We are a society and a world that loves our smartphones. South Korea owns the most, and the USA comes in at around 72% smartphone ownership. In fact, it has been estimated that by 2020, over six billion people will own one. They have been ingrained in our daily lives, and it’s fair to say that a lot of people would find it difficult to cope without them. The general smartphone use varies between texts and calls, to app use, viewing television and using social media. In fact, you could go as far as saying that we are becoming smartphone dependent. A recent study found that people between the ages of 15 and 24 use their phones around 387 times every day. This amounts to some kind of cell phone activity every other minute when you exclude time spent sleeping at night. However, as smartphones become more popular, the market also becomes more saturated. Different technologies are always trying to outdo each other and when a technology is new, it doesn’t always work the first time. In fact, smartphones have become such complex pieces of technology that they are unfortunately subject to a lot of different problems. If you are having some problems with your smartphone, it could actually be a common issue that affects thousands of other users worldwide.
Overheating and charging overnight
Cell phones overheating is a very common form of damage. Alarm clocks are now dying out, with most people using their phone alarm instead to wake them up on a daily basis. This means that most people actually keep their smartphone switched on overnight, often connected to power so it charges. Don’t worry, you can’t actually ‘overcharge’ your phone. Their technology has advanced so that once a full charge has been reached, the charging process will stop. So, charging your phone overnight can’t actually cause it to overheat. However, you will need to be careful about WHERE you charge your phone overnight, as this can cause some issues. Make sure you charge it on a regular surface or on the floor – DON’T leave it sitting underneath your pillow. Leaving it under a pillow means that no ventilation is getting to your device, a common cause for overheating. Another reason for a smartphone overheating includes too many background acts running, so make sure you shut them down. Also, be sure to keep your phone out of direct sunlight, as this can seriously damage the battery.
Running out of storage
If you are a current smartphone owner, you will know the pain of the ‘you have run out of storage’ message. This is an issue which plagues most smartphone users and unfortunately, there are only two ways to get rid of it. You can either delete all your photos and get rid of any big apps you have, or you can buy more storage. Buying more storage for your phone often means having to upgrade to a completely new contract or even a brand new model. This often doesn’t come cheap, and with phones getting more expensive by the day it’s something that most of us want to avoid. However, there is a third option that allows you to save your favourite photos and videos, whilst not having to shell out any more money. Backing up your photos to a cloud storage system such as pcloud is the easiest way to keep all your photos safe whilst freeing up space on your device. Plus, if your phone gets damaged, you will still be able to access your pictures and files from any computer or other devices until you get a replacement.
Freezing or crashing
Remember the days where a cell phone’s battery lasted for days and it worked around the clock? That might seem dreamy in hindsight, but we did still have to put up with black and white screens, no camera and no internet! That being said, smartphones often crash simply because they are processing so many data at once. When your smartphone freezes , it is because the data being sent to the Operating System (OS) has got confused. When it crashes, it may be because you have overloaded it. This can often happen when your phone is sent lots of instructions in quick succession. So, try and give it just one command at a time to avoid this issue. When it comes to freezing, you can either wait for the smartphone to rectify itself, or you may need to restart it. But pressing more buttons is only going to confuse it more, and potentially make it slower – so try and resist that urge!
