I guess by now you have realized that phones have an "expiration date", and to a large extent, it is due to how we handle it daily. We are not going to forget either that the big technology companies and other manufacturers of consumer products dedicate huge amounts of money to their “planned obsolescence department”.
This means that engineers and technicians strive to give a certain useful life to the products they sell. Although there are features that come with the mobile that we can not even touch, these tips will help you extend the life of your mobile through simple habits.
Prevention and protection
1.- Tempered glass screen protector
In most cases when we buy a phone we do not want insurance (now they are quarterly instead of annual). When it falls for some reason, the screen usually breaks and other damage appears, making it impossible to use.
A good investment is to acquire a tempered glass screen to reduce the risk of ending up with a cracked screen. This is certainly optional and a preventative measure, but in the worst case it may save you from buying a new phone or replacing that expensive touchscreen part.
2.- Remove photos and apps you don't need
Has it ever happened to you that a process runs slowly? In most cases this happens due to the use and storage of the Smartphone's RAM. You have apps, photos, and documents that you once downloaded but no longer need. A good practice is to regularly delete this data, to avoid unnecessary expenses. This happens a lot with whatsapp, in case you have the automatic download.
Be careful to delete applications that you hardly use, but that you will need in the future, such as apps to locate a mobile, remember important events or system protection. This measure is also explained later to extend battery life.
3.- Solid Casing
Now that you have your screen protected, it's time to protect the rest of your phone. If you have a very thin and soft case, it will not protect what is necessary in the event of a blow. If you tend to drop it a lot, the best thing you can do is buy a hard case that protects enough to avoid these possible damages.
In fact, there are protections that cover the phone with a very solid and robust material, which protect almost from any blow, although they do not absorb the vibrations of the impact sufficiently.
4.- Give your mobile a break
Do you often turn off your laptop or PC, or on the contrary do you leave it running for several weeks in a row? I guess from time to time you turn it off, but on the phone it doesn't usually happen. Leaving the phone turned off for several hours a week or why not every night will also help its performance and prolong its life.
5.- Do not take the Smartphone to all places and in all activities
It seems that if we don't carry our mobile with us we are missing something and although it is often necessary, it is not recommended to carry it in all activities. For example, applications for exercising and measuring results have now become fashionable.
This idea is great, but the mobile that you carry on your arm or in your pocket can be damaged by sweat or accidental falls. In the event that you have this habit, it is advisable to isolate the phone as much as possible, although it is not so easily saved from vibrations.
6.- Good loading practices
If you are the type of user who leaves the battery charging for a long time, do not worry, you will not damage the phone, although you probably have daily habits that do damage the battery and reduce its useful life.
Waiting for your battery charge to reach 25% greatly reduces the ability to receive and send data. According to various studies, if the phone is always charged when it reaches 25%, the battery will work at its maximum potential for approximately 450 recharges.
However, if you start charging when it is at 75%, you will have a better chance of getting the most out of the battery, about 2400 times.
In fact, the myth of emptying the battery to 0% and charging it fully is not a good idea, it is advisable to make more charges for less time throughout the day, either with the cable itself or external batteries.
7.- Avoid malware and viruses
A Smartphone is not usually infected by a malware or virus, but it is always better to take precautions just in case. Viruses can get in through apps, so it's best to rule out any extraneous factors.
If, for example, your phone starts to slow down and strange things happen right after installing a new app, access the data usage of that app to see if it can send information to third parties.
It may be the case that you have applications with viruses that have been installed without prior permission if your mobile has jailbreak or root. A simple way to get rid of a virus is to restart your Android in safe mode and delete it directly, then exit safe mode, or in the most extreme case, reset to factory mode.
8.- Use data storage in the cloud
If it happens to you that you often lack storage due to the large amount of data you download daily, it may be recommended that you use free cloud storage, such as Google drive or others, and make frequent backups. In this way you will prevent the mobile from being saturated with too much data and showing the fateful message of “no storage space”.
