Technologies

The 3 iOS Features You Definitely Aren’t Using (but Are Silently Draining Your Battery)

If you find that your phone loses battery too fast, you may just need to disable these features to solve the problem.

It’s 2026, and if you’re constantly toggling on «Low Power Mode» just to survive a commute, you may as well be carrying around a brick. While it’s true that lithium-ion batteries naturally degrade over time, most people are draining their «juice» prematurely by leaving on high-performance features they don’t even need.

Your iPhone has a few key settings that drain your battery in the background. The good news is, you can turn them off. Instead of watching your battery percentage plummet at the worst possible moment, a few simple tweaks will give you hours of extra life.

Before you even think about buying a new phone, check your Battery Health menu (anything above 80% is decent) and then turn off these three settings. It’s the easiest way to make your iPhone battery last longer, starting right now.

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Turn off widgets on your iPhone lock screen

All the widgets on your lock screen force your apps to automatically run in the background, constantly fetching data to update the information the widgets display, like sports scores or the weather. Because these apps are constantly running in the background due to your widgets, that means they continuously drain power.

If you want to help preserve some battery on iOS 18, the best thing to do is simply avoid widgets on your lock screen (and home screen). The easiest way to do this is to switch to another lock screen profile: Press your finger down on your existing lock screen and then swipe around to choose one that doesn’t have any widgets.

If you want to just remove the widgets from your existing lock screen, press down on your lock screen, hit Customize, choose the Lock Screen option, tap on the widget box and then hit the «—« button on each widget to remove them.

Reduce the motion of your iPhone UI

Your iPhone user interface has some fun, sleek animations. There’s the fluid motion of opening and closing apps, and the burst of color that appears when you activate Siri with Apple Intelligence, just to name a couple. These visual tricks help bring the slab of metal and glass in your hand to life. Unfortunately, they can also reduce your phone’s battery life.

If you want subtler animations across iOS, you can enable the Reduce Motion setting. To do this, go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion and toggle on Reduce Motion.

Switch off your iPhone’s keyboard vibration

Surprisingly, the keyboard on the iPhone has never had the ability to vibrate as you type, an addition called «haptic feedback» that was added to iPhones with iOS 16. Instead of just hearing click-clack sounds, haptic feedback gives each key a vibration, providing a more immersive experience as you type. According to Apple, the very same feature may also affect battery life.

According to this Apple support page about the keyboard, haptic feedback «might affect the battery life of your iPhone.» No specifics are given as to how much battery life the keyboard feature drains, but if you want to conserve battery, it’s best to keep this feature disabled.

Fortunately, it is not enabled by default. If you’ve enabled it yourself, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Keyboard Feedback and toggle off Haptic to turn off haptic feedback for your keyboard.

For more tips on iOS, read about how to access your Control Center more easily and why you might want to only charge your iPhone to 95%.

Technologies

Google’s Pixel 10A Is Coming to Japan With an Exclusive Blue Edition and Special Wallpaper

This model comes with creatively designed stickers and a special look for Pixel’s 10th anniversary.

Don’t be blue: Google is releasing an Isai blue edition of the Pixel 10A to celebrate the Android phone line’s 10th anniversary, setting it apart with its own sticker set, specialized wallpaper and custom icons. But it’ll only be available in Japan.

Announced Tuesday on the Google Japan blog, the Isai blue Pixel 10A has a dark blue look and includes bonus decorations designed in collaboration with Japan’s Heralbony art company. These include an exclusive bumper case and stickers for customization.

This edition of the Pixel 10A will arrive in Japan on May 20, following the April 14 release of the Pixel 10A in its original colors of lavender, berry, fog and obsidian. The Isai blue model costs 94,900 yen, which roughly translates to $595, and includes 256GB of storage.

This makes it slightly less expensive than the US model’s 256GB edition, but it comes with a number of fun extras at no additional cost.

