How to Boost Your iPhone X Battery Life

For all intents and purposes, the iPhone X (pronounced iPhone 10) is a bit of older technology in 2020 but those who have cared for their device are still loyal to Apple’s first full-screen phone. As with any aging tech you may find that your battery just doesn’t last as long as it once does.

There are several reasons for this so before you go rushing out to have a new battery installed or purchase a new phone, let’s review some things to try and fix your battery woes first.

What’s Causing Battery life Issues?

The first step in solving your problem is understanding what’s causing it. Let’s review a few reasons why your battery isn’t holding the charge it once was.

Note – An aging phone will have some battery loss over time, that’s natural. But, if your phone’s battery isn’t even lasting most of the day you may have a problem.

Memory

How much memory do you have left on your phone? – Head over to the ‘Settings’ in your phone and tap on ‘General.’ Tap ‘About’ to see how much memory you have left. An excess of older apps, updates, etc. can run in the background of your device causing it to lose its charge faster.

Physical Damage

Is your phone damaged? Are the internal components exposed to the environment? Although the damage may not indicate any harm that has occurred to the battery, damage (especially liquid damage) can cause corrosion and dust to infect the internal components of your device. This can certainly be the reason your phone is losing its charge.

Connectivity Issues

Is your phone constantly looking for a cellular signal, wifi, or Bluetooth? If you’re dropping calls a lot or having an issue with your connection it may be that an internal hardware issue is causing your phone to use more battery life.

Essentially, if your phone is constantly looking for a stronger signal it is using more battery life.

Your Screen Time

Lastly, it may be no error on the phone at all. How much time are you spending on your phone? – Tech support agents hear it far too often “the battery used to last all day!” Yes, the phone’s battery life lasted all day when all users could do was check their emails and scroll through social media.

The way we use our phones now is much different than in 2017 when the phone was launched. You can play games, stream endless amounts of content, and scroll through several social media sites all day. If you are using your phone now more than you did when you first purchased it then your phone’s battery will drain much faster.

How to Check Your Battery Health

The next step in your “Battery Life” journey is checking the actual health of your phone’s battery. Doing this will indicate if there is a hardware issue (which your battery needs replaced) or something else.

Open the ‘Settings’ on your phone and click ‘Battery’

Click ‘Battery Health’

Keep in mind that your Battery’s health is different from its percent charged. Basically, your battery should be at 100% health (or very close to that) to perform its best. As seen in the screenshot above, the battery health of this iPhone X is 81% while the phone is charged to 100%. The phone is still operational, but, it will never be a true 100% charge until the battery is capable of supporting that amount.

How to Boost Your Battery Life

After troubleshooting and checking the battery health we’ll assume that your phone isn’t broken and you didn’t have any “Service Warning” messages under battery life so let’s proceed to correct the errors that aren’t caused by hardware.

Check Your Apps’ Battery Usage

Go to Settings | Battery and scroll down to the Battery Usage list. Here, you’ll see which apps have used the most battery life over the past 24 hours, and during the past seven days.

Below the app’s name, you’ll see exactly how it was using your battery, such as via “background activity” or “audio”. If there is an app that’s using a disproportionate amount of power, you can try using the app less or uninstalling it if it’s no longer needed. 

Enable Low Power Mode

Without a doubt, the best way to save power on your iPhone X is to enable iOS’ built-in Low Power Mode. It offers a catch-all, quick solution to a draining battery and automatically disables background app refresh, auto-downloads and resets the lighting and animation options to maximize battery life. Be warned though, you won’t get all your usual app notifications if you enable Low Power Mode. 

To enable, go to Settings | Battery and toggle Low Power Mode to “on”. The battery icon in the top right-hand corner will go from green to yellow to show it’s been enabled.

Disable Raise To Wake

A subtle, yet incredibly useful, feature that came to the iPhone in iOS 10 was the Raise to Wake tool. When enabled, each time you pick up your phone or orientate the screen towards you, the screen registers the movement and “wakes the screen” up. This means you can glance at your phone without pressing the power button on the side, or pressing the home button. The latter, in particular, can inadvertently unlock the device if you’re using Touch ID, which can be a pain. 

The benefits you get from this feature can be undone by the amount of battery life you eat into by constantly making the screen light up. To conserve an, albeit small, amount of power, disable this feature by going to Settings | Raise to Wake and move the switch to the “off” position.

Stop Apps Refreshing in the Background

Although you can automatically disable the Background App Refresh feature in Low Power Mode, you can also manually disable it while preserving other features. It pings the servers of your relevant apps to pull in your latest emails, see your new Facebook Likes, retweets, and more.

Regularly pinging these servers uses up battery because it means apps are running on your phone’s power (and data connection) even if the phone isn’t being used. 

To disable Background App Refresh on your iPhone X go to Settings | General | Background App Refresh | Background App Refresh and toggle the slider to the “off” position. You can additionally disable Background App Refresh for individual apps. 

Manage Your Screen’s Brightness Levels

Simply tweaking how bright your iPhone X screen is can work wonders for your battery life. The extra light used to illuminate your screen requires a fair amount of energy which drains your battery.

As a rule, the lighter it is outside, the more light you’ll need on the screen. For example, when lying in bed at night you can have the screen on minimum brightness and still see everything clearly. While in bright sunshine, you’ll need to turn the brightness levels to maximize to counteract the amount of light coming from the sun.

You can manage your screen’s brightness levels manually by swiping down from the top right-hand corner of the screen. Locate the sunshine icon and tap on it. Then, use the slider to adjust the brightness.

Alternatively, go to Settings | General | Accessibility | Display Accommodations and toggle the Auto-Brightness switch to “on”. With this enabled, your iPhone X will adjust the display to suit the amount of ambient light hitting its sensors. 

Turn Off Unnecessary Functions

As mentioned previously, your phone is constantly looking for a signal. If it isn’t finding one it will continue to look until your battery is completely drained. This is probably more likely to happen with your wifi or Bluetooth functions that your cellular data. Nonetheless, if you’re not using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, turn the feature off.

Unfortunately, Apple devices have this constant need to be on wifi so you may have to toggle the switch off every day and every time you turn your phone on.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get a new battery?

The answer to this question can be a little tricky thanks to Apple policies. You’ve probably seen several electronics repair stores in your area that offer iPhone repair. Unfortunately, many of these places aren’t Apple Certified and therefore, you aren’t going to get original Apple parts. You’re more than welcome to take your phone to one of these places just keep in mind, the battery and the way your phone interacts with that battery will never be the same as the original.

With that word of caution, we recommend that you call Apple before taking your iPhone X for a battery repair to a third-party shop. Apple often offers the battery replacement and a lower cost and your phone could still have a warranty. As we saw with the iPhone 6, Apple offered battery replacements at no charge for a time because of hardware issues.

You can contact Apple to find a retail store or an authorized repair center near you. At the time of writing, an iPhone X battery replacement is $69 with no warranty. It isn’t a bad deal for factory parts and installation provided by certified technicians. Just keep in mind before driving all the way to an Apple Store if your phone has third-party parts, they will know and they won’t work on it.

Does overcharging the battery hurt the battery life?

A common misconception is that you don’t want to overcharge your phone because it will actually hurt the battery. While there is a lot of debate about this, Apple has implemented a fail-safe to combat any issues from overcharging.

The iPhone X does have Optimized Battery Charging (iOS 13 or later) which is located under the Battery tab in the Settings. If you toggle this on (which it should be on by default) your phone will learn your charging routine. Toggle the option on so that your battery’s chemical life lasts longer.