10 Effective Ways to Save Battery Life on your Apple iPhone XR

Mobile consumers have been introduced to various social media environment, games, movies, music and among others which are accessible whenever and wherever we go.  But most, if not all smartphone users’ dilemma is on their phone’s battery being drained instantaneously. Though Apple’s latest smartphone variants like iPhone XR are equipped with long-lasting battery life, heavy usage like keeping apps opened and running make it inevitable for some of these iPhones to experience rapid battery drain. Save battery life on your iPhone XR by reading further.

In this article, I have lined up various techniques on how to conserve the battery life of the iPhone XR handset. This information is aimed at helping those who are into using huge apps, streaming videos and playing video games on the iPhone. Read on to learn how to save up some power and make the most of your iPhone XR’s battery life.

Battery-saving and optimization tips

Below are the power-saving tricks that will help keep your iPhone XR battery last longer even without minimizing phone usage.

First method: Install the latest iOS version for your iPhone XR.

Little did we know that updating your iPhone’s OS to the latest version will not only enhance various phone features and render bug fixes, but also helps ameliorate the phone’s battery life. If your phone is not set to automatic updates, you can always check the current software of your phone by navigating through the settings menu. Here’s how:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Select General.
  3. Tap Software Update.
  4. If a new OS version is available, tap Download and Install.
  5. When prompted, enter your passcode to continue.
  6. Tap Agree to confirm.

Reboot the iPhone once the update installation is finished. Doing so will dump junk files cached in the internal memory and likewise refreshes apps and system services.

Second method: Reduce Display & Brightness.

Screen brightness and screen time-out are also among the factors that are linked to your phone’s battery consumption. The brighter the display is, the more battery or power is being consumed. That being said, it is recommended to reduce screen brightness on your device. To adjust screen brightness on your iPhone XR, simply follow these steps:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Select Display & Brightness.
  3. Tap and drag the slider to adjust the brightness level. The lower, the better.
  4. Then, tap Auto-Lock.
  5. Select a minimal time for the automatic lock.

As  for the screen timeout, setting the shortest time duration for your iPhone screen to dim or lock is recommended.

Third method: Turn On Auto-Brightness.

Turning on the Auto-Brightness will let your phone automatically adjust the display brightness depending on the current level of light in the surroundings. Setting your iPhone to act this way will save you time from configuring the display settings whenever you use your phone in various environment. To enable Auto-Brightness on your iPhone XR, follow the steps below.

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Select General.
  3. Tap Accessibility.
  4. Then, tap Display Accommodations.
  5. Tap the indicator to turn on Auto-Brightness.

Fourth method: Turn Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wireless services Off when not in use.

Enabling Wi-Fi only when needed greatly helps in terms of battery saving. It is thought to extend the battery life significantly. There are many ways for you to turn off wireless services on your device. You can disable the features individually or simultaneously.

To disable Wi-Fi on your iPhone XR, refer to these steps:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Tap Wi-Fi.
  3. Toggle the Wi-Fi switch to turn it on/off.

To disable Bluetooth on your iPhone XR, follow these steps:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Tap Bluetooth.
  3. Toggle the Bluetooth switch to turn it on/off.

To disable all wireless radios including cellular network connection on your iPhone XR, you can use the Airplane mode toggle instead. Here’s how it works:

  1. Tap Settings from the Home screen.
  2. Tap Airplane Mode.
  3. Toggle the Airplane Mode switch to turn the feature ON.

When enabled, your phone’s wireless functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular networks are turned off.

After a few seconds, toggle the Airplane Mode switch again to enable wireless features of your iPhone.

Always make it a habit to turn these features off when not in used because doing so can slow down the process of battery draining especially when your phone keeps trying to search for available networks.

Fifth method: Turn off Location Services when not in use.

