Battery Saving tips for your Nokia Lumia 800

Battery Saving Tips:

These are mostly generic battery saving tips that you could apply to pretty much all phones so here are some you could try for the Lumia. I get over a day with mine, and we’ve heard similar reports from others. But equally people are also having mixed experience to the point that Nokia have said that there is an update to come that would assist battery life.

Whilst that comes, here are some tips that would help your Lumia last just that little bit longer. Most can be applied to other phones though some are Lumia/WP specific. All these things are accessible from Settings.

You don’t have to use them all. Depending on what you use in your phone, you can turn certain things off, keep other things on.

1) Turn WiFi Off.

2) Turn Bluetooth Off

3) Install something like Toggle so you can quickly switch them on/off

4) Set mail to manual retrieval (or longer intervals instead of as they arrive)

5) Turn 3G off

6) Turn screen brightness to low or at least keep it on automatic so it would change brightness when you need it instead of constantly being super bright.

7) Turn off live tile updates for news tiles (e.g. BBC news)

8 ) Use dark theme (works for AMOLEDS). Try the same if you can in other apps, e.g. Amazon Reader

9) Reduce battery intensive apps, like games, videos or things that use a lot of bandwidth, e.g. streaming music/videos.

10) Switch phone to battery saving mode. (See first image). Note from here you can see battery times and estimated time remaining. It’s useful to turn on the automatic battery saver mode when battery is low. Also, you can manually switch battery saver mode on and it will stay on until the next time you put it on charger.

11) Make sure your software is up to date. Not sure the 7740 update was supposed to be the battery saving update. I think that’s still coming. Nevertheless, still update your phone in case there are optimisations taking place that will impact how your other apps work. (It may periodically check the network for updates, not sure if this would conversely affect battery life too).

12) Make sure your applications are up to date. See marketplace to see if you have any updates – your apps may get better optimised to work on your phone.

13) Keep your most used stuff pinned to the top of your homescreen. This means you can just glance at certain things or open things much quickly, e.g. the people hub or calendar appointments. The quicker you get things around the quicker you’re done and can put the phone back to lock.

14) Switch off location services. If an app asks to use GPS to better localise their info, you can say no. GPS does eat battery.

15) —I’d say close an app but they rarely have an affect since they are tombstoned. If you want though just long press the back button, select the app and click back to close it.

16) Turn off additional find my phone settings.

17) Reduce screen time out times so screen dims and darkens quicker.

18) A little bit extreme, but with the Toggle app again on your homescreen, you can turn your flight mode on. This turns all radios off. This is useful if you are working in areas where you might not have much time at all to ever check your phone or areas where you have poor signal anyway (e.g. in a hospital)

19) Very extreme. Some friends do this, not to save battery but just because they aren’t using the phone. Turn it off. Long press the power, press off. Mine takes about 17-18 seconds to start and it’s up and running immediately. Again useful if you are working in areas where you might not even have the chance to look at your phone, or might be in an area where you have so signal anyway (e.g. certain areas of our placement hospitals have no WiFi and no way any mobile signal is getting through). A quick start up makes turning it off a more palatable option.

20) Try and avoid taking photos with flash perhaps if you can (and most of the time, I find LED flash sucks anyways). Similarly, avoid video recording with LED flash.

21) Possibly keep recording in VGA as opposed to 720p.

22) Try to visit mobile versions of sites. In the default browser, and SurfCube, you can set mobile versions or low bandwidth versions (uses less bandwidth)

23) Listen to music/audio through headphones instead of the loudspeakers

Outside of the phone

24) Bring a portable charger pack. Whilst you’re on a train these things can juice up your phone whilst you listen to music/watch videos/play games etc. I’m sure Lumia battery cases will appear on the market soon so watch out for those (cases with battery pack built in)

25) If you work in an office bring your charger or microUSB cable. Keep your phone juiced up whilst you’re doing work on the computer.

26) Though seemingly contradictory to 24) try to avoid using the phone when plugged into a battery for a long time if you can. This is to look after your battery’s long term life as gradually with all batteries they do eventually decline in the amount they can hold.

27) Perhaps once a month make sure you charge the phone to 100% and use it all the way till it’s to 0%.

28) Again, general battery care guides. Keep the phone in cool dry places. Not saying put it in the fridge, just keep it away from areas that are possible damp and warm.

29) If still experiencing severe battery issues, contact Nokia Care or your retailer. You may have a dud.

Any other battery saving tips missed out?

Tags: featured, Lumia Tips

Category: How to:, Lumia, Nokia, Windows Phone