Summary
I’ve used a Samsung phone for the past two years, and lately the battery has become one of my biggest frustrations. It got to the point where I couldn’t trust it to get me through a full day away from a charger, especially on days when I used it heavily. I’ve tried plenty of ways to squeeze a little more battery life out of my Galaxy, but three settings in particular made the biggest difference. After changing them, the phone started lasting noticeably longer, and more importantly, I no longer constantly check the battery percentage when I’m out. My phone doesn’t need to work this hard I traded a little power for a lot more battery The first thing I changed was my Samsung phone’s performance profile. Once I thought about how I actually use my phone every day, this was a pretty easy decision. I spend most of my time on the phone reading stuff online, doomscrolling when I have a few minutes to kill, playing way too much Sudoku, and replying to friends and family. None of that really needs the phone running at full potential all the time. Samsung gives you two performance profiles to choose from: Standard and Light. Standard is enabled by default and balances processing speed, battery life, and cooling. That sounds great, but that balance wasn’t really working for me. So, I switched to Light. Instead of prioritizing processing speed, this mode emphasizes battery life and keeping the phone cool. For the kind of things I do every day, that trade-off makes a lot more sense. After switching to Light, I could actually notice the difference in everyday use. My phone lasted longer, without feeling noticeably slower at anything I use it for. The Light or Standard profile doesn’t affect gaming performance. Samsung handles that separately through Game Booster. My battery drain had some usual suspects I stopped letting them run wild in the background Changing how my phone handled performance certainly helped, but I also wanted to figure out which apps were quietly eating through the battery in the background. Thankfully, Samsung makes that pretty easy to check without installing anything extra. I opened Settings, went to Battery, and then opened Background usage limits. This gave me more control over which apps could continue running in the background. I started adding apps I didn’t need to run all the time to the Deep sleeping apps list. Once an app is in deep sleep, it can’t run in the background and only becomes active again when I open it. Of course, I wouldn’t do this with apps where I need notifications to arrive immediately, but I have plenty of apps on my phone that I use only occasionally and have no reason to keep active throughout the day. It also made me realize how many apps were running in the background even though I barely used them. Putting those into deep sleep has helped cut down on unnecessary battery drain, and I haven’t really had to change how I use my phone to get that extra battery life. Stop leaving battery life to chance Standard mode gives me the balance I wanted The last change I made was turning on Power Saving. This is the most obvious battery-saving setting of the three, but I like that Samsung gives me enough control over how aggressive I want it to be. There are two options: standard and maximum. On my phone, switching to Standard currently shows an estimated 10 hours and 26 minutes of battery life. It gets there by limiting things like background network usage, syncing, and location checks. I can take things further by limiting CPU speed, turning off the Always-On Display, reducing brightness by 10%, dropping the refresh rate to Standard, enabling Dark mode, and setting the screen timeout to 30 seconds. Maximum takes a much more aggressive approach. It restricts background activity and notifications for almost everything apart from essential apps and the ones I specifically allow. That can stretch the battery further, but it’s more than I need on a normal day. Standard has been the sweet spot for me. It cuts back on enough things to make a difference without making my phone feel unnecessarily restricted. I’d probably save Maximum for days when I’m running dangerously low and won’t be near a charger anytime soon. Turning it on is pretty straightforward, too. Follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app.
- Head to Device care.
- Select Battery.
- Tap Power saving.
- From there, you can choose between Standard and Maximum and decide which additional restrictions you’re comfortable enabling. For me, Standard with a few carefully chosen limits is enough. However, I’d recommend reading through it and turning on the mode that makes the most sense for you. I’m no longer planning my day around a charger I still don’t expect my Samsung phone to suddenly last forever, but these three changes have made a bigger difference than I expected. The best part is that I haven’t had to completely change how I use my phone just to make it last longer. I can still scroll, read, and use it normally — I’m just reaching for the charger a lot less often. And after spending months worrying about whether my battery would make it through the day, that’s really all I wanted.