Five things you're doing wrong with your iPhone

‘Why does my iPhone battery die so quickly?’ Here’s why and how to fix it!

In an age where our lives revolve around the welcoming screens of our shiny phones, the almost daily death of our mobile batteries is less of an irritation, more of a disaster. But if you treat your phone right, your battery will last a whole lot longer…

Here are 5 easy things you can do to stop the epic power sap.

1. Close your apps

Yes, those apps hold more of your heart than your own children, but you don’t need them to be open every second of every day. Give those apps a break, dammit! They work hard! The difference this small move will make to your phone’s battery is incredible. Even if you only close them once a day it will be worth your while. Simply double tap your home button and then swipe each app upwards. Hurrah! You’ve got this!

2. Alter the brightness

Surprisingly enough, your phone is not an LED spotlight - but the way you're using its brightness you'd think it was. That baby may as well have fluorescent scanning x-ray skills. Stop blinding the poor people around you and tone it down a notch. First things first, turn off that nasty 'auto-brightness.' It's causing a world of pain and it's time to say 'no more!' Be strong. Head to Settings - Wallpaper & Brightness - turn off Auto-Brightness. You can now manually adjust the brightness of your screen depending on where you are. The power is literally in your hands! Swipe up from the bottom of your phone and a brightness slider will be revealed. Play around, have some fun, go a little crazy - you deserve it!

3. Charge it properly

I know, I know, it's so tempting to just charge your hand-held baby when you have the time to, but it's not doing that rectangular genius any good. You should really only be charging your phone when it's completely dead. That's right - you have the power to bring something back to life. You are a healer! But if you then go and pull it out of the charger before it hits between 80% and 100%, then you're back to being a battery-life-sucking-devil again. Repeat after me: "charge at 0, unplug at 100". Meditate on that every morning and I promise life will improve. Things are looking up, everybody.

4. Don't let it overheat

Your phone is not a heater or a solarium. It shouldn't have steam coming out of it either, just FYI. If your phone is hot (and assuming you haven't just taken it out of the oven or set it on fire) the battery power will be sucked out of it a lot quicker than if it was cool. All you have to do is keep it out of hot environments: overheated cars, on top of laptops, near other electronic devices, on a heater etc. You should also check your taskmaster and make sure that none of your apps have gone rogue in case they're causing your processor to work extra-hard. Yes, traitor apps do exist. Watch your back!

5. Turn your phone off

It's okay, you will live through this. All we're asking is that you turn your phone off once a week to let it naturally recharge. It's unlikely that guy/girl is going to text you at 2am and you can wait (oh yes you can) to see how many people have liked your new insty photo till the morning.  My gosh, have some self-control! Do NOT hold the power button and home button down together for a long time (quickly for a screen shot though is a-ok) because it's the equivalent of pulling your computer out of the powerpoint. Just hold the top power button down for a few seconds and then slide to power off. You've got this! Yeah, that's right! Shut. It. Down.

Does your phone constantly run out of battery? What do you do to conserve it?