Apple’s iOS devices typically have very good battery life, especially compared to competing products. But sometimes people experience problems, like the battery drain issues in iOS 5, or just want to squeeze every last bit of life from their batteries. This guide provides a number of practical tips to help you make the most of your battery life.

Lower the Screen Brightness

Not only can reducing the brightness of your screen be much easier on the eyes, it can also help significantly increase your battery life, as the display uses more power than almost any other part of your device. You can adjust the brightness by double-tapping the home button and swiping to the left.

Disable Bluetooth

If you aren’t actively using a Bluetooth headset or other Bluetooth device, turn off Bluetooth. When Bluetooth is enabled, it is constantly looking for devices to connect to, which drains precious battery life. Tu turn off Bluetooth, go into Settings, then tap General > Bluetooth, and flip the toggle switch to the off position.

Turn Off Notifications

Notifications can be important. But many apps use notifications when the really aren’t necessary – games can be really bad about this. Turning off notifications for apps (find this in Settings > Notifications) that you don’t use them with can help you save some battery life, as well as prevent apps from annoying you unnecessarily.

Quit Apps in the Multitasking bar

iOS 5 introduced the ability for apps to run in the background. Even apps that aren’t currently doing anything can hog up valuable memory and resources, making your device work harder to run other apps. To quit apps in the multitask bar, double-tap your home button, and hold an app in the Multitask Bar that appears at the bottom of the screen. The apps will jiggle, and a small red minus sign will appear in the top left of each icon. Tap that minus sign to quit the app.

While there has been some debate about whether or not this actually impacts battery life, I’ve heard numerous reports from users that this does in fact help, especially with apps that use the compass, GPS, or location services.

Use Airplane Mode

 This applies mainly to the iPod touch and the iPad. When you aren’t doing something that needs internet access, setting your device on airplane mode can save battery life by preventing your device from searching for wireless signals. Airplane mode can be enabled by entering Settings, and tapping on Airplane Mode.

Disable Location Services

Many apps, including Apple’s standard camera app, can retrieve location information while you are using your device. Determining your location takes battery power, so if you don’t need your apps to have access to this data, you can turn location services off. You can also disable location services for each app you have installed by entering Settings, and tapping on Location Services.

Change The Frequency of Receiving Mail

Depending on which email service or services you use, different default settings can apply to your mail. Some services, such as iCloud, use push, which delivers messages to your phone the instant they are received in your inbox. Other services, such as Gmail, are set to retrieve email messages less often.

By setting your email preference to “fetch,” which only downloads messages when you enter Mail.app, can save a lot of battery life by preventing Mail from constantly connecting to the internet or downloading mail. This is done through the Mail, Contacts, Calendars pane in Settings (Settings > Mail > Fetch New Data.)

Disable Diagnostic & Usage Reports

Sending out usage and diagnostic reports can help Apple to improve iOS and make the user experience better. However, this also uses data, and causes some background activity. So to get the very best out of your battery, disabling this might be a good option. You can find this in Settings > General > About > Diagnostic & Usage > Don’t Send.

We hope this will help you squeeze a bit more valuable use time out of your iOS devices! Know of any tips that we missed? Let us know!