Tips 3 min. read

Making the most out of your mobile devices

Making the most out of your mobile devices

The mobile phone is arguably the best innovation when it comes to integrating technology in our daily lives. Given that it’s the most accessible piece of hardware for us, it’s no surprise that it comes with plenty of features that are suited to every lifestyle.

But even the most familiar of things can deceive us, and our phones are no different. For all our familiarity with them, there are still a couple of features that our phones have that are relatively unknown to us.

Here’s a few things that you may not know (or tend to ignore) about mobile devices – and the best way to make the most out of yours.

Airplane mode

Contrary to the name, airplane mode is useful, even when you’re not on a plane. Airplane mode blocks all incoming communication to your mobile device while still having it function – basically a way to cut down on incoming and outgoing cell signals.

This comes in handy for a number of uses: if you’re used to writing on your phone and don’t want interruptions, or if you want to stay quiet for a couple of hours a day from notifications. Airplane mode is the mobile device’s way of giving us quiet time, something we don’t quite get enough of.

Turn up the volume

While phones may be made with sound in mind, they’re not always made with sound in priority, which makes it aggravating to deal with sometimes. If something you’re listening to seems a bit too soft for your liking, try to check if the app you’re playing it on doesn’t have any internal sound controls. Some apps allow you to control the volume while you’re playing music while keeping the volume on your phone the same.

This feature was implemented in order to make sure that notifications won’t get drowned out by the music, but sometimes volume controls take all of them to the same level. Experiment with the volume sliders on your phone until you get the right balance: music and videos usually fall under the “media” slider, which is separate from your system sounds.

Background applications

For the more tech-savvy users, there’s always the option of checking which background programs run on your phone. These programs work while your phone is idle, draining battery power and taking up unnecessary space on your RAM. Clearing them out or disabling their function while not active can help you extend your battery life.

This also applies to applications – given that mobile devices usually tab applications within the system, it’s possible you may have simply exited the program and moved to another app instead of shutting it down. Cycling through your system tabs should give you a fair idea of what’s taking up most of your device RAM.

Security software

Finally, a good mobile device is a well-protected one, and there’s a veritable smorgasbord of apps and tools you can use in order to beef up your phone’s security. Aside from making sure that your mobile device functions well, they also come with a suite of features that makes browsing the net, protecting your identity online, and active protections from targeted attacks on your device or data much more reliable.

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