Honestly maximizing my phones current daily battery life, so that I don’t need to charge it as often.

My previous phone (Xiaomi Redmi Note 4x lasted me 4 years 2018-2022, and the reason I moved off of it, was because it’s GPS was wonky and I couldn’t use it as satnav, and the Micro USB port was dodgy since I got it and I grew tired of using it. It’s battery life is still great and when I do use it as a temp phone, it still is great.

What I did with that phone, was root it, installed Lineage/Arrow OS without Google Play, then installed the bare minimum that is required to get Google Play to work. When I originally did this with my Note 4x the battery life went from barely 1-1.5 days to an easy 2 days depending on my usage. I think it’s now at a solid 1.5 days, but it’s been sitting in a drawer at 1/2 charge so… meh.

My other trick, is to reduce screen on time. Learned that lesson with an old Blu phone I had. After looking at my battery drain, it’s obvious that the less I am on it, responding to messages and looking at emails, the longer it lasts. My solution there was a Pebble Time, so I can look at and respond to arrant notifications and emails. Sadly the Pebble isn’t as good as it use to be, since responding to texts is bad, and Rebble isn’t as active as it needs to be for me to keep using my Pebble.

My new smart watch is a Garmin Forerunner/Fenix. I had a 235 but it was missing basic watch features, my SO has a 245 which works great for their needs, and I splurged and got a Fenix 6 during a massive discount sale, the watch was over half off. Barely use it for its intended purpose, but for a notification machine that lets me see my emails and messages, all while lasting 2+ weeks, it’s nice.

Current phone (Poco X3 Pro) lasts easily 3 days without a charge, and light lemmy doom scrolling or about 8-10 hours of constant screen on time.