In the article, “signs that it’s time to abandon, fix or change your smartphone so you don’t get surprises”, you will be presented with important stuffs you need to pay attention to while you are enjoying your newly or fairly used phone.
Most people plan and wish to continue using their phones for as long as possible pending when they will be financially stable to go for the expensive or exotic phones, while a few “ajebo” (well to do folks) are on the look-out for the next to be announced/launched series thus validating the sayings that goes that, “all fingers are not equal”!
Sadly speaking, you will not always have your phone working all through the years, so it is wisdom for you to prepare for the unknown before it finally shut down, goes into extinction or obsolescence since nothing actually last forever no matter how much we cherish them. Once upon a time, Yahoo Messenger left us in good faith, Google+ bade us farewell and the BBM Blackberry Messenger App went away, but life goes on with Facebook and Whatsapp “sha”!
Why You Should Abandon, Fix or Change Your Smartphone To Avoid Being Caught-up!
While exploring your smartphones, bear in mind the following points as listed below:
- Software versions
- Firmware availability
- Application crashes
- Loss of support for OS (Operating System)
- Hardware part availability
- Physical or body changes
- Apps That will no longer work on specific phones
- Users review or opinions
- Phones more than two or three years of launch
- Phones with root vulnerability
- Second-hand value
1. Software versions
Different softwares powers the smartphone devices. For most users, the Android software is superb as it meets or satisfies their need for shareability and portability of both system and custom applications.
Aside the Android software operating systems, there are others like the Apple iOS, the Windows OS, the Blackberry OS, the Lineage OS et cetera, whichever operating system softwares that runs in your phone, you would want to make sure it is the updated version.
For instance, an Android phone running software version 9.0 or higher will do well in supporting more recent applications than the one running on version 4.4 or even lesser. This is why you would want to keep updating your phone to the latest software version
2. Firmware availability
Firmwares are operating system software files that runs in the phone’s flash memory in collaboration with the central processing unit.
The unavailability of this firmware files for the model of phone you are using makes your phone useless when there is a software related problem.
This is why popular brands in a region should be patronized. In the event that a software problems show up and there isn’t a way to download Firmwares online, Firmwares could be sourced alternatively from similar phone to fix a faulty one because they are widely used.
3. Application crashes:
This crashes happens when you try to access some apps on home screen, and then you find pop-ups like unfortunately this app has stopped. The problem is mostly affecting Android smartphones.
Others may include: memory low, bootloop (phone freezing), lagging, rebooting etc which are all software related as well and are signs that you might need to abandon, fix or change your smartphone.
4. Loss of support for OS (Operating System)
Why would you want to stick to an old operating system? For Tech companies, there isn’t a one size fits all!
After doing a couple of software patches to strengthen against vulnerabilities, they might decide to move on to a better platform with advance technology features.
What this means is that you might lose support for some important functionalities. For example, Blackberry due to challenges and popular demand had to move in to the Android platform operating system, same with Microsoft, Nokia etc.
5. Hardware part availability:
Don’t allow marketers sweet mouth you when it comes to parts for your phones. Availability is crucial! You should ask questions like; hey! “what happens when my phone’s screen gets broken”?
You might also want to find out availability of stuffs like phone porch/casing, battery, chargers and others that might be of interest to you.
6. Physical or body changes:
If you notice disintegration of your phone parts, whether due to weak casing, missing nuts, over use etc, you might consider going for repairs before things begin to fall apart for real which might get things worse beyond repairs thereby forcing you in to abandoning it for good.
7. Apps That will no longer work on specific phones:
What on earth would you do with a phone that cant run social media apps effectively?
Whatsapp announced that Windows phones and phones with lesser Android versions will no longer be able to use the app come February 2020! Remember that this happened to Nokia Java and Symbian phones like Nokia E series, and Nokia 200 plus others.
8. Users review or opinions:
Never underestimate the value of user reviews and opinions as they help in wise decisions. There are always first users of a particular service or product you intend to use!
So you should find out about the trending threads about the good, the bad and ugly reviews before making a move, so you don’t spend money on something that doesn’t worth it!
9. Phones more than two or three years of launch:
It’s interesting poping your new smartphone out of the box to start enjoying the latest features or functionalities, as interesting as that might be, manufacturers are daily thinking about how to shift consumer attention from the previous productions to the latest ones thereby making your present joy short lived and frustrating.
Instead of pushing OTA (over the air updates) and upgrade for software versions, they will rather make another model and push that update in to it to woe you in to abandoning your old device.
Armed with the above knowledge, one would rather sell it off on time so it doesn’t lose value! Imagine a blackberry passport phone that was sold for 70K more or less being sold now for less than 15K! Hmm….. That’s a serious matter!
10. Phones with root vulnerability:
What are root vulnerabilities? Simply put it, these are reprogramming effort with the use of software tools to gain root access to certain environment that wouldn’t have been ordinarily possible!
As you read further you would see the reason why you might consider changing your phone to protect yourself from unexpected surprises!
This process makes users gain total control and the ability to further tweak the ROM or the stock firmware that ship with phones out of the box.
The process becomes necessary when there is a need to upgrade Android version for phones whose update support have been discontinued so they could still enjoy great features found only in more recent releases!
This activity is called rooting and includes unlocking bootloader. Rooting might also be done to re-write a phone’s lost imei for one reason or the other.
Rooting makes phones vulnerable to cyber attack by putting your personal details available to hackers. Sure, you wouldn’t want to see that your bank account details are stolen or compromised.
To know if a phone has been rooted, check to see if you can find on home screen certain icons such as kingo root, iroot, etc.
11. Second-hand value:
If you are a phone freak, you might want to consider buying something you can easily swap for bigger and newer devices.
For instance, the Nigerians most popular and selling phone brands include but not limited to stuffs like: Original iPhone, Samsung, Gionee, Infinix, Tecno and others. This list are considered as having high second hand value. Provided they are clean and in good shape, you can be sure of monetary value when trying to upgrade later on.
Though others not listed above may be great phones, it is understood that some brand are just unique to some region.
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