Tips for Improving Your Verizon IPhone 4's Battery Life

The Verizon iPhone has brought a whole bunch of new users to the iPhone, and many of them don't realize what they're getting into. While the iPhone is certainly an awesome piece of well designed technology, it has its limitations. Among the biggest of these limitations is battery life.

Here are a few tips to keep your Verizon iPhone 4's battery life relatively long, giving you more use out of your shiny new smart phone.

Adjust Brightness. Going into the "Settings" menu and clicking on "Brightness" will give you control over the brightness of your screen. Most iPhone owners don't need a super bright screen, yet screens are set bright by default because it makes them look really pretty and shiny on store shelves. Scroll back the brightness on your iPhone to a reasonable level and make sure that the auto brightness feature is turned on. This automatically adjusts the brightness level when you're in a dim or a bright room, saving even more battery power.

Turn Wi-Fi On. If you let your iPhone get all of its Internet from Verizon's 3G network, you'll waste your battery pretty quickly and you'll end up with a big monthly bill unless you've got the unlimited plan. Turn Wi-Fi on in the Settings menu of your iPhone. This has an added benefit: while you're connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can talk on the phone and browse the Internet at the same time, since you aren't using Verizon's data network. Eat your heart out, AT&T fans.

Look For CPU Hogs. If your Verizon iPhone just keeps losing power and you don't know why, you may have an app open that isn't fully optimized for the device. As it stays open, it sucks a bit of power from the phone, causing all sorts of battery life problems. Fix this by double tapping the center button, which brings up all of the apps that are currently running on the iPhone, and hold one until a little red minus mark appears in the upper left corner of the icon. You can then exit each program manually.

You can also restart your Verizon iPhone by holding the top button on the device for a few seconds and then sliding your finger off the screen. It's good to get in the habit of doing this once a day or so, as this will keep the power hog apps down and allow all apps to function more efficiently.

Do you have any other tips for using the Verizon iPhone 4 and extending the iPhone's battery life? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.