Google Pixel 2: How to improve battery life

Here are some good basic principles to follow when trying to improve battery life:

1. Check for power-hungry apps: One badly coded app can be a nuisance; a handful of badly coded apps can destroy your battery. At the end of the day, go into your battery settings, scroll down and see what percentage of your day’s battery life was consumed by which apps. If a single app is using more than 5%, think about if it really needs to be using that much — investigate to see if you can get it to calm down.

2. Uninstall unused apps: A bad app can’t drain your battery if it isn’t installed. If you started up your new Pixel 2 and just installed all 100 apps from your last phone, chances are there are dozens on there you don’t actually need. Uninstall the useless ones — you can always install them later if you decide you need them.

3. Turn off always-on display: It doesn’t have a huge effect, but any time the screen is even partially illuminated it’s using battery. Go into the Display settings and turn off “Always-on” — a nice compromise is keeping “Lift to check phone” turned on to have it illuminate when you grab your phone.

4. Reduce display sleep time: In the same vein, you can set your display to go to sleep quickly when it isn’t being interacted with. By default the phone is at 1 minute, but you can set it as low as 15 seconds if you’d prefer to save the battery instead of the convenience of having the screen stay awake.

5. Use a static wallpaper: Out of the box the phones use a great “living wallpaper” that subtly animates. It looks cool, but also uses up battery. Switch to a static wallpaper, and you’ll save some precious juice.

One thing to consider at some point, particularly on the Pixel 2 with its 2700mAh battery capacity, is that you just won’t be able to get more battery life out of your phone no matter what you do. Even if you follow all of the above steps, you have to use your phone at some point — and if you use it hard, it’s going to drain the battery quickly.