Improve your battery life
The iPhone battery life is a much discussed topic, and whilst I think a day is ok for a smartphone battery to last, anything you can do to make it last longer is a bonus. The other day Steve and I were playing around with some settings and we believe we have found the best tip to increase your battery life by at least double and it’s so easy!
The big question is how? Well I won’t mess around, you simply switch off Spotlight Search. When we tried this it seemed almost too easy to be true, but amazingly it works and so many people we have spoken to didn’t even know you could switch it off. You may also note that this is the same “fix” that was reported for 3G users running iOS 4 who are having performance issues, so it’s clear that all that indexing is a resource hog. After all, if it can bring a perfectly capable smartphone like the iPhone 3G to a grinding halt, surely it’s doing something to the performance of your iPhone 3GS or 4. Anyway, that was the theory on which we decided to give this a go.
The old way
Personally I don’t use spotlight, and neither does Steve or many others that we have told, and for me switching it off makes no difference to my day-to-day use of the iPhone. You see the thing is I come from the days of the 1st generation iPhone where Spotlight Search wasn’t a feature and when it first came out I didn’t use it as it wasn’t something I was used to having. It’s not something I ever think about using either, if I want to search the web I open Safari, if I want to search my contacts I open Contacts and so on, in fact the only thing I might have used it for was to search for an app, but even then I didn’t really use it (and now that we have Folders and I have one or a maximum of two screens of apps I never will).
Search still works elsewhere
Talking of which, the only thing you will lose by switching it off is searching for apps. If you open mail, contacts, calendar, notes…. whatever has search, you can still search! The only thing is it means is you have to open the app to do the search and having Folders and the Fast Switcher really does negate the need to search for your apps. You can also still search the web or Wiki from Spotlight.
A cleaner Spotlight Search
Interestingly when I was telling one of the other guys about it and I said “the best thing is that searching within apps still works” he said “actually the best thing is that it’s now really easy to search Wiki or the Web” and this is so true because they are now your only results.
This also works for the iPad, although the iPad has excellent battery life anyway so you may not need to do it. Also as it’s not running iOS 4 yet and therefore no Folders or Fast Switcher you may want to leave it on, but if you do decide to switch it off the instructions for that are below. Just to note though; because you are running a version of iOS 3 you have to leave at least one of the options ticked. I left notes ticked as it’s not an app I use very often and therefore doesn’t need to index it.
So how do you switch it off? Easy.
On iPhone 3G:
Go into “Settings –> General –> Home Button –> Spotlight Search” then untick all of the options.
On iPhone 3GS and 4:
Go into “Settings –> General –> Spotlight Search” then untick all of the options.
Untick all options
On iPad:
Go into “Settings –> General –>Home –> Search Results” then untick all the options (except one)
Untick all except one
To give you an idea of battery improvement and what you might gain here’s a little about my usage trends. I consider myself to be an ‘average’ to ‘mildly heavy’ user of my iPhone. I have four email accounts, two set to push and two set to fetch every 30 mins. I have 3 calendars, again two set to push and one set to fetch and I regularly text and call. I use safari a lot and use lot of data (500MB plan is only just enough for me). I also play games (GodFinger is my fave at the moment) and have apps installed for developer testing. Bluetooth is always on, Find my iPhone is enabled and brightness is set to max (auto brightness off). I am on XT in Christchurch so signal searching isn’t an issue.
*At most*, previously my battery would last from 7am fully charged until approx 9pm the same day when it would hit 20% or less. Since swicthing off Spotlight……. 100% at 7am day one to 31% at 10:30pm day two!
So that’s more than double what it would previously last. Steve has had very similar results as did others that we have spoken with.
Give it a go and let us know how you get on in the comments. Already doing it…? Then why didn’t you tell us before! (Oh and tell us in the comments how you get on).
Have turned off on both unused 3GS and heavily used Iphone 4. Will report back with outcome. As a bench mark my Iphone 3GS (on standby not physically used at all but has a mobile me account loaded with push on) gets 6 days (not quite the 300 hours/12 days Apple boost but a long time) so will be interesting to see what happens there.
(camtab has made 468 comments)
Oo nice tip. Will give this a try, still iffy about my iPhone’s battery life.
