Accidentally optimising for battery life

Every now and then I will get frustrated at how quickly the battery on my phone or laptop will discharge. Usually this means a bit off research, before stripping out "bloat" and replacing it with 'lighter' software. This time the prompt came from a different place.

Over the past couple of months my screen time has been increasing. Some of it can't be helped, my work is computer based, organising and activism is mostly done through group chats and for obvious reasons has a big social media component to it. Well a week ago I reached a limit and uninstalled FB messenger off my phone, 3 days later the biggest culprit, instagram followed.

The difference was night and day. Yes I was still finding myself on my phone mindlessly cycling through apps, but Signal and Gemini and even Lemmy are not close to similar time sinks. None of the aformentioned platforms are anywhere near as insidious and addictive.

My phone(moto z2 play) has gone from the 3000mA/h battery lasting ~5-8 hours to lasting more than 24 hours. Looking at the usage graph there are near perfect flat periods during the night (with airplane mode activated). My next step would be to test with perfect usage(only essential screen time) during the day how long can my phone battery last. 72 hours? A week? Uninstalling an app is easy, behavioural change is going to be the hard part.