Want to know how to keep your trusty iPhone by your side ’til the end of time?
Well, you don’t have to be a certified Apple Genius to learn how to do maintenance on an iPhone. As long as you follow basic tips to keep your phone in great shape, you can prolong its life and keep its performance high. Your iPhone won’t last forever, but it can definitely last longer than you’d expect it to.
Keep reading for some key iPhone maintenance tips you can put to use today!
1. Charge Your Phone!
Are you the kind of person who gets distracted and lets your phone die before recharging?
Well, now might be the time to change that habit. Keeping your phone within the middle range of charging levels will help keep your battery as healthy as possible.
2. Close What You’re Not Using
Your iPhone likely has multiple applications and browser pages open in the background whenever you use it. So every so often, do your phone a favor and exit all the apps you won’t need to use for a while.
And close any Safari tabs you don’t need to use anymore. It might not seem like a big deal to have these “dormant” pages open, but it can affect your phone’s performance. Once you close those extra applications and tabs, you might notice your phone running better than before.
3. Delete What You’re Really Not Using
If you don’t think you’ll need to use an app ever again (or for the foreseeable future), go ahead and take it off your phone. This might feel scary, but it’s not a big deal. Once you’ve bought or downloaded an app, you can always re-download it even after deleting it from your phone.
There’s even an iPhone setting that will do this for you. If you go to “Settings” on your phone, you can find an option that will offload apps you haven’t used in a while. You’ll still see them on your screen, just offloaded—so don’t worry, you won’t forget about them completely if you don’t want to.
4. Try Not to Strain Your Phone’s Storage
Every iPhone comes with a certain storage limit, but this doesn’t mean you should use up all that capacity when you get a chance.
When you get to the limits of your storage capacity, you might start to notice problems with your phone’s performance. This goes beyond the app cleaning of the previous step. If you’re like most people, the main things taking up space on your phone will be photos, videos, audio content (like podcasts), and messages.
So if you want to get a head start on managing your storage, you can practice downloading the important things on a computer or hard drive every so often. You can also upload them to an online storage service or cloud, like Apple’s iCloud.
Once you’ve got your photos and other items backed up, you can delete them from your phone. Doing this regularly will ensure that you’re not making your phone strain to keep all your media.
5. Get a Case
This is more of a physical way to protect your phone.
A simple case can help prevent damage from falls and other accidents. If you want another layer of protection, you might be interested in a waterproof or shockproof case. These are usually clunkier, though, so there’s a bit of an aesthetic trade-off.
For the screen itself, you can get a screen protector. This will protect your phone from scratches and breakage. And if the screen protector gets damaged over time, you can just replace it (rather than going for expensive screen repairs).
6. Temperature and iPhone Maintenance
Have you ever noticed your phone struggling in hot or cold weather? That’s not your imagination.
iPhones, like most pieces of technology, are designed to operate at a certain optimal temperature. If you subject your phone to very hot or cold conditions, you could be messing with its proper functioning.
The good news is that you can make a big difference just by making simple decisions. No one’s saying you need to keep your phone in a temperature-controlled glass case all day. But what will help is keeping it in the shade rather than in the path of direct sunlight.
And when it’s super cold out, you might want to cut down on the outdoor texting and scrolling if you can. Your iPhone will likely be happier in your warm pocket until you get to an indoor spot with heating.
Another tip for cold weather is to warm up your iPhone before trying to charge it. If you plug it in while it’s cold, you might end up doing damage to the phone’s battery.
7. Do Your Regular Updates
What’s the point of iOS updates?
The flashiest thing about them is their new features. From cool emojis to new settings, iOS updates give iPhone users new things to play with every time a new update comes out.
This might lead you to think you can just opt out if you don’t want those new features. Maybe you’re afraid of change! That’s alright, but you should know that iOS updates are about more than just the fun parts.
The team at Apple is constantly searching for bugs in the operating system. If they find anything, they’ll correct it in the next iOS update. So if you want to keep your phone in tip-top shape, do your updates when they roll out!
The nice thing about iOS updates is that they keep any iPhone model up to date even if the hardware is older. So whether you’re doing iPhone 6 battery maintenance or working with the new iPhone 12, operating system updates can keep everything running smoothly.
…And If All Else Fails, Call Us!
iPhone maintenance is something you can work on every day as a responsible and savvy user. Remember to back up and delete photos, close unnecessary things running in the background, and do your updates.
But at the end of the day, things happen. If your phone goes haywire or starts slowing down out of nowhere, just give us a call—our number’s (804) 698-0004, or you can call us right from our website.
Our team is ready to help you out! You don’t even need an appointment.
