User Tips | Five ways to accidentally damage your smartphone

Whether you splurged on your smartphone or opted for a budget-friendly device, a phone is a big investment. That means that you are  probably doing your best to keep your smartphone looking and running like new.

But no matter how much time you spend clearing out old apps or ensuring that your software is updated, there are still plenty of ways that you can inadvertently damage your phone.

Whether you’re planning on upgrading to a new smartphone within a few months or hoping that your current phone will last you for a couple more years, it is probably in your best interest to make sure you are not sabotaging your phone’s chances at a long Facebook-and-Minecraft-filled life.

Ahead, check out  five  ways that you may be accidentally damaging your smartphone — and figure out a few ways to stop the bumps and bruises before they result in a broken phone.

Pocket Safety

Like most cell phone users, one of your major fears will probably be having a cracked screen or dropping your phone by mistake or not, therefore so many practices are adopted to keep our mobile devices intact and well packaged, like the use of holsters, guards and casings, and the constant practice of keeping our phones in our pockets. Unknown to us, these practices may be causing damages to our device.

“It is advisable to unplug your phone once it reaches the maximum 100% and wait for it to drain to a battery level of about 30% before considering a recharge.”

If you are used to wearing thick clothing, especially tight clothing, and keeping your phone in those tight pocket spaces, you are indirectly adding pressure on the device.

The phone itself generates heat with all that’s working inside. All mobile devices need air and that tight space you think secures your phone is doing more damage than good. Let your phone ‘breathe’.

Keeping your phone under your pillow in the name of safety is not an option either. This might even be bad for your health.

A lot of people have the habit of keeping their phones in their back pockets and this has been the cause of a lot of reported cracked screens over the years; and without a pass key or a screen lock you may be at the risk of dialing contacts at random.

Overcharging

This is probably the most practiced habit especially living in an area with no steady power supply. These days, most phone users even walk around with their chargers.

But overcharging is one of the gradual ways to damage your phone battery and reduce its performance, especially if it is an old model phone as the new model phones are able to know when the battery is full and use the incoming power as its main power source.

Leaving your phone plugged in for a long period of time can be harmful to your phone battery as it causes your phone to heat up, therefore weakening the battery.

It is advisable to unplug your phone once it reaches the maximum 100% and wait for it to drain to a battery level of about 30% before considering a recharge.

 Overheating

Using your phone to make calls, chat, play games, watch movies or multi task is what it was built for so sometimes you may feel your phone to be warm, that’s normal.

When it starts to feel hot is where there is a problem. It means your phone processor is dealing with more than what it’s used to, and as a result it heats up and your phone might begin to slow down in performance.

Although sometimes it could be a hardware malfunction, and you should get it checked as soon as possible.

Placing your phone next to a hot surface or out in the sun over time will cause it to overheat, especially in cases with Lithium-ion batteries, which have the tendency to explode.

Phones overheating can be dangerous and have been the cause of a large number of first and second degree burns and domestic accidents over the years.

In 2017, Samsung ordered all 2.5million purchased Galaxy Note 7 phones to be returned as customers kept reporting phone explosions due to overheating.

Using your phone while it charges can also cause overheating, even worse could be when you’re using just about any charger to charge it.

A way to minimize or cool off the heat will be placing it on a cool surface or the use of water if it is water-resistant. You can also close down every window or app you are using and let it cool off, or just power off the device.

Downloading  trusted app optimizers can also be helpful.

Downloads from sites.

The best and most trusted source of downloads are the stores that come with the device. For example, if you are an Android user, any app downloaded anywhere else but Google PlayStore will be labeled as an ‘unknown source’.

Google has steps and procedures that guide the upload of apps on PlayStore to ensure the security of these files.

When you download from a website there is really no 100% guarantee that the file is malware-free and unfortunately these provided stores don’t always have everything you want so we confide in these other sources for the ‘extra things’.

The safe route to downloading files outside the stores will be the installation of a tested and trusted Anti-Malware or Anti-Virus software that will detect harm in the process of downloading the new file.

Sometimes surfing through just about any website alone can put your phone at risk, so Internet security software will also be advisable. Most times Anti-Malware and Anti-Virus applications have this feature already.

Filling Up Your Storage

When it comes to buying a phone, the storage is usually one of the major reasons for the purchase. Not everyone can afford phones with large storage capacities, so whichever the money can buy is usually fine, as long as it comes with a MicroSD card slot for extra space. Although, that is not the case for an iPhone user.

Cranking up your phone space to the brim is never a good idea. This can cause apps to malfunction e.g. to automatically restart or not respond. The struggle for space can be annoying, especially when you have to delete files and you don’t know where to start from.

The best thing is to get an external memory if your phone does not provide a MicroSD slot. Filling up your phone memory shouldn’t be an option.

If you are sure you have enough space to keep your phone going but for some reason you just keep getting the ‘Low storage’ notification try this quick method: dial *#9900# on your phone and select ‘delete dumpstate/logcat’ from the menu shown, and then press your home key to exit, and there, problem solved.