How to Improve Your WP7 Battery Life
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How to Improve Your WP7 Battery Life

It’s always the same. You’re just about to make that vital phone call and you notice that the battery light on your handset is flashing – time’s up.

Almost all mobile phones suffer from varying battery life, usually due to the devices being used in different ways from day to day. With Windows Phone 7 featuring a graphics-intensive user interface and integration with several web-connected services you can see where most of the battery life might be used.

While you can easily retain battery life by not using the phone, there are plenty of other ways to improve the life of your WP7 battery.

Disabling and Restricting Connectivity

The most obvious answer to saving battery life on a Windows Phone is to make fewer calls. Failing this, you should consider reducing your data use, whether this is the data included in your contract or the use of a wireless network.

Cellular data can be disabled in Windows Phone 7 in Settings > Mobile Network, where you choose between disabling Data connection or reducing the use of your 3G connection. Meanwhile if you regularly use a wireless network make sure you have disabled this when not using the facility via Settings > WiFi.

Additionally, ensure that Bluetooth is disabled when not in use (Settings > Bluetooth).

Localization and Media Sharing

Other features of Windows Phone 7 can contribute to your battery being drained, and if you’re reluctant to disable connectivity disabling localization options is a good alternative.

You can quickly disable localization across all applications in Settings > Location. Another feature that makes use of your data connection that can be considered non-vital is the ability to auto upload images to SkyDrive or Facebook.

This can be disabled in Settings > Pictures & Camera > Auto upload to SkyDrive.

Save Your WP7 Battery by Locking Your Phone

Using the power button on your phone to lock the device is also a good way of saving battery life, rather than relying on the default 5 minute timeout.

All that this means is that you press the power button once, quickly, after using your phone which puts the device into standby mode. If you’re not sure you will remember to do this on every occasion, try going to Settings > Lock & Wallpaper and change the Screen time-out settings to the minimum 30 seconds.

Note that if you have a lock on your wallpaper you will need to enter this each time you want to use your phone, but incoming calls will require you only to slide up and tap answer.

Windows Phone 7 Display Options

Another way of reducing the battery use on your Windows Phone 7 device is to alter the screen display options. Depending on where you purchased your handset, you might have some branding applied that takes advantage of the white background. Using the white background as opposed to the darker background uses up some extra battery juice, but this can be changed in Settings > Theme > Background.

Similarly, Settings > Brightness allows you to switch between letting the phone Automatically adjust your brightness settings and choosing between low, medium and high brightness levels.

References

Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Windows_Phone_7_logo.png