Most of us have a smartphone these days, but relatively few people really know how to make the most of that device they are always carrying around. Your phone is an incredibly valuable object for what it can do for your life, and it’s something that you are going to want to make sure you are making the most of. In this article, we are going to take a look at what you might want to do in order to ensure you are doing this. That could mean that you are going to get more out of your life in general, if you approach this in the right way.
Optimize The Home Screen
Probably one of the first things you do when you get your phone is to make sure the home screen makes sense for you. However over time your priorities often change, and you will find that you go from needing one app to never using it at all. You should therefore make a point of always optimizing the home screen, so that you can access those apps you most need easily, and put the others to the back. This simple change is one of the most important if you hope to make your phone work better for you personally.
Cut Down On Email Apps
You might have noticed, especially with Android, that you often end up with more than one email app. That can be most frustrating, as it means that you either get double notifications, or only through one app and then you have to sync the other one constantly. Plus, it is annoying to always be asked which app you want to open an email with. Instead, simply pare it down to one app, so that you can much more easily access your email while also saving space on the phone’s hard drive.
Get Only The Notifications You Want
By default, many apps will send you push notifications all the time. You might be someone who doesn’t mind these, or you might actively enjoy them. But if you want to try and minimise them, then bear in mind that this is always something you can do. The whole point here is to get the notifications you want, and none that you don’t want. If you just want to get rid of them completely, you can turn off all notifications in settings, though bear in mind that this will include things like receiving whatsapp messages and text messages and, in some phones, even voice calls.
Get A Clip-On Lens
If you like to consider yourself something of a photographer, then you will know that the smartphone already offers one of the best cameras you have ever been able to buy in human history. That’s not bad, but you might still feel limited by the smartphone’s abilities when it comes to taking photos. Notably, most smartphones only offer one kind of lens, the one that comes with the phone. But you can get a clip-on lens that will alter the type of photograph you are taking if you prefer. These are pretty affordable and they do make a huge difference to what kind of photos you can take, so it’s worth taking a look at them if you want to vary your photography.
Use A Stabilizer
Talking about taking photographs, what about video? If you know that you are going to be using your phone to take plenty of video, then you might want to make that a little easier to do with the use of a stabilizer. Generally, it’s pretty hard to hold a phone steady enough to take good quality video, but with the use of a high-tech stabilizer like the OM4, this problem is going to become a thing of the past. Whether you are hoping to take some home video for posterity’s sake, or you want to produce homemade short films, this is going to be an invaluable piece of kit.
Get Gaming
If you love to game, then the smartphone in your pocket can easily be turned into one of the most powerful console machines of all time - for its size and portability, anyway. Thanks to the rise of effective and affordable emulators, you can effectively turn your phone into any console you can think of - or, in truth, a combination of them all. Replay your old favourites and the old classics, as well as some up to date modern games, simply by visiting your app store and searching for them. You’ll be amazed at how good this can be.
Track Your Health
There is nothing so important in your life as your health. If you are concerned about your health, or you just want to make sure that you are starting to take your health more seriously, then you can absolutely use your phone to make that a lot easier and simpler. There are so many ways in which a smartphone can help you to be healthier, but the most important is simply by tracking your health. With the added use of a fitness tracker, you can look after your heart rate, find out how much sleep you are getting - and how much of it is REM - and much, much more. You can even track your calories and water intake with an app like My Fitness Pal.
Get More Out Of The Battery
All of these things are only going to be worthwhile if you can ensure that they are not going to drain your battery too quickly. Many modern smartphones have batteries with poor shelf life, especially the Apple products, so you need to try and mitigate that in whatever way you can. There are actually a number of things you can do to ensure that your smartphone’s battery is going to last as well as possible, and it is worth understanding a little about these if you want your phone to work more effectively in general.
First of all, turn off any unnecessary background apps and settings. These are only draining your battery unnecessarily without giving you anything in return. Also ensure that you don’t constantly have the screen turned up bright. The brightness of the screen is the single biggest drain of the battery, so if you can keep it fairly low this is going to make a big difference already. Similarly, if you always have wi-fi and data on automatically, that is going to drain it a lot too. Consider only switching it on when you need it.
If you really want to do something effective here, you could also think about putting your phone onto ultra power saving mode - or whatever it might be called on your phone. In this mode, you only have access to a few apps at once, and background items are removed automatically. Generally this mode increases the phone’s battery capacity by around 500%, so it’s pretty incredible, and a useful thing to bear in mind if you are in an emergency and need to keep your phone alive.
Do these things, and your battery should last much longer, allowing you to do whatever else you want with the phone along the way.
Choose A Reliable Network
When it comes to the actual operation of the phone as a texting and calling apparatus, you have to look at the network that you are using to determine whether or not it is going to work as well as you would hope. Choosing a reliable network will ensure that you can always make calls and texts when you need to, and this is something that you can always change up if you need to as well. At any rate, you should ensure that you carry out your research before signing a contract - and once your contract is up, double-check that you are still with the best provider in your area.
It’s a simple case of checking online to see whether you are with the best one. If you are not, don’t delay in switching over, as it is going to make a huge difference to how much you can get out of your phone in general.
Decorate It
A lot of people like to decorate their phones. This is certainly a good way of making it feel more like yours, and of expressing yourself a little too. You might want to do this through the use of a particular phone case, for instance, or you might want to think about finding other ways to decorate it, such as changing the colour of the phone itself. However you do it, decorating your phone to fit your personality will make it feel like more a part of you, and is bound to increase your usage of the item dramatically.
All of these are useful ways to get more out of your smartphone. Take a look and see whether any of these might be worth looking into as soon as possible.
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