Q. I have a smartphone, but the battery life is terrible. I charge it up overnight, but by the end of surgery each day there is only about 10% left in the battery. Any advice?

A. The most likely reason for your problem is that lots of processes are running on your smartphone that are using up the battery. Here are some suggestions:

• If your email is set to continuously check for incoming emails then change the setting so it only looks for emails when you check manually.
• Make sure there are no apps running which use GPS. GPS is a real battery drainer and some apps work in the background and use location services to check where you are. Turn off location services.
• There may be lots of apps running away in the background and consuming power. Turn them off.
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both use energy. Do you need to have them both on all the time? I leave the Wi-Fi on but turn off Bluetooth unless I need it to power a wireless earpiece when driving.
• Do you allow your apps to accept notifications and alerts? Turn them off.

These simple steps should solve most smartphone battery problems. If you take all these steps and your battery life is still poor then you may have a faulty battery that needs replacing. Talk to the company that sold you the smartphone.