How To Make Your Smartphone Last Longer Than Average
The average smartphone gets replaced every 2.5 years and it’s pretty disappointing since the hardware in these devices could last 5 years or longer without any problems. Most users buy a new phone because their old one has a battery that barely lasts half a day or because the phone has become so slow that even basic apps take forever to load. These problems are completely preventable.
A new flagship phone will set you back anywhere from $800 to $1500 and yet within 2 years, that expensive device is probably going to have the exact same problems that every other phone develops. The battery health drops below 80% of its original capacity after about 500 charge cycles - which sounds terrible but better charging habits could double or triple that number without much effort. And the phone’s storage fills up with cached files and leftover data that makes everything run at a snail’s pace. And if you’ve ever left your phone on a car dashboard in the summer, you’ve probably already caused permanent damage that knocked the battery capacity down by as much as 20%.
Repair specialists have developed some really effective techniques for keeping phones in great shape for 5 years or more and the best part is that none of them are going to need any technical knowledge whatsoever. They don’t cost anything either and it’ll completely change the way you take care of your device and you can start trying them out right away.
Here are some easy ways to extend your smartphone’s lifespan past the usual 2.5 years!
How to Care for Your Battery
Phone batteries are actually way weaker than the rest of the hardware in your device and many users out there have no idea that their charging habits matter when it comes to whether a battery dies after 2 years versus one that stays going strong for 5. Inside that sleek case there’s a lithium-ion battery that slowly wears down no matter what you do. But every charge cycle takes a little bit more of its life out of it.
Battery health stays strongest when you keep the charge level somewhere between 20% and 80% usually. Always pushing it all the way to 100% or letting it drain completely down to 0 puts unnecessary stress on those battery cells. Back in 2017, Apple ended up in hot water after customers figured out that the company was deliberately slowing down phones that had degraded batteries. They eventually had to come clean and acknowledge that yes - battery wear was bad enough to hurt phone performance.
It’s likely that your phone already has built-in features that protect the battery but you might not have them activated. iPhones have a feature called Optimized Battery Charging that figures out your day-to-day patterns and holds off on that final push past 80% until you actually need it. Android devices use something called Adaptive Battery that cuts power to the apps you barely touch. Either way these features can tack on a few extra months to your battery’s working life.
Plenty of users stress about leaving their phone on the charger all night long. What actually goes on is that after your phone reaches 100%, it switches into a trickle charge mode just to maintain that full charge. That endless topping off generates heat and puts chemical stress on the battery which makes it lose capacity faster than it should.
Battery replacements usually cost somewhere between $50 and $100 at repair shops today. Stack that up against dropping a grand or more on a brand new flagship phone and the numbers tell their own story about which option makes more sense financially.
Protect Your Phone From All Damage
Your phone’s screen is actually the most vulnerable part of the whole device. Once that glass cracks you’re stuck with a very frustrating choice because the repair bill usually runs about half of what the entire phone is worth - and at that point a lot of owners just throw in the towel and then go buy a brand new phone.
The latest Gorilla Glass is pretty impressive technology and phone manufacturers are always working on better formulas and stronger materials. But glass is still fundamentally glass no matter how much they reinforce it. A screen protector runs maybe $10 or $15 at most and it could save you from a repair that costs $200 or more. The math on that one is pretty simple and it definitely works out in your favor.
A lot of phones now have either an IP67 or IP68 rating for water resistance. The first digit in that rating tells you how well it blocks dust out and the second one is all about liquid protection. If your phone has an IP67 rating it should be able to survive a quick accidental dunk in shallow water for maybe 30 minutes or so. IP68-rated phones can usually go a bit deeper and stay underwater for longer periods. The problem is that these ratings only apply to fresh water at room temperature. Pool water has chlorine in it and ocean water is full of salt - and these can still damage your phone even with the water resistance rating.
About 75% of all broken phones actually get damaged from drops of less than 3 feet. We’re talking about pocket height or roughly the distance from the ground when you’re holding your phone and texting. A decent protective case will absorb the majority of that shock force and stop your phone from breaking.
Phone cameras have become way better over the years and part of that improvement comes from the camera lenses that protrude slightly from the back of the device. While this design enables better photo quality it’s also a very vulnerable point on your phone. One bad drop onto concrete can scratch or crack that lens and then your camera could be ruined even if everything else on your phone is completely fine. I see plenty of cases that have raised edges specifically around the camera module for protection. Some even have sliding lens covers that you can open whenever you want to take a picture.
Keep Your Phone Storage Clean
A phone that’s acting sluggish usually makes you believe that your device is old. But the culprit is almost always the storage space. When internal memory fills up past a certain point, the performance drops dramatically and everything starts to lag.
The slowdown actually happens because of how phones manage their storage. Modern smartphones use something called NAND flash memory and this type of storage needs a decent amount of empty space just to work well. After your phone hits around 85% or 90% full, it starts to have a hard time every time it needs to write new data or move files around.
A useful guideline is to always keep at least 10% to 15% of your storage free on your device. Google ran lots of tests on Android phones and found that devices with less than 10% of available storage crashed 3 times as much as those phones with adequate free space - it’s a massive difference in stability for what amounts to just a few gigabytes on most phones.
Storage problems are one of the sneaky issues that creep up on you over time. A social media app might take up just 100MB or so when you first download it. But give it a few months and suddenly that same app has ballooned to 2 or 3GB on your phone. The app saves all your photos, videos and messages locally as cache files and this pile of data never stops accumulating.
