It has been more than 9 months since Samsung introduced the Galaxy S4. While the S4 is still a top-notch handset in every possible way, you might find its battery life inadequate now. 10 months is a long time in the technology world and while the S4’s battery life was remarkable back then, it is pretty poor compared to the late-2013 flagships like LG G2, Note 3, Xperia Z1 and others.
Thankfully, using a few tips and tricks below, you can greatly improve the Galaxy S4’s battery life by at least 10-20%. If you are expecting anything more than that, I’d suggest you to look into extended batteries or a new phone.
Use the Power Saver mode
You can improve the battery life of your Galaxy S4 by at least 10-15% by simply using the Power Saver mode. Using the Power Saver mode will reduce the processor’s clock speed, display brightness and turn off other software features to save battery life. In day to day usage, you will not notice the performance hit because of an underclocked CPU/GPU, except when you take an HDR photo.
You will have to compromise on the user experience a bit, but if battery life is your absolute priority, Power Saver mode is your best option. You can enable the Power Saving Mode by going to Settings -> My Devices and toggling the ‘Power Saving mode’ switch to On position.
Turn Off Background Wi-Fi Scanning
With Android 4.3, Google introduced an option to keep Wi-Fi scanning always available for better location based results. This feature is enabled by default on the Galaxy S4 and can impact your battery life by at least 5-7% on a day to day basis. You can turn off background Wi-Fi based location scanning by going to Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Advanced Settings and turning off ‘Always Allow Scanning’.
Turn off all the gesture based features
Samsung has included a lot of software features on the Galaxy S4, that only work properly in their TV promos. Majority of the time, the eye-scrolling feature and other gesture based features don’t work properly in real life. If you don’t use any of these features, make sure to disable them to save some battery juice.
Use Greenify
Greenify was recently updated to work on non-rooted Android device. By using Greenify, you can hibernate your installed apps from running in the background thereby preventing them from taking precious resources and draining battery. Here is a quick guide on how you can use Greenify properly.
Use Snapdragon Battery Guru
If you are using the Snapdragon variant of the Galaxy S4, use Qualcomm’s own Snapdragon Battery Guru app to boost the battery life of your device. The app automatically manages your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth radios, CPU governor and clock speed etc. to improve battery life.
Let the app run in the background for a few days to analyse your usage and it will automatically start doing its job.
Disable all the S-Apps
With every new Galaxy device, Samsung adds a plethora of new apps and services that are bordering on being called bloatware. The Galaxy S4 is no exception to this rule, and comes with a plethora of bloatware on the context of being dubbed as features.
Apps and features like S-Planner, S-Memo, Action widget, S-Cloud etc. all run in the background that not only take precious resources, but also reduce battery life. You can disable most, if not all, of the pre-installed Samsung app by going into App Manager from Settings, then tap the app name and select the ‘Disable’ option.
If the above tips are still not able to quench your thirst for more battery life, it’s time you look into buying an extended battery for your S4 from Mugen Power or ZeroLemon.
