We’ve heard and experienced some pretty rough battery life with the Nokia Lumia 920 for Windows Phone. It’s a mixed bag of results, with some reporting fantastic battery performance while others struggle to make it through half a day.
As Nokia sorts things out, they reminded us that managing apps running in the background can help extend battery life. And this power-saving technique isn’t exclusive to Lumia Windows phones. If you want to save energy on your HTC 8X or Samsung Focus 2, close some unnecessary apps that are still running in the background.
To see what’s running in the background, go to your Windows Phone settings and swipe up to the apps page. There you will find the «background tasks» settings at the top of the list.
Once you go into settings, you will see a list of all apps running in the background. To close it, just click on the app and click the «block» button. To confirm that you’ve closed the app, press and hold the back button to view all open apps.
Nokia received reports that if Nokia Drive is running in the background, it may consume more power. They also note that Angry Birds: Star Wars may also consume energy above normal. There is nothing definite about this, only suspicions that are being investigated.
Along with closing apps running in the background, consider turning off the NFC feature (tap + share feature in the settings menu). We’re not sure if there’s a connection, but with NFC disabled, our battery life has improved a lot in the past two days.