Google’s creation of a country-specific model for Japan may also reflect strong sales in that market. In 2023, the IDC analytics firm (via 9to5Google) reported that the Pixel 7 series accounted for 10.7% of the country’s market share, a 527% increase from 2022.

Technologies

Can’t Wait for New Emoji? Here’s How to Create Your Own on iPhone

Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhones can create custom emoji in a few easy steps.

Apple brought new emoji to all iPhones when the company released iOS 26.4 on March 24. The new emoji include «🫍» orca, «🫪» distorted face and «🫈» hairy creature — or as we might normally call it, Sasquatch. According to Emojipedia, there are 3,953 emoji with more on the way, including a pickle. But there’s no emoji for a dog wearing pajamas, a plate with burgers and fries and many other things. But if you have Genmoji on your iPhone you can create these emoji and many more.

Apple released iOS 18.2 in 2024 and the company introduced its own emoji generator, called Genmoji, to Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones at that time. The Unicode Standard, a universal character encoding standard, is responsible for creating new emoji, and approved emoji are added to all devices once a year. With Genmoji, you don’t have to wait for new emoji to appear on your iPhone each year. You can just create them as you need them.

Read on to learn how to use Genmoji on iPhone to create your own custom emoji. Just note that only iPhones with Apple Intelligence, like the iPhone 17 lineup, can use Genmoji at this time.

Note: The new emoji may not display correctly for Apple users whose devices aren’t on a 26.4 software version.

How to make custom emoji

1. Open Messages and go into a chat.
2. Tap the plus (+) button next to your text box.
3. Tap Genmoji.

You can then type a description of an emoji into the text box near the bottom of your screen and tap the check mark on your keyboard to enter that description into Genmoji. You can also tap different suggestions and themes that are right above the text box. And with iOS 26 or later, you can also combine and use emoji to create others rather than describing a new emoji or using suggestions.

Your iPhone will generate a series of new emoji for you to pick from according to your description, and you can swipe through these new emoji. When you find the one you want, tap Add in the top right corner of your screen and the new emoji will be available to use as an emoji, tapback or a sticker. Now you don’t have to wait for the Unicode Standard to propose, create and bring new emoji to devices.

For more iOS news, here’s what to know about iOS 26.4 and iOS 26.3. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet for other tips and tricks.

Technologies

Save Over 20% on This Handy 10,000-mAh Anker Nano Power Bank

Keep your devices charged on the go with this Anker Nano power bank, now down to just $46.

We’ve just spotted the Anker Nano 45-watt portable power bank for just $46 at Amazon right now. This saves you $14 — a 23% discount on its list price. Though it’s $6 more than the lowest-ever price we saw during Black Friday, it’s still a solid discount when you take the rising cost of tech accessories into account. It also matches the lowest price we’ve seen in 2026. It comes in four colors: black, green, pink and white. They’re all on sale for the same price.

This Anker Nano portable charger weighs approximately 8.2 ounces and measures a compact 3.21×1.99×1.42 inches. Despite its small size, it has a retractable cable and supports fast charging in compatible Apple, Samsung, Google Pixel and other smartphones. It also has a large 10,000-mAh capacity and a smart display so you always know how much juice is left in your power bank.

The Nano can charge an iPhone 17 to up to 50% battery in an estimated 20 minutes, and is powerful enough to charge tablets and laptops. Need to charge your devices while charging your power bank? You can do so safely thanks to pass-through charging so you’ll never have to go without battery life.

We’ve also compiled a list of the best power banks for iPhones and for Android, in case this deal isn’t quite a fit for you.

Why this deal matters

If you travel, have a long commute time or are otherwise always on the go, a portable charger can help you keep your devices fully powered. This 45-watt Anker Nano power bank is compact, includes a loop that lets you keep track of it easily and has a built-in cable so you don’t have to keep up with extra cords. Amazon’s $14 discount makes this a solid deal for anyone looking for a compact power bank.