Tips for Saving Battery when Playing Pokemon Go

Unless you have a steady supply of mobile power using a backpack full of portable chargers, you’ll find your biggest challenge playing Pokemon Go is running out of smartphone battery. Pokemon Go is hardware intensive because it uses the smartphone’s processor, the camera, and GPS. That’s a nightmare of a trifecta for even the most rugged, durable, and long lasting smartphone battery.

Fortunately, there’s a couple things you can do to keep the juice flowing longer.

The first thing is to turn on battery saver mode in the game itself. Niantic Labs, the developers, knew the game would be a battery siphon, so they included this option in the game’s settings (tap the Poke Ball at the bottom of the screen and go to Settings). Battery saver mode isn’t the cure-all as it only causes the screen to dim automatically when the smartphone is pointed down at the ground.

Another tip has also surfaced and should save some extra battery because it helps minimize how often the GPS triangulates your position. For Android users, if you download the maps for your city, or your location, through Google Maps, your smartphone should use less data which in turn should use less battery. To download the maps offline, open Google Maps and then go to Settings – Offline areas.