iOS 9's Low Power setting will give your iPhone several extra hours of battery life

As it is a perennial concern of consumers, smartphone manufacturers are always looking to improve the battery life of their devices. During the keynote address at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced that, through simple system tweaks, iOS 9 has added an extra hour of battery life to the iPhone. Additionally, a new Low Power setting will supposedly extend battery life by up to three hours.

According to Apple's iOS 9 page:

"Across the entire operating system, apps and key technologies have been made more efficient to trim battery usage wherever possible — so you get more battery life for the things you do every day. Thanks to ambient light and proximity sensors, your iPhone knows if it’s facedown on the table and prevents the screen from turning on, even when you receive a notification. And the new Low Power mode lets you extend your battery life even further."

This trimming will supposedly save an hour of battery life regardless of whether or not you use the Low Power feature.

In iOS 9, once your phone drops to 20% battery, and again when it hits 10%, you will be prompted to turn on the Low Power setting. This feature optimizes the iPhone's power usage by turning off or minimizing usage of various apps and features which, Apple claims, can give you up to three more hours of operating time. When turned on, Low Power mode will turn off push notifications for all apps, including Mail, which can only be fetched manually while the setting is on. The display will be dimmed and motion effects will be disabled. Background app refresh and downloads are disabled as well. The setting will apparently slow down network activity, though exactly what this will affect isn't yet clear.

The first complaints about just about every iOS version to date have been about it draining too much battery. Perhaps this time around will be different. It looks as though Apple has worked some magic with its new App Thinning technology to free up storage in iOS 9, it'd be great to see some of those same concepts applied to power management.