Poor battery life on your mobile phone is a constant problem and it affects a lot of people. If you have an Android phone, this guide will help you extend battery life with tweaks and apps.

Some people cannot get through a whole day without connecting their phone to a charger. What is wrong and what is the solution to high battery drain and short battery life? There are a variety of causes and one is misbehaving apps.

That's the polite term for it, but basically buggy apps crash or get stuck and freeze, or start using massive amounts of CPU power for no reason at all.

A hot phone may mean trouble

Phones get hot when they are either charging up or working hard, like playing games. That is perfectly normal, but I noticed that my Android phone, a Samsung, was warm when I pulled it out of my pocket. It could be that it is simply warm in my pocket, but it felt warmer than usual.

This always triggers alarm bells in because when a phone is working hard, it gets hot. It should be idling with nothing to do in my pocket.

Check battery usage

When the phone is working hard, it uses a lot of battery power, so the obvious thing to do is to check the battery usage. Go to Settings, Device Maintenance > Battery > Battery Usage (it varies with the phone and version of Android).

Under the Recent Battery Usage heading is a list of apps in order with the one using the most battery power at the top. An app will appear here simply because you have been using it a lot, but if you haven't, it may be because it has a bug, it has hung, crashed or misbehaved in some other way that has caused it to use excessive battery power.

You can tap an app in the list to see the app statistics. Look at the CPU total and the CPU foreground. The foreground is when you are actually using it. Some apps use a lot of CPU in the background and this makes the phone get warm and uses a lot of battery power.

Press the three dots in the top right corner of this screen to display a menu and press Optimise battery usage.

Some sort of crash or bug can cause an app to misbehave and do things it shouldn't, like wasting battery power, data, CPU and so on. Here is what you can do about it.

Related: How to reduce Facebook data usage and battery drain

Solve battery drain problems

1 Clear all running apps

The best way to prevent apps from draining the battery is to shut them down. Switching to another app or the home screen just leaves them running in the background and it does not stop them using the battery power. Press the app switcher button and swipe away or close all the apps that are open in the background.

2 Monitor app power usage

Go to Settings > Device Maintenance > Battery and tap the three dots in the top right corner. Select Advanced Settings and turn on App power monitor. (Different phones and versions of Android might put this in different places in settings.)

3 Put apps to sleep

Recent versions of Android are able to put apps to sleep, which basically suspends all activity until you use them again. However, sometimes certain events can cause them to restart too, and this is a bit annoying, but you cannot do anything about it.

Go to Settings > Device Maintenance > Battery and swipe up to show the Save Power button and app list. Press the button to put the listed apps to sleep, (may depend on phone and Android).

4 Restart the phone

If you notice that the phone is getting warm in your pocket or the battery is draining faster than it should, close all apps (the first tip above), then restart the phone. This is usually by holding down the power button until a menu appears.

5 Update apps

Make all of the apps on the phone are up to date because bugs are detected and fixed sooner or later and the next version might be lighter on the battery. Open the Google play Store > menu > My apps > games > Update All.

I prefer not to automatically update apps because there are app updates nearly every day and it uses battery power when downloading and installing them. I manually update once a week and only when the phone is plugged into the mains charger.

6 Cool the CPU

There are apps that can automatically kill tasks in the background and some people swear by them, but aren't they just one more app that is running in the background? The benefits may outweigh the extra app that is running, but as we have seen, there are built in facilities for closing or suspending apps.

However, this may vary with the phone and version of Android, so on some phones a utility may be needed.

Misbehaving apps with bugs in or that crash or hang will often consume more CPU power than usual and this leads to higher battery drain and a build up of heat. Some apps measure the temperature of the phone and when they find it rising, they suspend or close apps that are running in the background. This reduces CPU usage, which cools the phone, but it also reduces battery drain too.

CPU Cooler - Cooler master Phone Cleaner, booster and Cooling Master-Phone Cooler are two similar apps (so similar they could be the same), that monitor the temperature and if it rises, they can alert you and cool the phone by closing power-consuming apps.

If you have a recurring battery drain problem and your phone is getting warm when it should be idling and cool, try them. They are free, but suffer from a little too many ads. Paid ad-free versions are available though.