iPhone’s battery charge drops very low or runs down completely, your iPhone automatically shuts itself off. To bring your iPhone back to life, you must attach the USB cable to a power source (your computer or an electrical outlet). When your iPhone shuts itself off because the battery charge is too low or nearly empty, you won’t be able to use your iPhone until the battery reaches a minimal charge level. Usually you only have to wait a few minutes before your iPhone turns itself on again.
More charging options
Apple and other third-party vendors make charging accessories. You can use an iPhone dock, which is a type of base that you set your iPhone in to charge the battery – it’s convenient to have on your desk to keep your iPhone close at hand. Make sure you purchase the dock that’s appropriate for the iPhone model you use. You can also purchase battery packs that attach to your iPhone to get a longer charge. And, if you spend a lot of time in your car, another option is a USB adapter that plugs into the cigarette lighter to charge your iPhone. Many newer car models come with a built-in USB port that both charges your iPhone and lets you listen to audio from your iPhone through the car’s stereo speakers.
You can replace standard electrical outlets with USB-enabled outlets, so all you have to do is plug in the cable. We’ve seen USB outlets more frequently in hotels and airplanes, too, which makes charging while traveling super easy. If charging in a hotel room, make sure the USB outlet still works when you turn out the lights.
Keeping an eye on your charges
The battery icon in the Status bar indicates roughly how much battery power you have. If you want to see a specific percentage, open the Settings app, tap General, tap Usage, and tap the Battery Percentage switch on.
You can see detailed battery charge consumption in the Settings app by tapping General, tapping Usage, and tapping Battery Usage. The screen shown in Figure 2-2 opens. You see how much time has passed since your last charge, specified in two ways:
✔ Usage: How much you’ve used it
✔ Standby: How much time your iPhone spent sleeping
The list shows which apps have been the top battery consumers in the last 24 hours. As in Figure 2-2, low (cellular data) signal is the cause for a high usage of apps that use the Internet like Facebook and Mail.
Figure 2-2: Battery Usage shows which apps are power hogs.
Changing the battery
If you keep your iPhone for many years, sooner or later, you’ll need to replace the battery. Despite our do-it-yourself (DIY) world, you can’t replace the battery yourself. You have to send it in to the Battery Replacement Program. For $85 (as of this writing), you send your iPhone to Apple or take it to an Apple Store, the battery is replaced, and Apple takes care of disposing of the old one. This service is covered if your iPhone is still under the one-year warranty or you extended the warranty to two years with the AppleCare protection plan, which we explain in Book I, Chapter 5.
Technically, you should get about eight hours of talk time on an iPhone 5 on the 3G network. Realistically, if you play games and go on the Internet, you probably get less. Here are some tips for keeping the battery charged longer and for maintaining long battery life:
✔ Turn off Location Services. Open the Settings app, tap Privacy, and tap Location Services. (Remember though that the apps that use it do so only when you’re using them, so you’re not saving a ton of battery life this way.)
✔ Turn off Wi-Fi. If you have Wi-Fi turned on and there’s no Wi-Fi network, your iPhone keeps searching and searching and consuming battery power. To turn off Wi-Fi, open the Settings app, tap Wi-Fi, and tap the Wi-Fi switch off, or just swipe up from the bottom of any screen to open the Control Center and tap the Wi-Fi button.
✔ Turn off 4G/LTE. If 4G or LTE isn’t available where you are or you don’t need to access the 4G network, turn it off. Sometimes this actually improves access to your cellular calling network. It doubles your battery charge. Open the Settings app, tap Cellular, and tap the Enable 4G/LTE switch off.
✔ Turn off Siri. If you don’t need Siri’s assistance, you may as well send her out to lunch since she’s a power hog. Open the Settings app, tap General, tap Siri, and tap the Siri switch off.
✔ Turn on Airplane Mode. If you happen to be out of your network range, your iPhone consumes a lot of battery power as it continually searches for the cellular network. Eventually the words No Service appear instead of the carrier name, and your iPhone settles down and stops searching. Consider putting your iPhone in Airplane Mode: Open the Settings app and tap the Airplane Mode switch on, or just swipe up from the bottom of any screen to open the Control Center and tap the Airplane Mode button. Both cellular and Wi-Fi are turned off, but you can still use other apps that don’t need those services.
✔ Use fetch instead of push. Instead of having your iPhone constantly check for new information with push, you can set your iPhone to sync with whichever cloud service you use – such as iCloud, Yahoo! Mail, or MS-Exchange – at set time intervals, or sync manually. Open the Settings app; tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars; tap Fetch New Data; and tap the Push switch off.
✔ Use Auto-Brightness. Dimming your screen also improves the length of a charge. The ambient light sensor dims or brightens your screen based on the light it senses. You can turn the automatic adjustment on in the Settings app by tapping Display & Brightness and then tapping the Auto-Brightness switch on.
✔ Turn off Bluetooth. If you don’t have any Bluetooth devices connected and don’t plan to use any for a while, open the Settings app, tap Bluetooth, and tap the Bluetooth switch off, or just swipe up from the bottom of any screen to open the Control Center and tap the Bluetooth button.
✔ Turn off cellular data. Open the Settings app, tap Cellular, and tap the Cellular Data switch off. You can still use the phone and Wi-Fi connection.
Interpreting the (Visual) Signs
In this section, we explain what you see on the Home screen, how to interpret the Status bar icons, and how to read and respond to notifications iPhone sends you when it has something important to communicate.
Home screen
The point of departure for everything iPhone is the Home screen, which features three basic parts (or zones), as you can see in Figure 2-3. At the very top is the Status bar, which we get to in just a few paragraphs. The bulk of the screen holds 16 or more app buttons and folders; the number varies with screen size. Four of the Home screen’s apps stay tacked at the bottom of the screen in what’s called the Dock, which makes it easy to get to your most-favorite apps no matter which Home screen you’re viewing.
Figure 2-3: The Home screen is the point of departure for iPhone.
When a Home screen is filled with apps and/or