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13 WAYS ON HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOUR SMARTPHONE

You have your smartphone and it serves as your companion in connecting with other people: friends, classmates, officemates, mass, media, etc. You spend a lot of time with your phone to talk with your friends, play games, surf the web, take selfies, jot down notes, listen to music, watch videos and use it as a flashlight. However, your smartphone has its own pros, cons and limitations and there will be a day that you have to replace it with a new one. There are some instances that something happens with our phone that we didn’t expect. We accidently “ruin” our phone or we destroyed it unintentionally. So here are some tips on how to take care of your smartphone and to prolong its usability as well, so you don’t have to buy a new one too soon:

1. Use recommended accessories only. I

f you bought a smartphone from an authorized seller, your smartphone must come with a bundled set of charger, headset and sometimes a case. Some smartphone manufacturers also make smartphones with removable battery. As your phone comes with these accessories, take care of those accessories as well. They are the original accessories that came from the box and the compatible and recommended accessories for your phone. Using a different charger with different voltage will affect not only the battery, but also the charging port and the overall performance of your phone. If your charger is no longer working, the best thing you can do first is go back to the store where you bought your phone and ask an authorized personnel for a recommended and compatible charger for your phone. He/she must give you the charger with the same model that comes with your phone or he/she will look for another brand and model which can be an alternative if the model is already obsolete. The same thing goes with your headset and battery. You must keep in your mind that using incompatible accessories will put your phone into risk. Using counterfeited chargers and accessories can cause explosions. You have to make sure that your accessories are all original and recommended for your phone.

2. Keep your phone cool as much as possible.

Most of the internals of a smartphone nowadays are made up of metal. Metals are good conductors of heat. Overheating can damage your phone’s battery, screen and many other parts of your phone. If you are using your phone for a long period of time, it gets warm but not totally hot but if you didn’t let it stay idle for a while, it may cause overheating. Overheating affects the overall capacity of your phone’s battery. The li-ion batteries being used by most smartphones nowadays are capable of having high mAh capacity but all of those are susceptible to damage caused by overheating.

3. Avoid using your phone when it’s charging.

Using your phone while charging doesn’t necessarily cause explosions but your phone is more prone to heat when it is charging. The best thing you can do when your phone is charging is to relax and be patient, especially if your phone doesn’t support any quick charging technology. You may miss using your phone for a while but it is okay. You don’t want to put your phone to risk and you want to prolong its usability, right?

4. Know and understand the specifications of your phone.

Smartphones come in different segment and different price point. There are flagship smartphones, mid-range smartphones and last but not the least, the entry-level smartphones. Your smartphone can be categorized easily depending on the chipset that makes it run.

If your phone is a flagship one, it’s okay to play games in the highest settings even if it’s graphic intensive. It’s also safe to use your as your computer’s back up if it has a plenty amount of storage and you can even edit or encode your documents using a mobile office application without any stutters or lags. You can do almost anything in a flagship smartphone.

On the other hand, mid-range smartphones are also usable on playing games in high settings and editing your vlogs. However, these phones’ chipsets are not as powerful as the ones that you can find on the flagship smartphones and you can still experience very minimal amount of lags or frame drops.

Lastly, the entry-level smartphones are the cheapest that you can buy especially if you’re on a tight budget. An entry-level smartphone is basically powered by a chipset which is not necessarily “weak” but are even less powerful than the ones in a mid-range smartphone. In most cases, you can’t play games in the highest settings or even in medium settings. Editing videos and typing documents are sometimes nightmare in this segment. It’s recommended to play low-graphic games or if you want to play any MOBA in an entry-level phone, keep the graphics in the lowest settings and you’re pretty good to go. You still might encounter lags or frame drops but it’s acceptable for its price. But if you keep playing games at high settings in this segment, you’re already stressing your phone as it already reached its full potential and it already struggles in to do what you want it to do.

Knowing and understanding the specifications of your phone can enlighten you of the DOs and DON’Ts when it comes to games.

5. Avoid installing apps from unknown sources.

There are so many ways of installing applications to your smartphone, particularly in Android smartphones. They can download the Android Package File (APK) an application from the web browser, receive the APK file from “SHAREIt” or “ShareMe,” or simply go to Google’s Play Store and look for the latest version of the application that is best suited for their phone. Among those three, the latter is the safest way to install an app. Google ensures that most apps being sold in the Play Store is safe. You can see the “Verified by Play Protect” dialogue under the application’s title which indicates that the application is safe for your phone’s security. Applications from unknown sources sometimes contain malware that puts you and your phone’s security to risk. On the other hand, it’s not totally bad to install APK files you received from your friends but in some cases, especially in games, you might not be able to install an application for some reasons; your phone’s operating system differs’ from your friend’s or the application’s version is not optimized for your phone. If you want the best version of an application for your phone, go to Play Store.

