How To Improve Battery Life On The Galaxy Flip4 5G Or Other Samsung Phones
December 18, 2022Samsung’s Galaxy Flip4 is an evolutionary step forward compared to its predecessor. Instead of making big changes in a few areas, the company chose to make small, incremental updates to various aspects of the phone. The sum of these “upgrades” resulted in a phone that feels sturdier and more useful to average consumers.
At 165.2 x 71.9 x 6.9mm, the phone is slightly shorter and narrower than its predecessor despite having the same, 6.7-inch AMOLED display. This means that Samsung managed to shrink the overall dimensions without detriment to the screen quality or hardware performance. And despite the reduction in size, the Flip4 has a larger battery than the phone it replaces.
It’s a dual battery setup, with one section housed in each block of the phone. They have a total capacity of 3,700mAh as opposed to the Flip3’s 3,300mAh one. That extra 200mAh capacity can help extend battery life for several more hours (depending on usage). With that said, there’s no getting around the fact that the Flip4 has a smaller battery than traditional smartphones.
Size constraints of the Flip4’s dainty body make it close to impossible to give it a regular-sized battery. Samsung could have sacrificed the svelte look of the thing by making it slightly thicker. But said chunkier appearance would have made it less appealing to the phone’s target demographic.
As such, Samsung was left in an impossible situation. Making the Flip4 into what it is today was a fit of engineering in itself. Especially considering that despite its sophisticated folding mechanism, the phone is still able to have an IPX8 water resistance rating. It’s capable of being folded more than 200,000 times without showing signs of fatigue.
But there are certain things you can do to reduce power consumption and allow your Flip4 to last for longer without needing to be recharged:
Reduce Refresh Rate
Samsung has given the Flip4 a vibrant, 120Hz display that offers decent viewing angles and extremely responsive to touch input. Changing this to the regular 60Hz can dramatically improve overall battery life. Granted, doing so will reduce the smoothness of transitions, animation and touch feedback, but its a worthwhile sacrifice.
It will mean far less power consumption as you use the phone throughout the day. To do this, head over to Settings > Display > Motion Smoothness and select Standard. You can easily revert to the fast pace 120Hz again by selecting ‘High’.
Cut Out Errant and Unused Apps
Samsung’s One UI has been getting smarter over the years. It’s able to keep you informed of errant apps that are misbehaving or using more than their share of resources while working in the background. Regular apps could also be the culprits.
They could be gathering or retrieving data in the background without much benefit to you. Worst still is when unused apps continue to hog resources for minutes or hours without your knowledge. These minor power drains caused by individual apps eventually equate to a sizable loss in battery life over the course of a single day.
Instead of waiting for an analysis report, you could access the settings yourself. See what apps consume the most resources and how you may limit their background activities. To do this, head over to Settings > Battery & Device Care. Here you’ll see how your device’s battery is being used and make an estimate of which apps you’d like to put to sleep.
Click on the full report and you will see how much power has been used since you took the phone off the charger. Selecting individual apps will allow you to choose to put them to sleep or deep sleep, depending on how much you need each of them.
Doing the same for unused apps can also make a difference. After viewing the report, you’ll be surprised how much power is being consumed by apps you didn’t know you had. I once found that a third-party camera app that I used a handful of times a year was actively running in the background each day and consuming unnecessary power.
Limit App Notifications
Receiving notifications for messaging services or from social media platforms is something that’s important to most of us. But what about being bombarded by push notifications from e-merchant sites or news/media outlets that aren’t important?
Though they consume less power than active apps, allowing unnecessary apps to force-feed you with information you don’t need can take a toll on the battery life. To view what apps are allowed to send you notifications, go to Settings > Notifications > App notifications. Then turn off permissions for apps you don’t plan on seeing throughout the day.
Not only will this action increase overall battery life but it will declutter your notification list and speed up your phone’s performance. Since there is less happening in the background, this frees up your system resources for tasks that actually matter.
Dark Mode on AMOLED Screens
Though often overlooked, enabling Dark Mode on apps and themes can help increase overall battery health. Unlike LCD displays, AMOLED ones don’t require much power to show black backgrounds or images. That’s because the pixels are turned off, which results in deep and pronounced blacks.
In Dark Mode, most of what you see is black with the exception of text or images. This means that the majority of pixels are off and not consuming much power. To enable this for a system-wide usage in your theme, go to Settings > Quick Settings and select dark mode.
Limit Screen Brightness
As bad as errant apps maybe they do not cause as much power drain as an overly bright display. Leaving your phone at full or nearly full brightness level can dramatically reduce your overall battery life throughout the day. Leaving the setting on adaptive brightness will allow the Flip4 to adjust the screen brightness to compensate for the ambient lighting around you.
This works well most of the time. But what if you are left with the remaining 20% but need the phone to last several more hours? Well, you can manually reduce the brightness by either accessing it within your quick panel or via Settings > Display section. Gradually turn the slider to the left to reduce the brightness to the level you are comfortable with.
Left With only 15% Power, What Do You Do?
We’ve all been there, especially after a hectic day of continuously using the phone or forgetting to charge it the night before. What do you do when faced with such a scenario? To help your phone last longer on what little charge is left, you should turn on Power Saving Mode.
This automatically limits the refresh rate and the number of apps that can run in the background. In this setting, your phone tends to use system resources more frugally, which can help the remaining 15% last for much longer than if it was left on “Normal”.
Some other practices worth mentioning that can preserve your battery health is to never allow your battery charge to dip below 20% and to ensure that you don’t leave your phone plugged in after it reaches about 90% charge. This can help prolong its lifespan and help maintain its original capacity for much longer.
The Galaxy Flip4 is a really good phone for people who appreciate its form factor and ultra-cool looks. It ticks all the right boxes and could genuinely pose a threat to traditional smartphones. If battery life is a concern to you, follow the aforementioned steps and you should see a noticeable improvement in overall service life on a single charge!