(pknz has made 92 comments)
Nice tip guys.
(jaytaylor has made 52 comments)
To disable it on my 3G, instead of what you have posted it is:
Go into “Settings –> General –> HOME BUTTON –> Spotlight Search” then untick all of the options.
Sounds like a logical tip, hope it works, thanks fellas!
(Matt has made 37 comments)
I have an iPad and I usually charge it every Tuesday or Wednesday and every Saturday.
I just read the tip and I will report back with the results.
(richboy247 has made 17 comments)
Oh, this looks promising. Will report back in a couple of days with my BatteryLog results!
(B Gallagher has made 71 comments)
I have never ever used Spotlight, never needed to
(Janak1 has made 3 comments)
Did this a few weeks back on my 3g it didnt doubble my battery life but i think it has improved, i can sometimes get away with 2 days with mild use but still mostly have to charge everyday
(deFusion has made 12 comments)
@Matt…. Cheers for that I have added it to the post.
Turned it all off about three weeks back to help the lagginess since ios4.
http://m.geekzone.co.nz/Forums/76/Topic/65153
Hasn’t helped my 3gs battery life enough to get me right through a typical day
(leStar has made 63 comments)
As an idea to Monitor it why do you we use the usage meter under general. Or usage 5hrs 21min and standby 1day 12hours. Just an idea? I have just changed all this to check. Before this on my iPhone 4 I have been getting roughly usage 7hrs and standby about 1 day 20hours. So pretty dam good!
(nfused has made 30 comments)
Im going to try it.
I find that disabling/ switching Safari completely off & if you are using Skype to log out once you finish using it also helps. Checking of mail i use the manual option.
(alopes has made 70 comments)
Well I was skeptical, and like Janak1, I don't use Spotlight Searches but its clearly helped as I turned them all off yesterday and I am still on 40% battery with 2 Days 9 hours standby (phone was already a day in when I turned them off). Prior to turning them off the best I had was 2 Days 11 Hours (with 6 hours 52 mins usage) so huge improvement already. Will report back when it finally dies
Great work guys
(camtab has made 468 comments)
How many of you use bluetooth on a regular basis? Bluetooth is a battery hog. iPhones sync using cable and I do not know any users who use bluetooth ear pieces. I leave mine on because I need it to connect to my car stereo only. The car stereo is the only device listed on my bluetooth devices and it is convenient to leave bluetooth on when using the car regularly.
Testing battery use without bluetooth turned on would be an interesting experiment.
(Janak1 has made 3 comments)
I did a recent test on my Iphone 4 a few weeks ago and lasted 24 hrs to 7% on moderate use. Which I blogged about. – http://chrishattan.wordpress.com
I turned off my Spotlight at 12 miday and now at 0200 its 58% so to me I dont think its going to be a major improvement. This has been on light useage so far!!
(Psychrn has made 131 comments)
@ Janak1: Bluetooth is on for the TomTom car kit, if it wasn’t for tat I would switch it off.
Psychrn wrote:
That seems quite poor, what do you plan to with your phone? I was recently tweeting the unhelpful Vodafone about my battery life and it got the point they mentioned the 30day return policy, or sending it away to Apple to check it.
Obviously I'd lose the phone for a up to and probably over a week, which doesn't suit me when I'm applying for jobs.
Not sure how the 30 day return would work with the contract either.
Left my phone on standby overnight and it dropped 3%. Currently at 47%: 4 hours usage, 1 day, 1 hour standby. So it looks like the Spotlight tip does indeed give it better battery life, although I don't think by 100% for me.
(pknz has made 92 comments)
I did a test over the past 24 hrs. I was left with 32% whewreas my last test was down to 7%.
I tried to do comparable things too
(Psychrn has made 131 comments)
If I leave wifi switched on or skype backgrounded it eats the battery in ios4
I leave Bluetooth off unless I happen to use my earpiece. Gps is the worst battery hog after the screen.
(leStar has made 63 comments)
I’ve tried this for a couple of weeks. For the time that I’m not actually using my iPhone, the standby batter life certainly seems to have improved quite a bit. However, thanks to multi-tasking and the like, I’m using my iPhone 4 much more than I ever used my 3G, so I still end up having to charge it just as often!
(B Gallagher has made 71 comments)