Four apps to help you extend your smartphone battery life that actually work

Android phones have gotten a lot better in the battery department over the past couple of years, due to increasing battery sizes and more efficient processors. However, users with older devices still rely on various methods to keep their phone batteries alive till the end of the day. Whether its disabling auto-brightness or switching off your GPS when not in use, there are several ways to reduce battery usage.

However, when it comes to running apps to save battery on your phone, there are many companies with bogus apps that only offer you a ‘snake oil’ solution that doesn’t save any battery life. That’s because many of these apps are essentially “task-killer” apps or “RAM cleaner” apps that kill all your background apps - which means your apps get woken up by Android very quickly and use even more power.

If you really want to save battery on your Android phone, there are four good apps you can trust that will actually conserve battery life - instead of ‘placebo’ improvements.

1. Naptime by Franco Francisco

Unlike other battery saver apps that “clear your memory’, Naptime taps into your device’s built-in doze power saving functionality. What this does is put your phone into the “idle state” that was introduced with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and make sure that the phone draws less power from the battery when it is idle.

Instead of 30 minutes after the phone is lying undisturbed, your phone can start saving battery as quickly as 4-5 minutes after you turn the screen off.

Download Naptime for Android

2. Greenify by Oasis Feng

This app is technically one of those battery killer apps we mentioned above, but if you want to use Greenify’s most effective battery saver mode, it also involves the same Doze functionality as Naptime, with a setting to enable “Aggressive Doze” that doesn’t wake the device out of the deep sleep mode even when motion is detected.

This is called “Doze on the Go” and has been reported by most users to be extremely effective at saving battery life while they’re away from the charger.

Download Greenify for Android

3. Battery Guru by Paget96

While Battery Guru is essentially a battery monitoring app and less of a battery saving app, the insights from this app are enough to prolong the life of your battery by a considerable amount.

You can also set reminders for battery temperature and charging limits, two of the biggest causes of battery degradation. Like Naptime, Battery Guru can also put your phone into Doze mode faster.

Download Battery Guru for Android

4. Servicely by Francisco Franco

Another app by the capable Franco Francisco on this list, Servicely goes beyond what the average battery saver app can do, by allowing users to disable battery hogging services so they simply can’t run at all. This allows you to save battery like no other app - but there’s a catch. In order for Servicely to be able to do its job, you need to have a ‘rooted’ device.

If you don’t know what rooting is or you haven’t rooted a device before, you should probably stick with Fransciso’s other app Naptime which offers decent battery savings too.

Download Servicely for Android