At this time and age, it’s hard to deny the importance of owning a smartphone for your daily needs regardless of work, play or personal usage. No doubt it’s become an integral part of our everyday lives. However, any smartphone has its own shelf life (read: it doesn’t last forever) and there comes a time when you need to say goodbye to your beloved tech companion. Below are 10 Signs You Need To Replace Your Smartphone.
1) The Battery Is Draining Too Fast
Once upon a time, your smartphone can last up to one day on a full charge. Then, as the years go by, the full-charge capacity no longer gives you the same amount of lasting battery power. In other words, decreasing or degrading battery life indicates that your phone is beginning to show its age. This is especially true if your phone’s battery can only sustain for merely a few hours after a single charge. Unless your phone has a removable battery, chances are you need to replace it with a whole new device altogether.
2) Your Phone Randomly Shuts Down And Restarts Itself
Ever encounter a situation where you find your phone switching off by itself all of a sudden? Then, the phone automatically reboots itself, even though you didn’t do anything unusual to it. It can mean that something might be wrong with one of your faulty third-party apps or your phone’s battery starts to rear its ugly head. Or it can be any hardware issue that causes your phone’s unexpected shutdown-and-rebooting problem. If factory reset can’t do much or makes little difference to prevent the above from happening, it’s time to say goodbye and consider investing in a new one.
3) Apps Frequently Crash Or Are Unstable
Be it the Google Chrome app, a mobile game or any social media apps like Facebook and Instagram, you might find them suffering from instability. In a worst-case scenario, the app crashes each time you try to open it. Although updating the app might help to solve the problem, there are times it won’t make any difference. You can attempt to reset and restore your phone to its factory setting. But if this last resort hardly solves anything, that means you have to get a new phone.
4) Your Phone No Longer Receives Updates
Stability matters when it comes to a smartphone. This includes the phone manufacturer’s software and updates that help to fix problems and such. If your phone is unable to download any new updates, it’s time to consider changing a new one.
5) Your Phone Is Slowing Down
There are many factors that cause the phone to move at a snail’s pace. It can be due to the outdated software or too many junk files that need to be cleared. Sometimes it has to do with too many apps running on the phone. If tweaking or deleting can’t do much to speed up your phone, replacing it with a new one would be the best option.
6) You Frequently Drop Your Phone
No matter how careful you may be, you might find yourself accidentally dropping your phone at some point. But if your phone constantly suffers from clumsy or accidental drops and knocks, don’t be surprised to find it starts to malfunction over time. For instance, you never know, but the internal components of your phone might suffer from the cause of your action. If your user experience becomes increasingly bad, it’s time to get a new phone instead.
7) Your Touch Screen Isn’t As Responsive As It Used To Be
During the first two years, you are happy with the swift responsiveness when it comes to swiping on your phone’s touchscreen. But over time, you might find your touch screen not as responsive and compliant. For instance, it takes you a few swipes on your touch screen just to get a response. You can try to have your touch screen repaired but if it costs too much, changing a new phone might be a better alternative.
8) You Are Running Out Of Storage
Sure, you can always choose to delete photos and uninstalling apps that you hardly use. Or perhaps transfer the photos from your phone to cloud services like Google Drive. But really, wouldn’t that be troublesome in the long run? Unless your phone contains an external memory, chances are you are better off replacing it with a new one. Preferably with bigger memory and expandable storage, that is.
9) Your Phone Begins To Show Vertical Or Horizontal Lines
Well, it could be some minor glitches due to, say software issues. And if that’s the case, a mere restart might do the trick to rectify your phone’s problem. But if those vertical or horizontal lines kept appearing on your phone screen no matter what you do, it’s time to shop for a new one.
10) The Camera Is Poor
Still using a single-camera phone that only gives you middling-to-poor results of dull-coloured and grainy images? Well, it’s time to replace it with a new and better one. These days, you can easily get a flagship-level phone with a quad-camera setup for less than RM 1,000 price range.