The excellent news is that you can reclaim most of this wasted space without sacrificing any important data. Go to your phone’s storage settings and you’ll usually find a list of which apps are hogging the most space. From there you can delete the cache for certain apps and it removes temporary files as it preserves your login credentials and personal settings.
For apps that remain bloated even after the cache clearing, your last resort is to wipe the app data completely. This nuclear option will return the app to its original state and it means that you’ll have to sign in again and reconfigure your preferences. Save it for situations where you desperately need to free up space or for apps that you don’t use much anyway.
How Heat and Cold Affect Your Phone
Your phone has a temperature problem and it’s probably not even on your radar. Once the processor climbs above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the device has no choice but to slow itself down for protection. And this actually happens a lot more often, especially during those long GPS sessions or extended gaming marathons.
The problem starts when your battery gets hot. Once it reaches 113 degrees Fahrenheit, the battery begins to permanently lose some of its charging capacity. A car dashboard in the summer months can reach 150 degrees, sometimes even higher than that. Leave your phone there for just an hour and you’ve just taken months off of its lifespan.
Apple recommends keeping iPhones between 32 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal performance. Android devices are subject to the same temperature laws.
Your phone generates plenty of its own heat as well. Navigation apps are by far the worst offenders since they’re running the screen, the processor and the GPS all at the same time. Video calls and gaming apps are close runners-up in the heat generation department. Whenever your phone starts to feel warm in your hand, that’s your cue to give it a rest. Set it down for about 10 minutes, or at least turn the screen off and let the device cool down.
Cold weather brings a very different set of problems. Once the temperatures drop below 32 degrees, your battery might display 20% left when it actually has closer to 50% available. At least there’s some encouraging news here - the cold temperatures don’t cause the same permanent damage that heat does. Your battery will bounce right back to normal once it gets a chance to warm up again.
The simplest fix is to store your phone away from direct sunlight whenever possible. A car vent mount works much better than a dashboard mount. And always take your phone with you as you exit the car. It’ll literally add years to your device’s usable life!
Which Updates Are Best for You
Phone updates can be a mixed bag and if you’ve had one slow down your device lately, you’re not alone. Tech companies always talk about better security and new features whenever they release an update. But somehow these same updates can turn your perfectly functional phone into something that barely works. Apple was pretty confident when they said that iOS 14 would run beautifully on the iPhone 6S but plenty of users found their phones became painfully slow after they installed it.
Software updates can be tricky because some of them are necessary for your phone and others might actually cause more problems than they solve. Security patches deserve their own separate conversation since these are the ones that protect your device from hackers and malware. What makes security patches manageable is that they’re usually small and targeted so they almost never affect your phone’s performance in any way that you’d actually feel during everyday use. These should go on your device right when they become available. Big operating system updates are a very different story and need much more careful consideration before you hit that install button.
Once your phone passes that 2-year milestone, it’s time to approach big updates with a healthy dose of caution. The problem with these big updates is that they’re usually full of features that were specifically built for the latest processors and camera systems. Your older hardware then has to push itself much harder just to accommodate all these new features - even the ones you’ll never use! All that extra effort translates directly into faster battery drain and apps that seem to take forever to open.
Instead of rushing to install that shiny new update, it pays to spend a few minutes on some quick research first. Tech forums and review sites are goldmines when it comes to what other users with your exact phone model have experienced with the update. A week or 2 of patience can save you from plenty of frustration. Early adopters will have already found any of the big problems and shared their experiences online.
Big manufacturers like Google and Samsung have recently started promising software updates for 5 to 7 years which sounds great. The catch is that this extended support period means that you need to think more about which updates make sense for your particular device. An available update doesn’t automatically mean that your phone needs it or will benefit from it. The update details are actually worth a look - go through them and think about whether any of the new features justify the chance of slower performance on your older hardware.
Trade Your Old Phone for Cash Today
Your day-to-day life is much easier when your battery actually lasts until bedtime and you have room for all the photos and apps you want. No more desperate searches for chargers or frantic file deletion just to make space for one update. And those $300 - $500 you’d normally drop on a new phone every year? Save it for something that you actually want to buy.
Environmental benefits matter when you hang onto your phone another year. If everyone in the United States held onto their device for just 12 more months, we’d stop about 2 million tons of electronic waste from hitting our landfills. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly the weight of 10,000 blue whales. The process to extract rare earth metals and other smartphone materials takes large amounts of energy and damages the environment so every extra month that you use your phone actually makes a difference.
Nobody expects you to turn into a phone care guru tomorrow. Start small - maybe you can adjust your charging habits this week and then pick up a protective case next month if you see one that catches your eye. Pretty soon all these habits become second nature and as automatic as your morning coffee. What’s great about it is that tech makers can no longer push you into their 2 - year replacement cycle. The control stays in your hands and you upgrade on your own timeline when it makes sense for your budget and needs.
Eventually that upgrade day will arrive and a well-maintained phone pays off one more time. We have more than 6,000 ecoATM kiosks set up across the country, ready to turn your old device into instant cash. Just walk over to our machine with your phone, let it run some quick diagnostics and pick up your money right there - either as cash in your hand or sent to your online account in just a few minutes. Those years of careful maintenance mean better pricing compared to beat-up phones and every dollar goes straight toward your next device. Plus you can be sure your old one gets recycled properly instead of being tossed in a drawer somewhere.
