Your iPhone’s battery is draining faster than it should? Well, a lot of factors affect the battery performance of an iPhone. Sometimes, it’s purely Apple’s mistake. But most of the times, battery drain is caused by how you use your iPhone.

Based on our years of experience with iPhone and smartphones in general, here are the three most common reasons about why and when an iPhone battery drains faster than it should.

The GPS problem

The GPS chip on your iPhone is great for navigating. But in 99% of the cases, GPS is the reason why an iPhone battery drains faster. Most people keep Location Services always enabled on their iPhone. But they don’t how much battery juice it sips.

GPS, when used with WiFi, does NOT impact battery life as the WiFi network easily gives the apps on your iPhone a rough idea about your location without requiring a connection with the satellite through the GPS chip. However, when you’re not connected to a WiFi network, your iPhone’s only source for getting your location is through GPS. And it doesn’t come cheap.

When Location Services are enabled, your iPhone tries to establish a constant connection with the GPS satellites out there in the space to get your device location. This gets worse when you’re indoors, and the GPS signal is weak. iPhone consumes 20% more battery power when it tries to establish a GPS connection in areas where the GPS signal is weak.

FIX: The fix to GPS problem is to use it cautiously. When you’re indoors and not connected to a WiFi network, disable Location Services on your iPhone by going to Settings » Privacy » Location Services.

Too many apps

If you’re curious and creative, the chances are you’ve got a boatload of apps installed on your iPhone. However, the truth is you only use less than 25% of all the apps on your device.

Every app you install on your iPhone eats battery. And the unnecessary apps that you install unnecessarily eats battery of your iPhone.

FIX: Every once in a while review the apps you’ve installed on your iPhone. Remove the apps that you seldom open.

Weak cellular signal

If you live in an area where cellular signal is weak, you’ll notice that your iPhone’s battery drains much faster. This is because your iPhone continually pushes more resources to get a better signal which in turn costs battery juice.

It gets worse when you’ve LTE enabled. LTE itself consumes a lot of battery, and when the signal is weak, and you’re on an LTE network, the battery drains even faster.

FIX: If you can’t avoid an area where cellular signal is weak, consider switching over to a 2G/3G network. In areas where LTE is weak, the 3G signal will probably be good, and if the 3G signal is bad too — switch over to a 2G network for both better cellular reception and battery life.

To switch between LTE, 3G and 2G on your iPhone, go to Settings » Cellular Data » Cellular Data Options.

That’s all we know about common battery drain issue on iPhone. If you’d like to add a few points from your experience, please post them in the comments section below.