9.- Protect the mobile while driving
It seems basic, but few people secure the phone in the car. You can attach it to a peripheral that sticks to the dashboard and stays fixed to prevent possible movements and falls.
Increase phone battery
What is the life of your battery? It probably won't last a day. Android smartphones have high-end features (super-fast quad-core processors, software that runs in the background, GPS, radio, and 2G and 3G networks) that absorb a lot of power, so it is advisable to do several practices and prolong active time as much as possible.
With these tips you can increase the life of your battery easily and safely.
1.- Process that consumes the most
Surely you have several active processes on your Smartphone and they are consuming valuable battery power. Go to settings and under battery, tap to drill down to all apps and processes. In the list you will see applications that you never use, you can uninstall it or disable that specific function.
2.- Deactivate unnecessary hardware
The phones already have LTE, GPS, NFC, WI-Fi and Bluetooth, without a doubt a great advance, although a constant consumption of energy. Why have all 5 activated all day? Android has the ability to keep location-based apps in the background, though if your phone has a control widget, you can quickly turn GPS on or off (GPS is definitely the biggest power hog).
Simply swipe down and when the notification bar opens, tap on the top right corner and start toggling off options that you won't be using at the moment. You will appreciate the extra time, that you will be able to use your smartphone, for things that are really necessary.
3.- Stop the apps that are in the background
Go to Settings>applications and on the left side, stop any applications you don't need, you may be surprised what you have open.
4.- Remove the widgets from the home screen that you do not use
At first it seems that all those widgets that you see on the home screen are inactive, but they do consume energy, especially those that are continuously updating, such as "weather" or "latest news".
In this case, I don't recommend you delete all of them, just the ones you don't use. In fact, one of the great things about Android is the customization of the home screen.
5.- You can see the screen with less brightness
Lower the brightness and (if you have it) turn off auto-brightness. It seems like an obvious thing to do to save battery power, but you will be surprised at the low consumption.
6.- Is there coverage or not?
If you are in an area where you have poor coverage, the phone will work slower than if you are in an area with more signal strength, that is drawer. This effect is negative for the battery and although you cannot directly influence to change this, you can always put the airplane mode, if you are not going to call or navigate. With this you get that the mobile or cell phone is not constantly scanning and trying to connect to a telephone signal repeater.
7.- Before buying a phone, get informed
Each phone has technical specifications and manufacturers mark estimated values of useful life, but they are not always correct. Many phones with similar features may have several hours difference in usage.
8.- Update applications
You will constantly see new updates appear for applications and although sometimes people think that it is not important, many times they are updated to use less battery power and avoid excessive consumption of system resources. If the processor and RAM memory have to run more developed applications and with "heavy" processes, the greater consumption of the process translates into greater energy consumption, so the battery will be the main loser and, therefore, the time of use. of the cell phone.
That is why it is important to have them in order up to the current date, even if you have the phone with the updates in automatic mode, make sure if any of them need manual installation.
9.- Saving or ultra saving mode
There are phones like Galaxy S5 , among others. that have ultra power saving that incorporates limits on basic phone functions like sending messages, calling, browsing the web and apps like Facebook.
In this way you can last almost up to a day, the battery of the phone when the percentage is very low.
Now all you have to do is use these tips to extend the useful life of your mobile phone, cell phone, smartphone or tablet and thus save money on possible repairs, buying an expensive new terminal or losing data.
And so far we have come, they are the best 18 tips to extend the life of your smartphone, some easier to carry out, others more laborious, but they can help you counteract the planned obsolescence and the misuse that we sometimes give to this type of mobile devices, whether they are android, iOS, Windows Mobile or other operating systems.
And you, what advice would you give us to extend the life of your android mobile? Leave a comment with your opinion and advice, at the end of this article, surely our android community, it is of great help in the daily use of your phone or cell.