Having these features enabled on your phone can also trigger fast draining of your phone’s battery. Hence, it is also recommended to turn them off when they are not in used. Aside from conserving battery life, disabling location services also prevents the processor from becoming exhausted as it can rest from syncing between servers when using location-enabled apps and services on your device. These options can be disabled from the settings menu of your phone. Here’s how to get there:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Scroll down and tap Privacy.
  3. Tap Location Services.
  4. Toggle the switch indicator to turn off Location Services.
  5. Tap Turn Off to confirm.

You can also select “While Using” options for all the apps instead of turning it off. Doing so will only enable GPS/Location services only to those apps that are currently being used.

Sixth method: Enable Low Power Mode on your iPhone XR.

Whenever your iPhone XR’s battery gets too low, you will be prompted whether or not to turn on the Low Power mode. If you’re in an instance that you badly need to use your phone but the battery is critically low, then you can set your phone to enter Low Power Mode. When enabled, it helps you save your battery by reducing the brightness, animation and background tasks on your phone.

You can launch the Control Center by swiping downward from the upper-right corner. Or you can also do it through the settings on your iPhone XR.

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Select Control Center.
  3. Tap Customize Controls.
  4. Then, tap to add Low Power Mode.

The only downside of enabling Low Power Mode is that some of your iPhone functions may not be available or limited. On the positive note, you can still use the basic key functions of your phone like calling and texting. Definitely better than being totally offline or unreachable.

Seventh method: Check and manage your apps.

Many cases of battery draining issues are linked to rogue apps and services. If you think that this is occurring to your iPhone XR, try to figure out which from your apps is acting up and consuming the most of its power. Here’s how to access and manage these settings on your iPhone XR:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Then, select Battery.

From this menu, you can navigate to certain tabs and sections that show which apps is consuming how much of your iPhone’s battery. If you find out an unusual battery consumption by an app, that’s when you need to manage that app to minimize or optimize battery consumption.

Eighth method: Disable Background App Refresh.

Various apps are regularly refreshing and updating contents even when they’re not in used. This is usually the case for iPhones with background auto-refresh is enabled. Setting up your phone this way can result to rapid battery consumption. As resolution, disabling Background App Refresh is recommended to save battery life. Here’s how it’s done:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Then, tap General.
  3. Select Background App Refresh and toggle the switch indicator to turn it off.

Ninth method: Turn off “Push” Notifications for email services.

One of the apps that often refreshes is the pre-installed Mail app on your iPhone XR. This happens as the email app tries to keep synchronized with the email server. While this is deemed an important routine, it can also contribute to rapid battery draining. When you set the email notification to “Push”, this will check and download emails in real time which will obviously consume most of your battery life. Fetch on the other hand will check and download new emails every 15 minutes or so, which means only minimal battery power will be use. As resolution, you can configure your device settings by customizing your email accounts to check for new emails only when triggered.  To customize these email settings and save battery life on your iPhone XR, simply follow the steps:

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Select Accounts and Passwords.
  3. Tap Fetch New Data.
  4. Then, select Fetch for each account (if you have multiple emails on your Mail app)

Tenth method: Turn off Automatic Downloads

Automatic downloads is also one of the factors that are tied to battery draining issues in mobile devices. Although this setting your iPhone to auto-download updates can save you time and effort from downloading and update apps, it’s also among the reasons as to why your phone easily runs out of power.  

  1. From the Home screen, go to Settings.
  2. Select the Apple ID header at the top of the screen.
  3. Then, select iTunes & App Store.
  4. Select the option to Turn off automatic downloads for apps you don’t need to auto-update.

And that covers everything in this guide. Hope this aids you to save battery life on your iPhone XR whenever you need to stretch the remaining power.

Feel free to drop us an email if ever you need some help in fixing battery- or power-related issues with your iPhone XR. Just give us all important details about the problem so we can use them as reference when finding potential solutions. You can also visit our Youtube channel and explore more troubleshooting videos. 

Also read: Common fixes for apps that keeps crashing on iPhone XR.

I hope that this how-to post has helped you one way or another. Please help us spread the word by sharing this post to your friends or people who may also have similar problems. Thanks for reading!

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