Even iPhones can start to feel old and crufty after a few months of use. That includes a smartphone that costs you $1,000. Apple just announced 3 new iPhones ranging from $749 to $1,099.
It is certain that whether you hang on to your current phone, or spring for one of these new ones, at some point, you are going to look at it and wonder what happened to all that storage, speed, and general new phone appeal.
The good news is you can get it back with a little bit of maintenance. There are things you can do to make your current phone feel new again, or make your new phone keep that new phone feeling longer. Regardless of platform, these tips can help you fall in love with your smartphone all over again:
Screen Care
There are two things you can do to take care of your screen. You should probably get in the habit of doing them both:
- Clean your screen with a micro-fiber cloth a couple of times a day. Your screen gets really dirty and quickly becomes a germ magnet. Never mind the smudges you can see. Worry instead about the germs you can’t.
- Use one of those iPhone Xs screen protectors, or whichever protector is most appropriate for your phone.
Even with AppleCare+, screen replacement will likely be more than you want to pay just for the sake of a few scratches. But few things make your phone look and feel old and crufty like visible screen damage.
Quality screen protectors do not adversely affect the functionality of the touchscreen in any way. Your phone will still fit easily in the vast majority of cases. So you most likely will not have to sacrifice your favorite accessories.
There is nothing but upside to proper screen care. Even if your screen has suffered some minor damage, it can look and feel a lot newer by putting a tempered glass screen protector on top.
Storage Wars
People have been fighting with storage space since the first iOS upgrades. This year will be no exception. If you have struggled with that dialog box telling you that you can’t upgrade because you are out of storage, the problem is that you pack more on your phone than your phone can comfortably hold. It will probably happen again.
The good news is that there are things you can do to clear space on your phone. For starters, you can:
- Move your photos to a cloud service. Both Apple and Google offer cloud storage as a part of their services.
- Use a music streaming service.
- Follow one of the many detailed tutorials for finding and clearing out “Other” on your iPhone.
Apple has done a lot over the years to help with the storage issues that bog down our experience. But the simple fact is there is no substitute for buying a phone with more storage in the first place. So if you are getting that annoying message, you should consider getting a higher storage tier with your next purchase.
Inoculations
Your smartphone can catch viruses just like any other computing device. While this is less of a problem for iPhones, Android phones are highly susceptible to viruses, malware, adware, spyware, and every other ware of which you should beware. This is not your fault. It is just the nature of any dominant platform.
What you have to do is give your phone regular inoculations with the latest, most updated versions of virus protection for your smartphone.
The thing that makes computers feel old and slow is usually the extra cycles taken up by criminals using your system for nefarious purposes. The same thing happens on smartphones. Don’t throw it out. Clean it out. Afterward, it will feel and behave like new.
It is not just iPhone season. It’s smartphone season. We just got a new Galaxy Note. And the new Pixel phones from Google are just around the corner. Everyone will be taking a long, hard look at their current phone to decide whether it is good for another year.
If your phone is a recent model, you can probably get a lot more life from it. Take care of the screen with regular screen care and protection. Win the storage wars by using cloud storage and streaming services. And speed everything up by inoculating your phone against viruses.
