How to extend the life of your phone's battery.

To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above and read the transcript below. In its current form, this transcript was automatically generated and then edited for clarity. There could be discrepancies between the audio and the text. To listen to the podcast, press play on the player above and read the transcript below. In its current form, this transcript was automatically generated and then edited for clarity. There could be discrepancies between the audio and the text.

Hello there, listeners. Welcome to Talking Tech, this is Brett Molina. When your phone's battery is ready to run out, there's nothing worse, more aggravating, or more frustrating than that. It's also unpleasant when you think your battery is half full, but when you look at it, it's only 20%, and you think to yourself, "I'm barely using it, why is this happening -he?"

It's quite aggravating, particularly when... It always seems to happen when you are in the most desperate need of your phone. When you need to check an email or are waiting for a phone call, you look down to see that your phone is at 1% battery life, that it is going to die, or that it is dead. It is never a pleasurable experience. However, there are actions you can do to maintain battery life while controlling the apps on your phone.

In a piece on tech.usatoday.com, my colleague and tech columnist Jennifer Jolly discuss this. It's called Why You Shouldn't Close Inactive Apps Otherwise to Save Data and Battery on Your Phone.

This is the first step. Stop making your apps close on their own. Which I understand seems strange because you have a lot of apps open and you're doing this small swipe motion on your phone to bring them all up and then you want to do a quick swipe to close them. And you believe it speeds up your phone and other such things? Certainly not. In most cases, your phone is capable of handling all of these idle apps.

So where is the battery issue? If you force close those apps, when you reopen them, it tries to recover all of the data that was lost when you closed it, which means c uses more energy just to get the app to run again. So I know I must close all of these apps by swiping up. Do not do it; instead, let it go.

Jennifer has given us yet another tip. Apps can't refresh in the background. Essentially, it allows you to... It will update all of the apps on your phone automatically. This is good, however, it uses a lot of battery, which is part of the problem. Then switch it off. Jennifer explains that an Android is beneficial because it has a feature called an adaptive battery. And it outlines how it addresses many of these issues, as well as what it can do to control how your phone uses a battery for apps so that if you don't use or use apps seldom, they won't consume as much power.

Downloading is one of the last suggestions she makes. This is something I do use Spotify. I recently downloaded some playlists on my phone that I enjoy. Because it plays directly from your phone rather than streaming, it saves battery life. Streaming uses a little more battery than downloading directly. So, if you know you'll be somewhere for a while and want to watch a TV show while you're there, download it. Simply download it to your phone if you have room; it saves battery and offers you a little extra so you don't end up in a position where your battery is dead and you need to acquire a new one.