Turn off 3G to save battery life on your phone

As smartphones get increasingly smarter, they require more and more power to operate. Although there have been advances in battery life in recent years, the gains have been soaked up by the increasing demands of mobile computing on smartphones. Mobile phones used to last a week on a battery charge, but now many people have to charge them up each day.

There are many ways to prolong the battery life of your phone and one of these is to disable 3G. A 3G connection is a high speed data network that is great for apps that require internet access, but the downside is that it requires more power to operate.

For most of the day your phone will probably be in your pocket. You don't need 3G to receive phone calls, text messages, instant messages, Facebook and Twitter notifications or email. Everything is available without it. So why is it on and burning through your battery charge like there's no tomorrow?

Turn off 3G and you will save quite a lot of battery power, prolonging its life. When you need to do something that requires the internet like watching YouTube videos or sat-nav, then turn it back on. Turn it off afterwards. It is a bit of a hassle, but not much and you may find that some days you don't need 3G at all. After all, there are lots of Wi-Fi hotspots around and these can be used when you need a high speed internet connection.

On  Samsung Galaxy S4 for example, (other Android phones are similar), go to Settings. Select Connections at the top and then tap More networks. Press Mobile networks and then Network mode. The default setting is GSM/WCDMA (auto connect). This means look for 3G and connect to it if available, otherwise use a standard 2G connection. Select GSM only, which turns off 3G. On an iPhone with iOS 6 (previous versions are similar) go to Settings, General, Cellular and set Enable 3G to Off.