The average American spends more than 3 hours on their smartphone every single day. They use that time to send text messages, check their social media accounts, play games, surf the internet, and more.

And as you might imagine, those who spend that amount of time on their smartphones tend to blow through their battery life in no time at all. Even though most smartphones are supposed to last people all day, it’s not uncommon to see a person scrambling to find a phone charger before they eat lunch.

Do you wish there was a way to extend your smartphone’s battery life? Well, as it turns out, there are actually more than a few ways to go about saving battery life throughout the course of a normal day.

Check out seven tips for saving your battery so that you can use your smartphone without having it die on you.

1. Put a Dark Wallpaper Up on Your Smartphone

When you picked out the wallpaper that you were going to put up on your smartphone, you probably didn’t think about how it might affect your phone’s battery life at all. But it can actually play a pretty big part in your phone blowing through more battery life than it should.

If you have a light wallpaper that is very bright, it’s going to result in your phone using up more battery life whenever you have your phone turned on. You can reverse this trend by taking your bright wallpaper down and replacing it with one that features nothing but darker colors. This could work wonders for your phone’s battery life.

2. Turn the Brightness on Your Smartphone Down

In addition to replacing a light wallpaper with a dark wallpaper to avoid making your phone too bright, you should also go the extra mile and turn your phone’s brightness down just a bit.

You obviously don’t want to make your phone too dark and impossible to see. But it shouldn’t be so bright that it lights up a dark room, either. You should attempt to find a happy medium between these two extremes so that your phone’s brightness doesn’t take a toll on your battery life.

3. Delete Smartphone Apps You Don’t Use Anymore

The average person has anywhere from 60 to 90 apps on their smartphone at any given time. But most people only use a few of those apps each day.

At the same time, many of these apps continue to run in the background on smartphones and chew up battery life. You might be surprised to see how many of your unused apps are doing that at this time.

With this in mind, it would be a good idea to go through your phone and delete any apps you don’t want or need anymore. It’ll reduce the strain that you put on your phone by constantly running things in the background.

You can also take this same approach when you’re trying to figure out how to save battery on Mac computers. The fewer things that you have running at one time, the longer your battery should last.

4. Turn Off Your Smartphone’s Location Services

If you’re going to be using something like the GPS on your phone to find your way around while driving, then turning your smartphone’s location services off isn’t smart. It’ll prevent you from using anything that needs to know where your phone is located.

But if you’re not using anything like this, then you can increase your battery life by shutting off location services. Your phone won’t have to work as hard to keep up with your location, which will give your battery life a big boost.

5. Put Your Smartphone on Airplane Mode Every So Often

There are likely at least a few hours throughout a normal day when you don’t need to use your smartphone. During these times, you might put your phone on silent and tuck it away somewhere for safekeeping.

Why not put it on airplane mode at these times to converse battery life? It’ll help you disconnect for a little bit while also keeping your phone charged up for longer stretches of time.

6. Avoid Allowing Your Smartphone to Die Completely

Have you gotten into the habit of using your phone all day long until it eventually dies and shuts off on you? This is just about the worst thing that you can do for your phone’s battery.

If you do this almost every day, it’s only going to be a matter of time before your battery simply isn’t able to hold a charge like it used to. You should try to get your phone onto a charger anytime it dips below the 40% mark to keep your battery strong and healthy.

Believe it or not, you should also avoid leaving your phone on a charger for too long once it eclipses the 80% mark. You should be especially careful about not letting it sit on your charger for hours on end while it’s on 100%. That could be just as bad for your battery life as letting your phone die all the time.

7. Stop Using Your Smartphone 24/7

At the end of the day, if your smartphone is always dying on you sooner than you would like, it’s a clear-cut sign that you’re probably using it too much. You could benefit from putting it down and not using it every now and then in a big way.

Don’t be afraid to give yourself breaks from your phone so that you can live in the real world. It’ll help your mental health and stop your battery life from deteriorating on you.

Start Preserving Your Smartphone’s Battery Life on a Daily Basis

It doesn’t matter if you have a brand-new smartphone or the smartphone you’ve been using for two years now. You can preserve battery life and keep a battery strong by using the tips found here.

Put a few of these tips to the test today to see what they can do for your battery. You might be shocked to see how well they work in most cases.

Take a look at the other articles on our blog to get your hands on more invaluable technology tips and tricks.