When life gets busy, it’s easy to postpone or overlook essential smartphone updates and upgrades. These seemingly minor delays can end up accumulating over time, and may compromise your device’s performance and security.
Taking a look at the updates you might need can help you avoid more serious problems down the road.
1. A proper phone case
Unless you’re someone who has intentionally chosen to go caseless, you probably already have a case on your phone. The important question is whether or not that case will protect your phone if you drop it or accidentally spill some water on the screen. If you don’t know the answer, you can’t afford to risk finding out the hard way.
The first upgrade to get is a durable, tested, reliable phone case, like the ones from SUPCASE. This company has thoroughly tested their cases and they are proven to protect phones against high drops, being tossed out a car window, being run over by a car, and more. You really can’t beat those results, and if you don’t know for sure that your current case can do all that, keeping that case could be an expensive risk.
2. Operating system updates
There’s nothing easier to delay than operating system updates. They usually pop up when you’re in the middle of something important and don’t have time to stop and wait for the update and then reboot your device. However, if you’ve gone weeks or months without updating your operating system, you could be missing out on critical security patches.
When you delay OS updates, you put yourself at risk of being hacked through known vulnerabilities, not to mention, you may not have access to the latest features provided by your phone’s manufacturer and even third-party apps.
3. Storage management
If you collect files, like photos, videos, and downloads on your phone, you’ve probably been neglecting storage management. As your device fills up with files, its performance can significantly decline. Just like a computer, it’s crucial to clean up by deleting old files, cached data, unused apps, and duplicate files.
If you have apps installed that you never use, delete them and your phone’s resources will be freed up for use. Instead of storing your videos and photos directly on your device, consider getting a cloud storage backup account so you can offload the majority of your files and still have easy access to them.
4. Your actual phone
How long has it been since you’ve upgraded your actual smartphone? If it’s been a few years, you may want to consider getting a brand-new device. It’s a good time to upgrade, considering both Android and Apple have been releasing devices with high-level artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
5. App updates
Just like it’s important to update your operating system when prompted, apps also need to be updated promptly. If you’ve got applications hanging around that haven’t been updated in a long time, it’s definitely worth updating as soon as possible. If you can’t update because your operating system is old, and your phone is too old to make the jump to the new version, then it’s definitely time to replace your phone.
6. Getting new apps
Maybe you’ve been using the same apps for a long time and you don’t really venture into the app store much these days. You might be missing out on new applications that can help you get through your workday smoothly, stay organized at home, or just provide some fun on your breaks.
7. Backup systems
When was the last time you backed up your phone and all of its settings and data? If the answer is never or not in a long time, you’re overdue for a backup. If you ever lose the data on your phone, it’s not going to be fun reconstructing it on a new device. If you don’t have a backup, you could lose photos, videos, account login information, contacts, messages, critical documents, and more.
It’s crucial to create and test backups on a regular basis to avoid devastating data loss. Most phones have a built-in option to make backups easy. Here’s a guide for backing up an Android device, and a guide to back up an iPhone.
Take preventive action
Addressing overdue updates and upgrades doesn’t have to be overwhelming, and you may not need everything listed in this article. Start with the most critical aspects, like security and device protection, and then work your way through the rest of the list. There will always be something to update, but that’s just the nature of technology.
