Stretch Your Android Battery with Battery Saver?

The more we create energy saving processors and jam more storage capacity into the same slim rechargeable batteries, the more we then immediately add increasing power demands to the firmware to consume ’em. You’d think that by now we’d have laptops that ran for a week and smartphones that you charged every 3-4 days or even less, but it just ain’t so. I always think of it as the fridge space dilemma: However much space you’ve made, when you come home from the market, you always have a bit more than you can fit in!

Android 9 does have a lot of power management tools to help you stretch out the life of your battery – because even developers have to deal with the hassle of charging their phones too often – but it also gives you the ability to install dozens of apps that run all the time, constantly check online, and generally eat up all the power. The worst offenders, according to the UK Independent, are Facebook, SnapChat, WhatsApp and Google Maps. Also on the list are a lot of Samsung apps if you’re on a Galaxy and having these issues. Netflix, Spotify and Microsoft Outlook are also called out as particular battery hogs too. FYI.

You can actually look on your phone to see which apps are the worst offenders too: Fix Battery Drain Problems on Android. And iPhone users aren’t left out, as I write about in this article: iPhone apps with the worst battery usage.

Don’t want to go through all this hassle? Okay, let’s talk about Battery Saver. Surprisingly, it’s not that much of a drag on your phone user experience and you can enable it without losing very much of the overall user experience of Android! As Google explains, when you have Battery Saver enabled, your device:

• • Waits until you look at an app to refresh its content, like email or news
  • Stops use of Location services when your screen is off
  • Stops apps from doing things in the background, unless you turn off battery optimization
  • Delays some notifications.

The best part is that you can enable it, try it for a few hours, and disable it if the limitations are getting in the way.

The fast and easy way to enable Battery Saver is right from the pull-down menu you get if you swipe from the top:

The rightmost icon, the battery, enables you to turn on – and off – Battery Saver. Tap on it and…

Once it’s turned on you’ll find that things change just a bit and your battery charge indicator on the very top of the Android screen goes a cool red:

Try that out for a bit, see if the limitations are problematic or something you don’t even notice. My guess is the latter, but some people are pretty plugged in and might dislike having even a bit less connection to the online universe…

Here’s what’s also cool is that Android 9 “Pie” lets you specify that if your battery gets to a certain level that Battery Saver should automatically be enabled, so that if your phone is almost dead you can eke out just a bit more battery life. To set that up, go into Settings then search for “battery”:

That last option is what you want: Battery > Battery Saver.

Tap on that to jump straight to that setting:

Tap to turn Battery Saver on automatically and you’ll get a chance to specify when it should be enabled:

If you’re fine with the experience of having Battery Saver enabled, consider having it turn on at 25% or 30%, but if it does kind of bug you, having it enabled at 10% or 15% is probably a better option.

That’s it. Now you know how to work with Battery Saver on your Android Pie 9.0 phone. Good luck!

Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Android for many years, so please do check out my Android help archives while you’re here!