Games that respect your battery

We test battery drain on every game we review, and over time some clear patterns emerge. Certain genres are just kinder to your phone, and some games make choices that keep them running cool for hours.

Turn-based and text-heavy games are almost always the winners. Adventures like Lantern Hollow barely touch your battery because they're mostly static scenes. Management games that let you pause are close behind, since nothing is constantly rendering.

On the flip side, tilt racers and anything with heavy 3D and constant motion will drain fast and warm up your phone. That's not a knock on them, it's just physics, but it's worth knowing before a long trip.

My rule of thumb: if I'm under 40 percent and away from a charger, I go for a fishing sim or a cozy adventure. If I've got a full battery and an evening ahead, that's when the racers come out.

Watch your brightness too. It's the single biggest drain on any phone, and lowering it a notch helps more than most in-game settings ever will.