You’re on the go today – out of the office, out of the house, and attending a business event. Everything is going fine and dandy until you look down at your phone to see your worst nightmare come true. Your iPhone is at 25 percent battery life. Before you panic, know that the answer to your dilemma may just be in the palm of your hand: in the Settings of your phone. So when a battery emergency strikes, try these five tips first before screaming into a pillow. 

Activate Low Power Mode

Perhaps the easiest way to save iPhone battery life, Low Power Mode can be activated with a single tap. When switched on, it automatically adjusts several settings to extend the life of your battery: it reduces the brightness of your screen and the amount of battery power your apps are using, disables the automatic fetching of new email, and it powers off the display more quickly.

To activate Low Power Mode, press Settings > Battery and then tap Low Power Mode so that the green light is on.

Lower the screen brightness

The brighter your iPhone screen, the more battery it drains. And really, there isn’t much of a need to have an excessively bright screen because in most instances (being outside in the sunshine excluded) you can easily see everything on the screen at a lower brightness level.

To adjust the brightness of your iPhone, there are two simple ways to go about it. First, flick the Control Center tab upward from the bottom of your screen. There you’ll find a brightness adjuster that looks like a vertical bar with a sun icon on it. Simply slide the adjuster up or down to increase or decrease your display’s brightness level.

Alternatively, you can adjust your iPhone’s brightness in Settings > Display & Brightness (it’s called Brightness & Wallpaper in iOS 7). You can also turn on Auto-Brightness to automatically adjust the brightness of your phone by going to Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations. When you turn this setting on, you’ll save energy because your screen will need to use less power in dark places.

Switch off Wi-Fi

As much as you love using the Wi-Fi on your phone, it is a proven battery life killer. The funny thing is, the degree it drains battery life varies by location. For instance, if you’re at home (where iPhone battery life is less of a problem to begin with), Wi-Fi will use less battery. But when you’re out and about, your phone is often searching for a Wi-Fi signal to connect to, and this drains battery. So if you can hold off on your mobile browsing and email till you get home, your phone will stay powered on quite a bit longer.

Switch off cellular data

Like Wi-Fi, cellular data can also eat up battery quickly – especially if you’re in an area where there’s no cellular coverage. When this happens, your phone begins to search non-stop for a signal, which is a huge battery drainer. So if you’re short on juice and don’t need to browse the internet, turn off your cellular data function. Doing this can easily provide an extra hour or two of additional battery life.

Activate Airplane mode

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this is exactly when you need Airplane mode. If you’re down to 20ish percent battery life and need your phone to last for a few hours longer, Airplane mode may just be your savior. By switching it on, your phone will shut down all wireless activity, including cellular, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Doing this is obviously not ideal, but if you have little battery life and want your phone available in case of emergencies, this is your best option (next to switching it off). Once in Airplane mode, you can individually turn on certain wireless functions, such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, while staying in Airplane mode.

To switch on Airplane mode, you can do so from the Control Center screen or by going to Settings and then clicking on Airplane mode.

Any other options?

If you must have your cake and eat it too, there’s an alternative choice that provides an extra battery bump with the ability to use Wi-Fi, keep your screen bright, and use your iPhone without adjusting any settings. The answer is to buy a power supply, also known as a power bank, which you’ve likely seen for sale at your local Best Buy or on Amazon. These delightful portable chargers are continually shrinking in size, with some even as small as lipstick, so it’s no longer a hassle to carry them around. You can simply slide it into your pocket and plug it in when needed.

If you’re looking for more ways to get the most out of your iPhone or are looking to service your Apple technology, feel free to shoot us a message. We’re happy to help in any way possible.

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Google releases a new version of Chrome almost every month. Some updates involve minor bug fixes and improvements, while others feature many more exciting additions. For its latest release, version 57, Google announced some serious upgrades to Chrome, and here are the three we think you’ll be more interested in.

