Key Takeaways
- Battery life is crucial; try using battery saver mode for a better quality of life, without much impact on performance.
- Lowering CPU speed and screen brightness, disabling 5G, and setting charge limits can significantly extend phone battery life.
- Full phone performance can easily be toggled back with a swipe and a tap, making battery saver mode a convenient feature for everyday use.
As time has gone on I’ve started to value battery life more and more in my phone, which has lead to the rather drastic decision to run it in battery saver mode most of the time. Surprisingly, this hasn’t resulted in any notable downsides when actually using my phone, so you might want to try it too!
My Phone Is Already Overkill
My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, which is already two models behind as of this writing. Despite it’s advanced age in technology terms, it’s still massively over-specified for my daily needs. So, even with the 30% cut to processing speed when using battery saver mode, I haven’t actually noticed any practical difference in my phone experience. Everything seems just as snappy, and even the odd mobile game plays just fine unless it’s an old AAA console port.
Battery Life Matters More
My phone has a pretty decent battery life, but I had become annoyed on some days that my phone’s battery was in the red by 8PM if I’d used it quite a lot that day. Overall, I don’t want to think about battery percentages during the course of my day. I want to put my phone on its wireless charger when I go to bed, and take it off when I wake up. I don’t have time for battery anxiety while I’m awake, and after turning on the battery-saving features, I now usually have 30% left at the very least when I go to bed. That’s a better quality of life improvement than you’d expect, and one less thing to worry about.
I’ve Left Some Features On
I haven’t turned on the most aggressive battery-saving features. Mainly, I’ve only underclocked the CPU by 30% and decreased the brightness of the screen by 10%. The OLED on my phone was already plenty bright, so I haven’t noticed that small sacrifice. I’ve also disabled 5G entirely on my phone, not because of some wacky 5G myths, but because it’s a power hog and I rarely if ever need my phone’s connection to be that fast. 4G speeds are also overkill for watching some YouTube and doom-scrolling through X.
The other feature I can’t live without is the always-on screen, since I don’t wear a smartwatch anymore, it’s nice to glance over and see the date and time when I need it. So, in principle, I could squeeze even more battery life from my phone if I needed it.
Battery Limits and Lower Resolution Are a Great Combo Too
My S22 Ultra supports a charge limit of 85%, where the phone will stop charging beyond that level. This prolongs battery life significantly and cancels out the negative effects of leaving your phone to charge overnight, since it’s not constantly pushing against that 100% limit. However, that does mean sacrificing 15% of your battery life, but by combining it with battery saving, I’ll likely extend the life of my phone’s battery by years.
The S22 Ultra also has a spectacular 1440p screen, and for a long time I was hellbent on enjoying every pixel I paid for. However, over time, I realized that I could not tell the difference between the phone running at its native resolution versus running at 1080p, which meant I was burning processing power for almost no benefit. Even at 1080p scaled to 1440p, you still benefit from not seeing the pixel grid itself, but the actual image is a little fuzzier. It’s just that you’d have to put them side-by-side to even tell.
Full Performance Is a Toggle Away
The best part of all, is that I can get my phone’s full-fat performance back with just a swipe and a tap, no more complex than turning on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Since the battery saver toggle is in the app shade, it’s no issue to revert to normal performance for specific apps.
Overall, I think I’m going to keep using the power saving mode, and consider its standard mode more like the “sports” mode on a supercar. You only need to flip that toggle on track days, you don’t need it to drive down to the grocery store.
