In your quest to be the very best, like no one ever was, as you catch Pokémon as part of your test, and train them as per your cause you might reduce your battery life drastically. Here, we list down some options to reduce the strain your smartphone’s battery faces in Pokémon Go, so you have those extra bars to catch more Pokémon.

Pokémon GO has taken the world by a storm and flooded social media feeds with images, news and funny compilations. Unless you have been living under a rock, you would be well aware about this phenomena, and for those of you who are caught up in fulfilling a lifelong desire to be a Pokémon trainer, you would be cursing every time your phone needs a re-charge. Well, these are 5 ways you can reduce your battery consumption.

1. Enabling Battery Saver in Pokémon GO

In Pokémon GO itself, there is a battery saver option under the Settings menu. This option does not change the game’s physics or the UI, but it does help conserve battery. It is still unclear as to how it does this, since Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, has yet released an explanation to the same.

To enable battery saver, tap the Pokéball at the bottom of the screen and select Settings. Under settings tap the option to turn on power saver mode.

2. Reducing Screen Brightness

If you have not done so, then do it immediately. Reducing the screen brightness will automatically help you improve your device’s battery life since the game is heavily reliant on using your device screen.

To reduce brightness, go to your device’s Settings and select Display and then tap on a preferred low level of brightness. it is not advisable to reduce the bar all the way down, unless you have the auto brightness settings turned on as it might dim the screens for certain devices to the point of no visibility.

3. Turn off the AR settings when catching Pokémon

The AR or augmented reality option when catching Raichu might look cute, but when you keep using it, it consumes battery. So do actions such as constantly zooming in and out, tapping your Pokémon to make those kawaii sounds and generally trying to take pictures of Pidgy on your car seat does consume a considerable amount of battery.

To shut off the AR mode, when you are near a Pokémon, you can tap the AR button on the top right hand corner. This would disable the function, while it means one doesn’t get to see cute Pokémon all around themselves, they can still catch Pokémon and play the game. Just saving battery along the way.

4. Turn off sounds and background apps

This is generally a no-brainer. Switching to silent mode and killing unused background apps (you might want to shut off those pesky WhatsApp and Slack notifications cause you’re training to be the best remember) would help reduce the battery consumption of the device. Though you may not see a tremendous boost in performance, you would be able to get a little more juice out of the device.

Bonus Option

Buy a battery pack, or a case with a battery in it so as to boost the number of hours you can train. After all, you need to win all those gym badges and defend your turf.

Do let us know if you have found other options to help reduce battery consumption while playing Pokémon GO, until then, Team Rocket is blasting off again…