By default many Android phones are shipped with the backlight display at max. This puts a substantial drain on your Android battery life and is unnecessary in most situations. You can play with your backlight display settings in different environments but basically you want to have it set to the lowest value you can stand in each situation. This will put less strain on your phone and increase your Android battery life. You can access the Android backlight settings via Settings > Sound & display > Brightness.

Disabling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS when they are not needed will make a major difference in the battery life of your Android phone. All three of these services require a substantial bit of power to operate and even when you are not using them, if they are enabled, they will still drain a significant amount of power. Also, as I found out recently, there are several Android apps that you may have installed from the market that make use of your GPS without it being terribly obvious. Turning off GPS unless you have a specific need for it is always a good idea.

 You can adjust the three settings mentioned in the previous section manually through the settings screen (as well as backlight display) but I prefer to use the Android power widget for quick access to these settings on-the-go. To add the Android power widget to your home screen simply long press your home screen, select Widgets and then Power Control. This will add the sleek and extremely useful Android power widget to your home screen for quick access.

Many built-in and add-on Android apps are set up to automatically sync your data on a regular basis. This can again put a strain on your Android battery and should be disabled or adjusted to maximize your Android battery life. These Android apps that sync data automatically include, but are not limited to, the default e-mail app, Seesmic, Twitter and Facebook. Each of these applications has its own settings where you can adjust (or disable) automatic synchronization of your data. Play around with the values and, depending on the amount of these Android apps you run, you should be able to find a happy medium between keeping the apps functional and extending your Android battery life.

A good practice when dealing with problematic Android battery life is to install a task manager/killer app. These Android apps will show you a list of what is running at startup and give you the option to kill or auto-kill these applications each time you boot your phone. Auto-killing Android apps that run at boot that you don't use is a great way to help extend your Android battery life. Many of the Android apps that auto run when you boot your phone you probably didn't know existed let alone use.