Let’s face it. Smartphones are a huge part of our daily lives, and when they slow down, our entire day slows down with it. These pocket-sized computers have captured our memories, showed us the way to Grandma’s house, and are our Friday night boom boxes. But none of its abilities are possible if your phone runs out of battery.
Don’t worry, we have your back and found the most common complaints phone users have spent precious hours trying to figure out. These 15 simple solutions will make you happier and make your phone faster, stronger, better, and longer lasting.
1. iPhone Glitch – “My iPhone won’t charge anymore!”
If your iPhone doesn’t charge, it might need a new battery. But a new battery means you’ll have to pay experts lots of money you don’t want to spend. So try these options before replacing the battery.
Restart Your Phone
It’s pretty surprising how helpful it is to restart your phone. Many of your problems can go away with by doing this, not all, but most of the basic glitches you’re having. Fix your iPhone with ease.
Check The Wall Charger
If you’re plugging your phone into the wall adapter, you could have a dead power adapter, which would prevent your phone from charging. Ask a friend to use their charger to power up your phone and if it works, it’s time to get yourself a new charger.
2. “I dropped my phone in the toilet… now what do I do?”
Plastic covers on your cell phone are sealed pretty tightly. It takes about 20 seconds or less until the water completely enters into your phone. So grab a glove and fish it out!
Then What?
Follow these steps:
1. Turn off your phone and take apart the phone as much as possible. Take off the battery cover and SIM card, and put them on a dry paper towel.
2. Wipe your phone down and dry it out. Then stick it in a bag/bowl of uncooked rice to allow it to soak up the water from your phone.
3. Feel free to use your bathroom again, it’s safe now.
4. Important part: Don’t touch your phone! I know, its hard to refrain from using, touching, thinking about, or looking at your phone for more than a few hours, but your it must sit for about 24 hours. After this point, turn it back on and test it out!
3. “How do I refresh my Background App?”
With your iOS 7 update, there is a new feature called ‘Background App Refresh’ that easily allows you to multitask and will continue to refresh your content when its running on Wi-Fi or a cellular network
Find this feature in your Settings > General > Background App Refresh to turn it on or off.
4. “Are they watching me from my location tracking app?
Where you go, your phone goes- and with features on Google Maps or iOS camera, your location is being tracked at all times. You can disable Location Services by going into your Settings > Privacy > Location Services and you can decide which apps you want to use your location, or turn them all off.
5. “How do I turn off the Parallax effect?”
Your parallax is the effect of endless amounts of scrolling up and down that can eat up battery life. If you want to turn off the dizzy movements feeling, enter your Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion and swipe “on.”
6. “What’s the best way to charge my iPhone?”
I know, I know, we’re always on the go and we have our handy dandy spare chargers in our backpacks, purses or briefcases, but try and use those for emergency situations like if your phone is at 20%. (AKA: Red zone alert!) Stick to the charger your phone came with and keep it plugged into the wall. It’s the safest and quickest way to charge your iPhone. The easiest way to charge your phone is at phone charging station. If you’re ever at an event, trade show, conference or music festival, ask the event organizer, hopefully they have rentals for phone charging stations.
7. “Why doesn’t my Wi-Fi or Bluetooth work?”
Wi-Fi=essential, and iOS 7 has given users issues with their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections. We recommend restarting or resetting.
How to Restart Your Phone
Hold down the lock button and slide the red bar to reboot your phone.
To Reset
Go to Settings > General > Reset.
8. “What’s the best way to save iPhone battery?”
Anyone with an iPhone could probably spend hours staring at the screen scrolling, texting, stalking (let’s be honest). But all these shenanigans have one big set back- battery life. Using your phone for an extensive amount of time means charging your phone after a few hours a day. Try and save all the power as you can by:
Auto Brightness
The ambient light sensor will adjust to the brightness of your screen. Settings> Brightness& Wallpaper> Auto-Brightness and turn “on.”
Turn Wi-Fi Off
Yes, Wi-Fi is faster than 3G, but if you’re not near a hotspot, try and keep Wi-Fi off to keep your battery from draining. So unless you’re on your phone, turn it off and save your battery life.
Keep Your iPhone Battery Charged – It Prevents
Keeping your battery constantly charged can help delay battery decay. A lithium-ion battery has a limited amount of cycles it can go through before decay starts in. Therefore, reducing the number of cycles your phone battery goes through will help increase the lifetime of the unit. Consider using a phone case with a built in battery like the one pictured below to keep your phone charged when not at home.
9. “Should I keep my apps updating automatically?”
With iOS 7 automatic downloads, it makes it easier to keep you and your phone to continuously stay updated. Instead of reminding yourself to visit the App store, this function will do it for you, but this could be your worst enemy if it’s running app updates and your battery is low and about to die.
Settings > iTunes and Apple Store and uncheck the Updates option
Ps. Did I mention this also saves you TONS of battery life?
10. “How do I gage my brightness on my screen?
It’s a true fact that turning down the brightness will help you save your battery life on any device. Your brightness will depend on where you are and your eye adjustment sensitivity.
On the bottom of your screen, swipe the arrow up and the bar with the two suns will allow you to manually make your screen brighter or darker.
11. “How do I prevent my phone from over heating?”
Try and keep your phone cool. Not Judd Nelson throw your fist up in the air and walk away with dramatic music playing in the background cool, but an average of 32 degrees Fahrenheit cool. By keeping your phone at a cooler temperature, you will avoid loosing 20 percent battery at 77 degrees and 35 percent at 104 degrees. Remember, your phone is not invincible, but don’t be that person who puts their phone on a bag of frozen peas.
12. “Does the Spotlight kill my iPhone battery life?
Answer: Yes. The internal function of Apple’s ‘Spotlight’ is always receiving new data and will put a toll on your battery life. It’s a function you don’t always need, so visit Settings> General> Spotlight Search and disable that battery killer.
13. “How do I turn off Airdrop?”
Airdrop is Apple’s newest feature that allows users to share files to other iOS users within the same Wi-Fi zone. Most people don’t use Airdrop and have reported improved battery life from disabling it.
Go to Control Center > Turn off Airdrop
14. “Why does my iPhone 5 charging tip get easily disconnected?”
It’s most likely the wire, or the build of the cable- but most likely the cable. You can easily buy a new chord online (it’ll probably be cheaper than the shirt you’re wearing on your back right now), but if you bring your cable into the Apple store within a reasonable length of time from purchase (about 60-70 days), they’re usually happy to replace it. Talk about excellent customer service!
15. “After upgrading to iOS7, the battery life decreased on my iPhone.”
The better battery life can be more attributed to your newly revived phone, and not how you restored it. It’s like waking up from your afternoon nap and feeling like you can conquer the world.
Go to Settings > General > Reset
Still cant find the fix to your issue? Try call us here at VanCell and see if we can help.
