Five settings that save your battery

Mobile games are getting prettier, which is great until you watch your battery nosedive on a long trip. The good news is that most of the drain comes from a handful of settings you can safely dial back without really noticing.

First, the frame rate cap. A lot of games default to the highest your screen supports, and dropping from 120 to 60 fps can massively cut both heat and power use. Second, resolution scaling — many games render above what you can actually perceive on a small screen, so a notch lower is basically free.

Third, kill the background animations and menu effects if the game lets you. Fourth, turn off haptics; constant vibration is a surprisingly hungry little feature. Fifth, lower your screen brightness and let the game's own contrast do the work — bright games often look fine dimmer than you'd think.

Do even two or three of these and you'll feel the difference on a flight or a long day out. I run through this checklist every time I install something graphically heavy, and it's saved me more than one dead-phone afternoon.