More power consumption improvements

Google’s browser is a known battery hog. At one point it got so bad that Microsoft was publicly criticizing Chrome engineers for destroying laptop battery performance. Part of the problem is that Chrome allocates far more processing power to tabs running in the background than do other browsers.

Google’s browser now limits power devoted to unopened tabs at 1% of CPU consumption. But if you’re using minimized tabs to stream music or video, don’t worry, Chrome won’t limit these. Engineers claim this change will “lead to 25 percent fewer busy background tabs.”

Chrome for iOS gets a “Save for Later” feature

In what is probably a delayed attempt to catch up to iOS’s native Safari browser, the newest version of Chrome for Apple devices will feature offline reading. To add to your reading list, just tap the Share icon in the upper right hand corner of the browser and select “Read Later.” Even if you don’t have internet, you can view content from both the Unread and Pages You’ve Read sections of your reading list.

Although not quite as convenient, earlier versions of Chrome on Android have a roundabout way of doing the same thing. When clicking the the download icon under the Menu dropdown, Chrome saves offline pages in local storage.

Better graphics on desktops

Chrome is also getting a serious boost in terms of visual processing power. Google’s browser now supports WebGL 2.0, which improves the speed, textures, and animated effects of elements on websites.

Support for WebGL has yet to make its way to mobile versions of the browser, but desktop improvements should put graphics on par with the 3D graphics in most modern games. Firefox and Opera already support this standard, but its addition to the most popular browser on the internet creates a huge incentive for web designers to push the visual boundaries.

For those who have been in the small- and medium-sized business field for a while, it’s tempting to think that browser improvements really aren’t that big of a deal. But in an age when the majority of work is done inside of browsers rather than software, how you surf matters. For all the best news and tips, get in touch with us today!

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Most of us know that apps can drain battery and slow down your phone. But what if there was a single app that was sucking 20% of your battery, and potentially slowing its speed by 15%. For Android phone users, this looks to be the case. And unfortunately for all those social medial lovers out there, the app responsible goes by the name of Facebook.

The flaw with the Facebook app was first reported by a tech writer, Russell Holly, from androidcentral.com. Here’s what he had to say about it…

“Recently I noticed some performance issues on multiple phones, and had started paying closer attention to what exactly was causing these problems. When Facebook turned out to be one of the more egregious resource hogs, I uninstalled it to see how things improved…Not only did my performance issues go away entirely, but I discovered I didn’t actually lose any of the Facebook features I cared about by uninstalling the app.”

Russell Holly, however, is not the only one who’s noticed a difference in Android performance after uninstalling Facebook. Since his finding, there have been numerous reports from tech writers and Android users across the globe. Furthermore, some users have also noticed a 15% boost in speed once they uninstalled Facebook and the Messenger app.

Alternative methods to get your Facebook fill

As one of the Android’s most popular apps, whether or not to install or uninstall Facebook can be a tough decision. However, the battery benefits are so big that it’s worth exploring alternate methods to get your Facebook fill. One is to simply uninstall Facebook and keep the Messenger app. This will not give you the full 20/15% boost, but will provide a noticeable difference in both speed and battery life. Alternatively, you can also access Facebook via Google Chrome or your other Internet browser. By doing this, you can still use most of the same Facebook features (with the exceptions of a few such as location-based functionality and Instant Articles, among others) and still get the max boost to your battery and speed.

As for Facebook, this isn’t the first time the app has been accused of slowing down a phone. Last October, the app was found to drastically drain the iPhone’s battery as well. Facebook promised to work on correcting that issue, and have a similar response to this, “We have heard reports of some people experiencing speed issues stemming from our Android app…We are looking into this and will keep [users] posted. We are committed to continuing to improve these issues.”

So while you’re pondering whether or not to uninstall Facebook on your phone, feel free to shoot us any of your other Android questions or concerns. We are happy to help resolve any of your Android or other IT related issues.

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