iPhone 'vampire setting' is secretly draining your battery but can be turned off easily

Having your phone battery running low is a real pain, partly because phones are really useful for all sorts of things and also because you're probably addicted to it and can't scratch that itch at the back of your mind without it.

There's all sorts of things you can try to do to prolong your battery life but there are some settings you might not even realise are switched on and wearing it down.

One of these 'vampire settings' which drains the battery life is 'WiFi assist', so if you're somewhere connected to the internet but it's being a bit slow for whatever reason this setting will kick in and use some data to bridge the gap.

Sounds good and convenient if you need to load the next TikTok or whatever you're doing, but it's a bit of a pain on your phone battery and if you keep it on you could end up seeing that percentage fall even further.

As long as you're fine with the WiFi being a bit naff every now and then hope into the 'mobile service' part of your settings and scroll down until you find it, then until the option to disable it.

"It was at 80 a few minutes ago!" (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Bear in mind that this could mean you experience a bit more lag when your Wi-Fi has an interrupted connection. However, it will help to make your phone's battery last longer.

Not only that, but Wi-Fi Assist can also sneakily use up a large proportion of your precious data when you think you're safely on a Wi-Fi network. Turning it off can help you to use less of your data plan as when you're on Wi-Fi it won't sneakily switch on.

It is there for a reason and it's not always terrible to have on, but only when you're sure you need it.

Apple's website says: "For example, if you're using Safari with a poor Wi-Fi connection and a webpage doesn't load, Wi-Fi Assist will activate and automatically switch to cellular so that the webpage continues to load."

It's definitely useful for some things, nobody likes to be stuck there waiting, staring at an empty screen begging for it to load up.

Go digging in your settings and turn it off, you'll save some data too (Chesnot/Getty Images)

It's always a tossup between your convenience pitted against your phone's battery life and your data usage.

If you want to keep your phone going for longer then you might also want to look into how you're charging the battery.

Most people stick it in every night and wake up to a phone at 100 percent.

But Chao-Yang Wang, the director of the Electrochemical Engine Centre at Penn State University, claims otherwise.

Speaking to HuffPost, he explained: "A battery will degrade faster if you charge it to 100 percent versus a little bit lower state of charge."