Saturday, 28 January 2017

Taking Care of Your iPhone [Updated]

 

Our phones are always within arm’s reach. Perhaps you’re reading this from your phone. Whether we are at home, at work or in the gym, our phones are never too far away. It wasn’t too long ago that phones were for calling, texting and playing snake. Now we use them constantly; to check the time, check our emails, check when the bus/train is due, check the weather forecast etc.

Our phones can monitor our health and fitness, help us keep an eye on our budgets, store all the music and photos we could possibly want, and give us instant access to our social media accounts.

Simply put, our phones have become our lifelines. Most of us can remember life before iPhones, but now, we couldn’t quite imagine going without. So why do we not take care of our phones as much as we should?

It’s almost in our nature to take things for granted, it’s never intentional but it happens.

Here’s how you can give your phone some TLC:

1)    Give your phone a good clean once or twice a week. If you take your phone everywhere with you, chances are, you take it with you to the bathroom too. Find a soft lint-free cloth to give it a wipe down. Or use a lens wipe as they won’t leave any residue behind.

2)    Turn off your phone once a week. Shock horror! While you’re at the cinema or down the pub or even doing some cleaning, switch off your phone giving it a chance to relax. Leaving it on, or leaving it simply idle stresses the battery leaving it to die faster than it should. The batteries in our used iPhones work best when powered between 50 and 80 percent.

3)   On the subject of batteries, try not to leave your phone plugged in overnight. We’re all particularly guilty of this. Letting our batteries drain down to 1% before sticking it on charge and going to sleep is one way to damage the battery over time. Charge your phone before bedtime, and take it off charge before it hits 100%. Topping up your battery in short spurts give the ion batteries (found in iPhones) just enough energy to work continuously.

4) Turn off those notifications and location services. And switch off your WIFI and Bluetooth when not in use. Most apps can work fine without location services, so go over to your settings and switch them off.

Push notifications can exhaust your battery because they need constant data connection. Leaving your WIFI and Bluetooth on is just a waste of energy. If not in use, switch them off.

5)    Summer may almost be over, but there are a few of us that grab a last minute break to jet off somewhere hot. Avoid taking your phone out in extreme temperatures. Switch it off and keep it somewhere where it isn’t likely to overheat and shut down.

None of the above tips take up more than a couple minutes of your time. Try and get into the routine of taking care of your phone, it’s likely won’t let you down when you need it most!

Like you take care of your iPhone you should also take care of your headphones to make them durable. We have recently published an article on How to take care of your headphones, you can check out all the tips and tricks to keep your headphone like new.