Special Report: What's killing your battery?

Special Report: What’s killing your battery?
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MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Those of us that can't afford to upgrade our smart phones every year have a similar problem: a drained battery well before the day is done.

There are a few habits experts say can help give us a little more juice, at least enough to make it to the next charge.

If you're on an iPhone, click settings, then battery and you can see which apps are taking up most of your battery.

"You can choose to take those out of multi-task mode, or choose to delete those applications themselves." says senior lecturer in the school of information studies at UW-Milwaukee, Matthew Friedel.

Another thing we can do, adjust the brightness on our screens. The extra light takes extra power.

Then adjust how often your screen turns on to begin with.

If the lock screen lights up every time we get a text (think long group text chains) or a Facebook notification, those little bursts of energy add up.

"If you're on your phone quite a bit, obviously that's going to drain the resources. Your screen resolution, your brightness could be another factor." Friedel says.

Bad cell coverage also kills the battery. Switch your phone to airplane mode if you don't need to use it.

Cold weather is also a major drain but there's not much to do about that.

In the long term, Smart Tech's Ryan Siegler says some aftermarket chargers can actually damage your battery's performance.

"Cheap, colorful gas station chargers. They're a dollar. Five dollars." says Siegler. "Sometimes it doesn't stop it at 100 percent and they'll just keep charging.

He also says over time, moisture can really effect the phone. That includes moisture collected in the bathroom during a steamy shower.

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