As PC sales continue their downward trend, and mobile device usage continues to grow, we’re using and relying on our mobile devices more than ever these days – according to a study by comScore in the US, between 2013-2014 mobile usage accounted for 60% of our time spent using digital media.

Trends aside, you know how much you use your mobile device, surely you don’t want it to quit on you when you need it most, right?

That’s why we have 10 easy tips to help make your smartphone (or tablet) battery last longer:

• Keep your device fully charged and topped up: Older Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries needed to be fully drained before being recharged so that they lasted longer, but newer one’s like Lithium-ion don’t require you to do this anymore, in fact if possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses.
  
• Turn it off: If it’s not essential for your device to be on, turn it off to save power for later use.
• Disable live wallpapers: If your smartphone or device is capable of displaying animated wallpapers, disable them. If possible, use a flat dark background as your wallpaper for your login and home screens.
• Reduce screen brightness and disable auto brightness: The dimmer your screen the better. Also, disable the automatic brightness feature. This will help reduce battery usage considerably.
• Disable vibrate and reduce volume: Vibrating requires the battery to drive a rotating mechanism which requires a fair amount of energy. Turn it off, and while you’re about it reduce the ringtone volume too.
• Turn off Auto-sync, Background Data or Background App Refresh:  This feature, known on Android devices as ‘Auto-sync’ or ‘Background Data’ and on iOS devices as ‘Background App Refresh’, allows your devices apps to refresh in the background, use location services, sync data or send you push notifications. Depending on how many apps you have that use this feature, it could use a lot of data and drain your battery. Switch it off.
• Turn off Bluetooth: When enabled, Bluetooth regularly checks for devices it can connect to. If you are not using it, disable it and you should see a small amount of energy being saved.
• Turn off GPS:  GPS communication with satellites is done regularly and for extended durations, which requires a lot of power and also prevents a mobile device from going into an energy saving mode. If you’re not using your smartphone’s GPS, disable it for considerable savings in battery consumption.
• Keep out of the heat: Once your device’s battery is damaged by heat, its capacity can’t be restored. So always store your device in a cool place and never leave it exposed to direct sunlight for long periods of time.
• Close overly active apps: Close processor hungry apps that are regularly performing background calculations, refreshing or syncing. Take a look at the AVG Android app performance report for Q1 2015 to see which apps are some of the biggest battery drainers.

If you want to go that extra step and save even more power to extend your device’s battery life, we recommend installing a power management app like AVG Cleaner for Android

For more great tips on getting the most out of your devices, visit us at www.now.avg.com and follow us on twitter or Facebook.