If you own a smartphone running iOS 9, Apple's new power-saving feature could give you way more battery life than you might expect -- provided you know how to use it.
When your battery falls to 20 percent, a notification prompts you to enable Low Power Mode, a setting that conserves your precious charge by disabling non-essential tasks such as visual effects, automatic downloads and background activity. It might also make your phone's performance slower, but that's better than having it die altogether.
The big problem is that this handy feature automatically turns off when you charge the battery up to 80 percent. For the average iPhone user, that may be enough. But if you have a long day ahead of you, you might want to stretch your battery life even more.
We've got a trick to help you extend Low Power Mode so you can use it not only when your battery is running out of juice, but anytime you want.
The secret is to manually enable this setting. There are 3 ways to do that.
1. When you receive the notification that Low Power Mode has been turned off, swipe to the left and tap "Enable again." Check out this GIF posted on ItinerantDev:
2. Head to Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode and pull the toggle button to the right. Voilà!
3. Ask Siri to enable Low Power Mode. Super easy.
Apple didn't disclose exactly how much battery your phone saves while in power-saving mode. However, some estimates suggest that the Low Power feature can help your phone hold a charge up to 44 percent longer than in regular mode.
That's a whole lot of battery. Use it wisely.
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