6. Turn the screen off when you’re not using your phone.

Most phones nowadays are using LED (or OLED and AMOLED) displays for they are power efficient and more color accurate than the PLS, TFT and IPS LCD displays. However, LED, OLED and AMOLED displays are prone to screen burn and screen bleeding. These are because the blacks on the screen are totally turned off unlike the ones in the LCD displays. The best thing you can do to avoid this issue is to keep the screen off when you are not using your phone. The burn marks doesn’t affect the performance of your phone but they are quite annoying especially when you are streaming videos or playing games.

7. Don’t use third party “optimizers.”

Android smartphones nowadays come with pre-installed boosters or device manager/cleaner. Just like an original accessory, the pre-installed cleaner is the best as it is actually the optimized booster or optimizer for your phone. (It’s not redundant because not all optimizers are optimized for all smartphones. Haha!) Sometimes, third party boosters doesn’t optimize a phone at all but they rather put a lot of unnecessary cache files to your storage and display unnecessary ads which are annoying, data-consuming and sometimes, not suitable for the eyes of kids. (You know what I mean. There are ads that display malicious content.) If you think your phone slows down, you can go to the pre-installed optimizer in your phone and tap “Clean Now” or “Optimize” button to stop all the running applications in the background and you’re good to go. If you don’t think it’s not yet necessary, you can simply tap the “Recent Apps” or the square-shaped navigation button and manually close the apps that are currently opened but you are not using.

8. Use protective cases and screen protectors.

For many, a smartphone without a case and/or a screen protector is incomplete. (I am also guilty about it.) It’s true especially nowadays because the materials used made for the external parts of the phone (in entry-level to mid-range segment) are plastic. The glass on the front is also fragile. We must think practically when buying a protective case. The durability always matters more than the design. Cases are basically made for protection and not for decoration. But if you’re into decoration, there are smartphone cases manufacturers out there that combine decoration and durability into one. It’s good to have one.

9. Keep your phone’s software up to date.

Software updates are like lubricants that allow your phone to process smoothly. They optimize your phone and they give your phone something new with its user interface. They contain security patches that enhances your device’s health against malware.

10. Unmount the memory card before you remove it.

Your memory card expands your phone’s storage and it allows you to take more picture, install more apps and store more songs and movies. However, it gets full after a long period of time and you have to decide whether to format your memory card, move the files to a computer or an external hard drive, or replace it with a new one. Some choose to just replace the memory card. It’s not bad but they are just doing it in a wrong way; removing the memory card without unmounting it. This practice corrupts the data stored in the memory card and sometimes, in the phone’s internal storage, and in worst cases, the phone malfunctions. To avoid these issues, go to settings app and navigate to storage menu. Unmount the memory card and wait for a notification which states that the memory card or “SD” card is safe to remove. This prepares your phone’s storage and your memory card for the removal of the external storage.

11. Do a factory reset at least once a year.

If you’re phone is already with you for a year or more, changes can be noticed in its performance. You might have uninstalled some apps that you are no longer using. The pre-installed booster or anti-virus sometimes won’t erase those files as they won’t find them malicious or potential for malware and the files will remain in your phones storage. If deleting them manually will not work, you can perform a factory reset. This will totally refresh your phone’s software and hardware. You might have to reinstall your favorite apps and download your favorite songs but it’s better than nothing.

12. Coordinate with trusted and/or trusted technicians.

Remember that not all the physical stores have repair services. If something’s happened with your phone, ask the authorized personnel for assistance and he/she will lead you to a trusted technician. It’s worth mentioning that some technicians acknowledges your phone’s warranty and they won’t let you pay for the service. Not to judge but if you went to an untrusted or not well-known technician for assistance, they might replace your phone’s internals with counterfeited parts and it will make the situation worse.

13. Hangout with your friends, not with your phone.

The more you use your phone, the more it slows down. Having many different social media applications installed on your phone can be a cause of performance degradation. Recent findings say that Human-Machine Interactions (HMIs) between a person and the phone create data, and eventually fill up the storage and the random access memory (RAM) of the phone. On the other hand, talking to your friends on the phone is different from being with them. You can talk to them in both ways but the bond that you can have when you are with them in person can’t be have when you’re just chatting with them through social media apps. Instead of using social media to communicate with your friends or the neighborhood, why don’t you just try to be with them and get disconnected? This will not just lessen the time you spend with your phone and the stress to your phone’s memory but it will also help you to maintain harmony with the people you love.

These are the easiest ways to take care of your phone. Nothing lasts forever and a smartphone is no exception but if you take care of it, it will last long and it won't be necessary to buy a new smartphone unless you really upgrade to new one every year. It's not always its price segment and brand that will tell how long will your phone last. It depends upon us sometimes.