New iPhone 5. How to conserve battery and data useage?

[Ginnungagap · Accepted solution]

Greetings BM48! If you set up an e-mail address on your phone I highly advise setting it to fetch manually (only when you click on the e-mail application). Applications such as Youtube will also consume a vast amount of data and battery life if you do not limit yourself.

The Onavo application is also a great way to track data usage.

Enjoy your iPhone 5! It is a sweet device!

[jason · Accepted solution]

Not only is Onavo good with counting data usage, it also includes data compression.

Also, with regards to data, I suggest you going on a plan with more data first, then scaling back down when your usage is normalized.

[bengjai · Accepted solution]

Tips for conserving battery:

1. Make sure you turn off your volume for each application you go into and your phone speakers as well when not using it. When you open an app (i.e.: Youtube), most phones nowadays, when you turn up the volume it is app specific. If you're on the home screen, the volume controls your ringer. If you're not using your ringer, turn the volume down. Speakers turned on will drain batteries. Be wary of that.

2. Turn your screen down to lowest brightness and only turn it up when needed (i.e.: bright sunlight). You can put it on Auto but sometimes this drains the battery as well.

3. Use 4G instead of LTE. LTE uses a lot more battery life plus it drains a lot more of your data as well. Realize that if you load up a webpage or a video for example, both on 4G and LTE the load times for the page itself is not that different. The biggest difference is that on LTE, the whole entire video can load up before you even watch a third of it. This uses up data so much faster than if the video loads at the same time you watch it. So if you turn off the video mid way, on 4G the whole video is not loaded whereas LTE the video would be fully streamed.

4. On an iPhone, close all your apps after use. Double click your home button to move the bar up from the bottom of the screen, hold your finger over the apps that appear, and hit the red symbol with white line. This will close the apps, not delete them. Those are opened apps on the phone that drain battery as well. They are kept there for multitask purposes and quick load. Closing them would be best.

5. Lastly, check your location services and GPS settings. If that is always on for all your apps, that would eat up battery life as well.

Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have other questions.

[Silver_Arrow · Accepted solution]

I also highly recommend Onavo. When I used it many years ago I was able to double my data amount. I was able to use 1 gig of "data" on a 500mb plan

[BM48 · Accepted solution]

I am a new iPhone 5 user, having just completed a satisfactory 3 year run with the iPhone3.  More bells and whistles with the i5.  Thank you all for your helpful information!!  yes, it is a sweet phone, I am enjoying the quality.  My concern was that I had a large data plan, mostly unused with my i3 and suddenly after only a few days my i5 seemed to have gone iHog.  Anyways, Telus gave me an extra boost, goodwill goes a long way, and now I have more information from the Telus "'hood" to help me on my next 3 year contract.  Me and Telus.  Again.  I'm in this for the long run.

[Ginnungagap · Accepted solution]

Greetings BM48! If you set up an e-mail address on your phone I highly advise setting it to fetch manually (only when you click on the e-mail application). Applications such as Youtube will also consume a vast amount of data and battery life if you do not limit yourself.

The Onavo application is also a great way to track data usage.

Enjoy your iPhone 5! It is a sweet device!

[jason · Accepted solution]

Not only is Onavo good with counting data usage, it also includes data compression.

Also, with regards to data, I suggest you going on a plan with more data first, then scaling back down when your usage is normalized.

[Silver_Arrow · Accepted solution]

I also highly recommend Onavo. When I used it many years ago I was able to double my data amount. I was able to use 1 gig of "data" on a 500mb plan

[bengjai · Accepted solution]

Tips for conserving battery:

1. Make sure you turn off your volume for each application you go into and your phone speakers as well when not using it. When you open an app (i.e.: Youtube), most phones nowadays, when you turn up the volume it is app specific. If you're on the home screen, the volume controls your ringer. If you're not using your ringer, turn the volume down. Speakers turned on will drain batteries. Be wary of that.

2. Turn your screen down to lowest brightness and only turn it up when needed (i.e.: bright sunlight). You can put it on Auto but sometimes this drains the battery as well.

3. Use 4G instead of LTE. LTE uses a lot more battery life plus it drains a lot more of your data as well. Realize that if you load up a webpage or a video for example, both on 4G and LTE the load times for the page itself is not that different. The biggest difference is that on LTE, the whole entire video can load up before you even watch a third of it. This uses up data so much faster than if the video loads at the same time you watch it. So if you turn off the video mid way, on 4G the whole video is not loaded whereas LTE the video would be fully streamed.

4. On an iPhone, close all your apps after use. Double click your home button to move the bar up from the bottom of the screen, hold your finger over the apps that appear, and hit the red symbol with white line. This will close the apps, not delete them. Those are opened apps on the phone that drain battery as well. They are kept there for multitask purposes and quick load. Closing them would be best.

5. Lastly, check your location services and GPS settings. If that is always on for all your apps, that would eat up battery life as well.

Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have other questions.

[BM48 · Accepted solution]

I am a new iPhone 5 user, having just completed a satisfactory 3 year run with the iPhone3.  More bells and whistles with the i5.  Thank you all for your helpful information!!  yes, it is a sweet phone, I am enjoying the quality.  My concern was that I had a large data plan, mostly unused with my i3 and suddenly after only a few days my i5 seemed to have gone iHog.  Anyways, Telus gave me an extra boost, goodwill goes a long way, and now I have more information from the Telus "'hood" to help me on my next 3 year contract.  Me and Telus.  Again.  I'm in this for the long run.

[BM48 · Accepted solution]

Thank you.  Most helpful.