How To: Save Battery Life on iOS 6 and iPhone 5

Ah yes, iOS 6 and the iPhone 5 just came out. As with every major iOS release, complaints of battery life being worse than before are in tow. There are ways to preserve battery life on iOS, thankfully.

Now, the thing with saving battery life is that there’s a trade-off between being able to leave some feature on, and having to jump in and out of settings to re-enable features we need. If you’re so fed up with battery life that you really need to start disabling features, here's a rundown of what may help.

Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when not using it.

While it can be convenient to leave these on, and Wi-Fi assists in location detection, they're also both massive idle battery drains because they're constantly scanning in the background. Disable both of these features in Settings when not using them. Bluetooth settings are no longer hidden under submenus iOS 6, making it easier to manage.

Disable or Reduce Cellular Data When Necessary

If you don’t need or don’t have data service available, then disabling Cellular Data can save on battery life while leaving you available to the world. What if you have wifi access and are not expecting – or not wanting – any calls, and anyone who needs to reach you has iMessage? Well, Airplane Mode serves as a handy way to make sure that there’s no usage of cellular access at all. It should dramatically improve battery life.

LTE on the iPhone 5 is fast, and will also drain your battery fast. Your Twitter notifications will come in just fine on 3G networks alone, so disable LTE when not needing it, or not in an LTE service area, to save some battery life. Disable this in Settings -> General -> Cellular. Older phone models may have the option to disable 3G networks.

Turn Off Notifications, and Reduce Background Data Usage

Getting lots of notifications can be a real drain on battery life as the screen constantly turns on, and the device constantly polls the Apple servers for notifications. While there’s no easy way in iOS 6 to turn off all notification, at least turning off certain applications’ notifications can help.

As well, if you have push email and don’t really need it, set it to Fetch every so often, or just check it manually. This can be done from Settings -> Mail, Contacts, and Calendars -> Fetch New Data and diabling Push, and setting Fetch to manual.

Just Buy an External Battery Already

Look, the reason we leave all this stuff on is because we want the convenience of being able to jump from mobile data to Wi-Fi, to be notified of every little thing, and to have a screen so bright it could be seen from space. So why trade off? There are plenty of external batteries out there, including separate ones, and ones built in to cases. Yes, it’s something else to carry around, and will leave less pocket room, but for the ability to never have to turn off Bluetooth ever again when you want to pull out that keyboard? Priceless. Mophie makes battery-enabled cases with wide availability. NewTrent makes external battery packs that are beefy enough to charge an iPhone several times over. DealExtreme is a great source for cheap external chargers.

Have other ways to save some battery life? Let us know in the comments below!