Suffering from poor battery life on iPhone 13 mini? You are not alone. There are many ways in which you can improve the battery life of your iPhone 13 mini. Follow these tips to extend your iPhone 13 mini battery life.
The iPhone 13 mini pack bright screen and high-end features that suck plenty of power.
Sadly, lithium-ion batteries haven’t made as much as progress. This leaves you to rely solely on software for longer-lasting endurance unless you want to upgrade to an iPhone with maximum battery life. Here are some practical tips for improving the battery life on an iPhone 13 mini.
Use these tips to extend battery life on iPhone 13 mini
1. Turn off unnecessary location services
Many of the apps you’ve installed want to know where you’re located at all times, and while iOS is pretty good about asking you whether newly installed apps are permitted to access your location, keep in mind that every app that does is sapping a little bit of your battery every time it checks where you are.
The most drastic way to improve your iPhone 13 mini battery life is to shut off the Location Services function entirely. In reality, though, that’s not usually practical. Therefore, we instead recommend taking control of how your phone and apps use location.
Ergo, if an app doesn’t really need to track you, you should turn off its ability to do so—not just for privacy reasons but also to extend battery life.
Head into the Settings menu, tap Privacy, then choose Location Services. From here, you’ll see a list of apps that can track your location. Slide the permission setting to off for each one you want to sever ties with or just uninstall the app completely if you’re not using it anymore.
2. Stop apps from running in the background
Another thing apps like to do is to keep running even when you’re not using them. And you guessed it: That causes your iPhone 13 mini battery to drain fast. Do you really need to see the absolute latest post instantly when you open that social media app of yours, or can you wait a second or two for it to update instead?
This “feature” is called Background App Refresh and it can be disabled on a per-app or across-the-board basis by going into Settings, then General, then Background App Refresh.
I’d suggest starting by disabling most apps that aren’t absolutely necessary or at the very least selecting the option to allow background refreshing only when you’re on a Wi-Fi signal instead of the “Wi-Fi & Cellular Data” option. Why? Because pulling data down over your cellular connection consumes more energy than doing the same via Wi-Fi. Every little bit helps.
3. Go nuclear with Low Power Mode
This is an option I like to use if I know I’m going to be away from a power outlet all day (or weekend) or if I really want some relative peace and quiet.
Apple’s Low Power Mode usually asks if you want it to kick into gear around the 20% and 10% battery levels. But you can also proactively turn it on at any time—and it cuts way down on battery drainage. To activate it, go to Settings, then Battery, then tap the Low Power Mode toggle.
Now, be forewarned: Although this can really stretch your battery life, it carries its costs. First, your screen will dim quite a bit. Second, your device might feel slower depending on what you’re doing, as this cuts down on nonessential features and animations—specifically Mail content won’t be downloaded in the background until you open the app itself. It’ll also temporarily disable AirDrop, iCloud synchronization, and the Continuity feature.
That said, you’ll still get essential alerts: phone calls, messages, new email notifications, and things like that. The internet and your apps will still pull down data while you’re using them as well, just not when you aren’t actively using them.
Again: This isn’t for everyday use unless you’re really a stickler for battery life or want to actively dumb down your smartphone a bit.
4. Disable Auto-Play Message Effects and Auto-Play Video Previews
Go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Toggle off Auto-Play Message Effects and Auto-Play Video Previews. When disabled, the former won’t allow full-screen effects in the Messages app to auto-play (which might not be a big deal to you) and it will shut down auto-play of video previews.
5. Reduce that brightness!
The iPhone 13 mini display is beautiful and bright. The only problem is that it is also a resource hog, and those are exactly the reasons why. If you really want to extend the iPhone 13 mini battery life, you should watch out for that screen. One way to continue enjoying your phone and save energy is to reduce brightness. It’s easy to do. And unless you spend a lot of time outdoors, chances are you are overdoing the brightness, anyways.
Go to Settings > Display & Brightness.
6. Set a shorter Auto Lock timeout
Let’s face it, we can be a bit lazy and sometimes our lives are amazingly busy. Very rarely do I manually turn off my iPhone screen; I usually just let the Auto Lockfeature do its thing. This will waste a lot of battery in the long run, so go into Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto Lock and pick a shorter duration if you want your screen to go off sooner during moments of inactivity.
7. Monitor Misbehaving Apps
Your battery life can take a big hit if an app doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. This could be caused by anything from a bug to a deliberate aggressive background feature. You can check this by heading into Settings > Battery > Battery Usage by app to see which apps have drained the most of it.
If there’s an app you don’t use much, you should uninstall it and monitor the battery for a day to see if it improves. You can also force-close the app and give it another shot. If nothing proves useful, get rid of it and switch to an alternative.
8. Turn off unnecessary connectivity
You are not always using things like AirDrop, WiFi, Bluetooth, or Cellular Data. If left on, these antennas will always be working in the background and trying to find a connection, which ultimately means to more wasted power. These can all be turned off easily, straight from the Control Center, so just give them the boot when you are done using them. After all, you won’t always be browsing the internet, or listening to your tunes through a Bluetooth speaker.
9. Remove or disable apps you don’t use
How many of you are app hoarders? I know I am. It’s easy to download and keep all those awesome apps in your iPhone, which is great if you use them all, but that is hardly ever the case. Look through your applications and uninstall whatever you don’t need.
10. Take advantage of charging capabilities
And of course, the most obvious way to keep your iPhone alive is by charging it regularly. The good news here is that Apple has been able to speed up charging times significantly. Apple has its own quick charging technology, which they call “Fast Fast Charging”. The company claims this charger can take your phone from 0% to 50% in just 30 minutes.
Additionally, the iPhone 13 mini supports wireless charging. You can buy some wireless chargers and just place them wherever you spend more time, like your office, kitchen or room. I love the effortless way in which one can charge phones with wireless charging. You don’t even have to think about it – just leave the iPhone 13 mini there and let it juice up whenever you are not using it.
Wrapping up
So there you have your 10 tips for keeping that iPhone 13 mini alive for longer. Some may argue that a few of these tips will affect your experience. But then, having a dead phone does as well. It just depends on your priorities.
Which of these tricks do you guys actually take advantage of? Do you have any other tips for your fellow iPhone 13 Pro Max users? Hit the comments and let us know!