices.

Once it’s installed, go ahead and fire up the app. If your handset is rooted, you’ll grant it superuser access here; if not, well, you won’t.

You can add apps to be greenified (aka put to sleep) by tapping the plus sign in the top-right corner. Greenify will show you apps that are currently running, along with apps that may slow your device down under certain circumstances. Go ahead and tap all the items you’d like to greenfiy, but keep in mind that the apps will no longer sync in the background after being greenified! For example, if you greenify your messaging apps, you’ll stop receiving text messages. Or, if you greenify your alarm clock, it won’t go off. Be thoughtful in what you choose to add to this list!

Keep the Device Out of Extreme Temperatures

This one can be a bit trickier because it’s not just a tweak or toggle—it has to do with where the device physically is. Extreme temperatures—both hot and cold!—can cause the battery to drain much faster.

For example, let’s say you live in a hot climate (like Texas, for example). It’s July and you jump in your car, toss your phone in a dock, and fire up Navigation. That means your GPS is in use, the display is on, and it has the hot sun beating down on it. That’s a recipe for disaster—the device will run hot because it’s working hard, and when you throw that hot sun into the mix it can be catastrophic to your phone’s battery life. In fact, I’ve seen devices lose charge while plugged in under this exact situation. It’s that bad.

What many people may not realize, however, is that extreme cold is just as bad as heat. The safe operating temperatures for lithium ion batteries is –4°F to 140°F—circumstances that are highly unlikely for most people to be in—while the safe charging temperatures are much lower: 32°F to 113°F. Naturally, as you get close to either end of this extreme, battery life will be negatively affected.

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