More about apps and phones

Welcome back everyone, part two here today about apps on your mobile phone and some things that will be useful to know about your phone its self. Last week we talked about the three to check with new apps (Age rating, star rating and requested permissions) as well as checking who made the app, we also looked at the process of downloading an app and checking the permissions. Did you guys and gals install Brave? If so let me know in the comments down below what you thought about having it on your phone as well as your home PC.

So, the first thing about apps I wanted to talk to you today about was some useful troubleshooting tips. If you have an app that is freezing and now working, you can use the long press mentioned in the previous post (press and hold the icon on your phone’s desktop) and use the (i) ‘app info’ button,  and then click the [Force stop] button followed by the [OK] button to confirm this action, which will close the app. Then open the app again and you should be good to go. If you find things on your phone are still unresponsive, try turning your phone off then on again, you’d be surprised how many tech issues can be solved with the old, “have you tried turning it off and on again?”

The next tip is a simple one, don’t have too many apps installed on your phone. Well, this might be easier said than done, as I look at my 43 apps I have installed. Some of the apps on your phone come pre-installed and are either hard or impossible to remove, and there is usually no need to do so. The best way to keep your app count down is to make sure each app you install serves a purpose, and if your app is a game, then consider removing ones you don’t play anymore. I do have some apps that I call my ‘Just in case apps’ which are ones I like to have in case of emergency but I don’t use on a daily basis. For the interested, these include; Survival Manual, Unit Converter, myRemedy, The Art of War and BOM (Bureau Of Meteorology)

Finally, this one will improve your battery life and potentially save you money as well. Turn your Wi-Fi off when you leave your house. We have a saying at my house, I say it, and so do my kids; “Wi-Fi off.” Nice and simple to remember right? The reason behind this is two-fold; first is that your phone will continuously try and look for a new Wi-Fi signal to connect to, and seeing as how even most free Wi-Fi locations require a password, all this will do is drain your battery and. The second reason to turn it off is,  whilst it is trying to connect to every Wi-Fi you pass it also leave your digital fingerprints on everything you pass. This is not a big deal for most people, but if you are someone who values your privacy, you should care about this one. Some shops within shopping centres are able to track, if your Wi-Fi is turned on, where you go in-store and how long you stand in any one location. They do not know specifically who you are, but the next time you come it to said shop, it will be able to pick you out of the crowd.

As a bonus point, it is advisable to NEVER connect to public Wi-Fi if you can help it. Unless you are running a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which we will cover in a future blog. Public Wi-Fi has too many potential attack surfaces that a bad actor might be able to leverage to gain access to your device and/or details. It’s like licking the handrail on an escalator, a great way to get sick.

Let me know down in the comments what’s your best mobile tip! There is a lot that we have not covered yet, I just wanted to get a start on this for everyone.

Also, thanks for being patient with the shorter post and delay in getting it out this week, I’ve been getting busy with a few projects recently. I’m hoping that either the next blog or the one after we will be getting back into Linux. Enough procrastinate, let’s get this moving. 😉

Warm Regards,

Paul