3 small tricks For Getting Way Better Smartphone Battery Life

There are lots of big power-saving tweaks that can help extend Android battery life, but even small tweaks can add up. Here are three quick tips for squeezing even more battery life out of your devices.

1. Install Black Screen of Life (BSoL). It’s an Android app that allows you to “listen” to music videos with the screen turned off. Just play any video in any app, then block your phone’s proximity sensor (usually located near the ear piece) by placing the phone face down or inside your pocket.

BSoL does the rest, turning off the screen while keeping the audio on. If you’re having trouble with the app, double-check that you’re blocking the right sensor. If it’s still troublesome, enable Compatibility Mode in BSoL’s settings.

These next two tricks only apply to devices with AMOLED displays. An AMOLED screen doesn’t require light to display black pixels, i.e. it “turns off” black pixels. So any tweak that forces the screen to display the color black will potentially save power.

2. Use Blackle instead of Google. Blackle is a black-themed version of Google. It does lack Google’s advanced options and filtering tools, but it’s fine for basic searches.

3. Switch to a solid black wallpaper.This not only saves battery, but also helps prevent screen burn (the permanent imprinting of images onto AMOLED screens).

Remember, only true black functions as a battery saver. Dark-colored wallpapers won’t work because they still require pixels to be turned on.