Phone battery dying too fast? 12 Tips to extend its life

The Zenfone 12 Ultra offers power-saving modes that can help you automatically optimize the battery setting to extend battery life. You can do so manually — for example, when you know you have a long day away from the power plug ahead of you. To change the power-saving modes manually, go to Settings, tap on Battery, select Low battery power-saving, and toggle the Enable power-saving mode automatically on. This feature automatically activates the battery saver when your charge drops below a certain threshold.

Some apps run in the background, consuming power without your knowledge. To identify these, go to Settings > Battery > Battery usage. Take some time to review the list of apps and their battery consumption. If you spot apps you rarely use but consume significant power, consider uninstalling or restricting their background activity. More on that in the next part.

Some apps, such as games, can also be quite power-hungry, and the Battery Usage function can help you identify the ones that consume the most energy, so when you’re in need of a longer battery life in your day, try to avoid those.

Background processes can silently drain your battery, and not all of them are crucial at all times. To manage your background processes, navigate to Settings > Apps & notifications > All apps. Select an app you’d like to manage, then tap App battery usage. Toggle off Allow background usage to limit its activity when not in use. Repeat for any app you think may not always need to be running in the background. You could also adjust the background processing settings inside some of the apps’ settings. For example, for an email client app, you can change how frequently the app checks for new emails and downloads new messages.

Aside from optimizing your battery settings, you can also adjust simple settings of your phone quickly and change them according to your needs. Start with adjusting the screen brightness. Your phone's display is one of the primary battery consumers. Keeping it at maximum brightness can significantly drain power. And let’s be honest, in certain situations, such as when using your phone after dark, you don’t need the full brightness. To optimize, swipe down from the top to access the Quick Settings menu. Then, find the brightness slider and adjust it to a comfortable level.

You can also enable the Adaptive brightness in Settings > Display to let your phone adjust brightness based on ambient light.

To push the screen-related battery savings one step further, you can consider the dark mode. The dark mode of the phone UI can be an aesthetic choice for some; for others, it can help with eye fatigue. But it also carries an additional benefit — improved battery life. To enable the dark mode, navigate to Settings > Display > System color scheme, and select the Dark Theme. Dark mode reduces power consumption by displaying darker pixels — especially beneficial for AMOLED screens — such as one in the Zenfone 12 Ultra — where each pixel is illuminated individually, so if it’s displaying black, it simply stays off, not consuming any power.

Features like Bluetooth, GPS, and NFC are handy but can drain your battery when not in use. Ensure you turn them off when they're not needed. To do so, access the Quick Settings menu by swiping down from the top. Then, toggle off Bluetooth, GPS, or NFC as required. To turn them back on, repeat the process, but toggle on.

You can use automated healthy charging settings or control this yourself. The charging mode can be adjusted after connecting the phone to charging. To adjust these settings, go to Settings > Battery > Charging mode, and select between three modes that best suit your needs: the Regular charging mode, where the charger powers the system while at the same time charging the battery; the Bypass charging mode, which causes the charger to only power the system and not charge the battery; and Smart bypass mode, which automatically stops supplying the power necessary to charge the battery when it is sufficiently charged (to avoid potentially harmful overcharging) and only provides power to the system.