How to make your iPhone battery last longer (and what doesn’t help)

Battery advice online ranges from useful to superstitious. Here is what we have found makes a real difference over months of use.

What helps

• Brightness. The screen is the biggest consumer. Auto-brightness does a good job; leave it on.
• Background location. Settings → Privacy → Location Services. Set most apps to “While Using”.
• Poor signal. A phone searching for a network burns battery. In buildings with bad coverage, use Wi-Fi calling.
• Heat. Do not leave the phone charging in the sun or on a hot dashboard. Heat ages lithium-ion cells faster than anything else.

What does not help

• Force-closing apps. iOS suspends them already. Relaunching from scratch costs more energy.
• Draining to zero. Modern batteries do not need full cycles. Shallow top-ups are fine.
• Turning off Bluetooth. The savings are tiny, and you lose your watch and earbuds.

When to replace the battery

If Battery Health shows below 80% and the phone no longer lasts a day, a battery replacement is the cheapest way to make an older iPhone feel new.