It's two o'clock in the afternoon, and your iPhone's battery is already heading towards the red zone. What do you do?

Must read: iOS 12.1: Tips and tricks to help you get the most from your iPhone or iPad[1]

There are no end of "tips and tricks" out there for making your iPhone battery last longer. I've seen them all. Bit more importantly, I've also tested them all (well, OK, not some of the really crazy ones like wrapping your iPhone in tinfoil, but most of them), and found that most of them do little to improve your battery's lifespan, and many compromise your iPhone's features so badly as to make is pretty much unusable.

So, after a lot of testing, and spending a lot of time running my iPhone's battery flat, I've come up the with two best ways of making your iPhone battery last all day. And the nice thing is that both of these methods and quick and simple, and don't involve making huge changes to iOS.

The first one the simplest one, but also the most effective, and that is to switch on Low Power Mode.

As the name suggests, activating this setting puts your device into low power mode. And it really does work, giving you about three hours of extra battery life. If you are worried about your battery not making it through the day, this is the setting to activate.

However, it achieves this by turning off or reducing mail fetch, background app refresh, automatic downloads, and some visual effects.

Here's a list of what Low Power Mode reduces or affects in order to increase battery life:

  • Email fetch
  • "Hey Siri"

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