Some of this may already be obvious to most, however, I thought it might be worthwhile to lay out all the steps you can take on your iPhone to maximize its battery life for a long ride.

I applied all of these to my phone this weekend and did a 3 hour and 40 min ride, and still had 33% of my battery life left. This WHILE USING A BLUEHR HEARTRATE STRAP.....which requires Bluetooth to be enabled.

Sorry if some of this seems common sense.....and, yes, (a) I know a Garmin doesn't have battery life issues, as a phone does, and (b) an extended battery like Morph can used as well. Enjoy:


1. Turn off location svcs: Settings > General > Location Services. I only leave Strava and Maps active.

2. Turn off Push Notifications: Settings > Notifications and set Notifications to Off.

3. Turn off push mail: Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off.

4. Lengthen the manual data fetch time: To fetch new data manually, from the Home screen choose Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and tap Manually. To increase the fetch interval, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and tap Hourly.

5. Auto-check fewer email accounts: You can save power by checking fewer email accounts. This can be accomplished by turning off an email account. To turn off an account, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose an email account, and set Account to Off.

6. Turn off Wifi: Settings > Wifi

7. Turn off BT: Settings > General > Bluetooth > Off (unless you are wearing/using a BT device such as a BlueHR or BlueSC from Wahoo Fitness)

8. Turn off setting time zone: Settings > Location Services > System Services. From there, it’s just a matter of turning off “Setting Time Zone.”

9. Turn off Cellular Data: Settings > General> Network > Cellular Data off.

10. Disable Ping: Settings > General > Restrictions > Enable Restrictions > Ping > "Off"

11. Turn off Siri: Settings > General > Siri > Off

12. Turn off iCloud: Settings >iCloud > Turn off all options you possibly can (I leave Photostream and Documents & Data on, as I don't want them erased from my phone).

13. Disable Diagnostics: Settings > Location Services > System Services. From there, it’s just a matter of turning off “Diagnostics & Usage”

buy a garmin edge 500 and use your iphone as a phone...

buy a garmin edge 200 if you want cheaper

Use your bike computer instead.

I use a Sigma BC1909 stem mounted computer. The Strava data is recorded with the phone in the jersey back pocket. I like comparing how I've done over segments, monitoring my HR over various zones and other aspects the Strava provides.

As previously prefaced, use the info as deemed fit........or don't.

I don't know how far you are riding but I just did an 80km ride and it only used about 25% of my iPhone battery.

Also, one option is to use a Garmin and upload the ride info to Strava afterwards. I set both on before my rides because I usually screw one of them up during my ride so its nice to have a back up.

13 steps? Really?

Garmin for me thanks.

Actually it would be 26, have to turn everything back on after the ride.

How does strava work if you turn data off? My (newish) phone dies after about 5 hours of running strava continuously.

Yeah... Garmin. Never lost a ride, but have heard a LOT of iPhone users losing rides. A buddy used his iPhone attached to a gigantic brick of a spare battery, finally wised up and realized a Garmin would be lighter, more reliable, and was actually designed for such an application.

External power source.

I get the Garmin being lighter on paper, but in reality there's no way I'm going out riding through the city without a telephone. In case of a wreck, component failure, or even injury, it's the best tool ever. A Garmin can't call my wife.

This

No but you can use your garmin and not have to worry about having a dead battery when you need to call your wife.

True that!

If you turn off cellular data and Wifi, do you really need to mess with changing your e-mail fetch and cloud settings? I'd assume that if all of your communications are off, it's not going to waste any power trying to pull your e-mail down.

I'm interested in where this thread goes. I did a 40 miler last weekend and my phone was down to 30% at the end. I'm doing a 60+ miler in a couple weeks and am seriously worried about running out of juice.

Odd, I can ride 150 miles and still have 95 to 100 % battery left.

Steps:

1. Turn phone off.
2. place phone in water tight bag, stuff in saddle bag.
3. ride.

I just ordered a Juice Pack Air for this, cause screw that, I'm not totally reconfiguring my phone for Strava. And the only reason I went with the battery pack was because I can't really afford a $300 cycling computer right now, $60 seemed reasonable. Getting an Edge is really the only good solution, everything else is a band-aid.

One tip I happened upon by accident, but I don't think OP mentioned:

Start the Strava app recording the ride, then hit the Home button to take the Strava app off the screen. You'll see the icons of other apps, but Strava will be working in the background. For some reason, this absolutely saves me lots o' battery. I can easily get in 4-1/2 hours of continuous riding using this "trick" alone.

(In fact, I've tested other GPS apps and do the same with them and get comparable results.)

Data is only required once you complete your ride and Strava attempts to send the Feed for that ride to its server. Its not needed during the ride while Strava is recording.