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Hands-Free Siri

When your iPhone is connected to a power source, instead of pressing the Home button just say “Hey Siri”. It should bring up Siri. You can now make your request. There is also a workaround to get “Hey Siri” to work when your iPhone is not connected to a power source. ➤ How to activate Siri without pressing the Home button

What song is this

If you like a song playing on the radio, then you can ask Siri “What song is this?” to find out the name of the song. You can also buy the song from iTunes if it is available by tapping on the buy button. ➤ How to see the list of all the songs you’ve asked Siri to identify

Battery Life Suggestions

iOS 8 or later will also provide suggestions to improve battery life based on your usage such as it will inform you to Reduce Brightness, Enable Auto-Lock etc. To find out what suggestion Apple has for you to improve battery life, go to Settings and navigate to General > Usage > Battery Usage.

Background App Refresh

Background App Refresh feature lets apps fetch content in the background. It improves the user experience of apps such as RSS clients, news app etc. that can download the latest content so you don’t have to wait for the app to refresh the content when you launch it. Although Apple has a lot of optimizations in place to ensure that battery consumption is minimal, it’s possible that battery life of older iOS devices takes a hit due to this feature. To disable Background App Refresh go to Settings, and navigate to General > Background App Refresh and turn it off for apps like Facebook or other apps that don’t absolutely need to be updated all the time. ➤ More tips and tricks to improve battery life

Use Location Only While Using an app

In iOS 8, Apple has added a new setting in Location Services called While Using the App, which means that the app will only use location services when you’re using the app, and won’t use it all the time. This can be useful for apps like the App Store, which don’t need to be using location services all the time. You can see which applications have recently used location services by going to Settings > Privacy > Location Services. Apps that recently used your location have an compass like indicator next them. Tap on the app, you should see the While Using the App, tap on it if you want the app to use location services only while using the app. This will ensure that the app will access your location only when it or one of its features are visible on the screen. Please note that this feature is available for stock apps and also some third-party apps, however we expect third-party apps to offer this feature when they’re optimized for iOS 8. ➤ Use Location only while using an app to save battery

Identify Battery hogs

In iOS 8 or later, you can find out which apps are consuming the most power. To find out go to Settings, and navigate to General > Usage > Battery Usage. The battery usage provides you information about how much battery is consumed by various apps and services on your device. It is important to mention here that an app with a high percentage battery usage does not necessarily mean it is a battery hog. It could be because you were using it a lot, or if it was running in the background to upload or download content. The apps that should be a concern are ones that show up on top of power consumption list even though you haven’t been using them. iOS 8 will also tell you what activity that could have resulted in battery consumption such as Background activity etc. ➤ How to find out which apps are using the most battery life

Reduce Brightness

Dimming the screen helps to reduce power consumption, so you can lower the default screen brightness based on your preference. Go to Settings, and navigate to Display & Brightness to reduce the brightness.

Shutter Timer

In the camera app, frame your shot and tap on the clock icon at the top, the number of seconds (3 or 10), and tap on the shutter button. You will see the countdown on the screen after you tap on the shutter button.

Enable Auto-Lock

Enable Auto-Lock so that your iPhone will turn off after a period of inactivity to reduce battery consumption. To enable the auto-Lock interval, go to Settings, and navigate to General > Auto-Lock and set the auto-lock interval to either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 minutes.

Calculator tip

You can delete the last entered number in the Calculator app by swiping from left to right or right to left across the display in the Calculator app. ➤ How to delete a number in the Calculator app with a Swipe