4 Settings That Can Improve the Battery Life of an iPhone 4S

The iPhone 4S is an amazing phone--there's no surprise there. However, when I received my 4S, I quickly noticed that the battery life left something to be desired. I wasn't getting any better battery life on my 4S than I was getting on my iPhone 3GS, although the battery meter seemed much more reliable.

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of juice to run a smart phone, but that doesn't mean that you have to settle for a 3-4 hour life on your iPhone 4S. Here are a few tips to extend your battery life without losing any essential functionality.

Lower The Screen Brightness. The iPhone 4S's screen is set fairly bright by default, because they want the iPhones to look nice and fancy in the stores. You probably don't need such a bright screen, and when you change the settings, you'll notice drastically improved battery performance on the iPhone 4S.

To change your screen brightness, go to Settings and click Brightness. It might take your eyes a while to adjust to the new brightness, so bear with it for a few hours if you don't like the screen a bit dimmer.

Fetch Data Less Often. The iPhone 4S "fetches" emails and other data on a regular basis. Accessing a 3G network or your home's Wi-Fi router will drain a bit of battery life, so if you set your phone to fetch data less often, your battery life should improve. You can change your "fetch" settings by going to the Settings menu and tapping Mail, Contacts, Calendar.

By default, your 4S should be set to manual fetches, which are only carried through when you open your Mail app or any other app that fetches data. However, your settings might be different, especially if you restored a backup of a previous iPhone to your new 4S.

While we're talking about fetching data, you might also turn off "Location Services" on the settings menu if you aren't using a GPS app or any other program that needs to know your location. Accessing the GPS can suck up a ton of battery power.

Data Stuff. Many people think that turning on the iPhone 4S's Wi-Fi will extend its battery life, but this is only the case if you're actively accessing the Internet. Turn the Wi-Fi off when you don't need to go online and your iPhone will save a little juice. Again, this is in your Settings menu.

You might also want to turn off Bluetooth if you aren't using it, as it uses a tiny bit of power as well.

Watch Yourself. Keep checking your battery life by going to your Settings app and tapping General, then Usage. You'll get a much better idea of how you use data and how your phone's holding its charge by checking your usage stats every once in a while, and they're fairly accurate on the iPhone 4S, especially as compared to previous iPhone models.

Have any other tips for improving an iPhone 4S's battery life? Post below.