When you have an iPhone your whole world revolves around your handset. You have your email, your calendar, your social media, entertainment, contacts and more all stored on your iPhone. Therefore, you want to make sure you look after your iPhone, to ensure it will have a good long life, and always reliably be there for you when you need it. You can ensure your iPhone will last longer and remain in top condition by following these tips.

1 – Car safety

Your iPhone will always be with you when you’re in the car, and there are some precautions you need to take to ensure it remains safe and in a good condition:

• Extreme temperatures. Your iPhone can experience extreme hot and cold temperatures if you leave it in your car. Temperatures of over 1000F and under 400F can degrade the performance of the battery. If you find that your iPhone is overheating, turn it off for several hours, but if your phone is emitting heat even when it’s off there could be a serious problem and you need to take it back to Apple or your provider right away.

• Car chargers. Car chargers should not be used as a primary means of charging your iPhone as the 12 volt electrical system used in your car is designed to run the headlights and the interior controls and was never designed as a phone charger. As a result you can experience a power surge in your car because you have overloaded the small capacity system and this can fry the main board of your iPhone. If you do have to use a car charger, don’t have your iPhone plugged in when you turn your car on or off, also only use Apple approved car charger products as they will use to your iPhone better.

• Risk of theft. Not only will leaving your iPhone in your car expose it to extreme temperatures, you will also expose it to the risk of theft as you’ve probably left your phone somewhere in full view.

2 – Moisture

You should already know that no mobile phone likes water or moisture, so try and keep your iPhone away from high moisture areas. This means don’t leave it in the bathroom, near swimming pools or in other high humidity areas as it only takes a small amount of moisture to do damage to your iPhone.

If your iPhone is exposed to moisture you can try and dry it out by removing the back casing and the battery as soon as possible. To help absorb the moisture, submerge your iPhone in a container of uncooked rice, seal the container and leave it overnight. If you don’t have any rice, leave the phone to air dry for a day before using it again.

3 – Memory

iPhones have an amazing memory capacity in being able to store your favourite songs, movies, images and files. However, be aware of how you are treating the memory of your iPhone because it’s not unlimited. If you find that your apps are crashing or your web pages are freezing it could be a problem with your phone’s memory. Therefore, make sure you don’t load up your iPhone to capacity, instead leave at least half a gig of memory free to handle any spikes in memory use.

At the same time take note of these crashes because if the same app keeps crashing it could be a problem with the app, and if Safari has a continual problem loading a page, that page could be too big. For easier web surfing on your iPhone look for the mobile version of a web page. Remember that your iPhone is really a mini computer and if you restart your iPhone this will help ease the burden on the phone’s memory.

4 – Battery

The battery is the life blood of your iPhone and you need to take good care of it to ensure your iPhone lasts a long time. You can look after your battery by:

• Sync your chip. If you find that your iPhone doesn’t fully charge when it is plugged in, it could be that the chip on the battery and the chip on the iPhone which measure the charge flowing back and forth are out of sync. To fix this run your iPhone battery completely flat and then charge it fully up before running it right down to flat again. This should help sync the chips, and should be done every month or two.

• Battery indicator. You may also find that the battery indicator is showing a false reading, showing that your battery is flat when it’s not. To correct the indicator run your iPhone completely flat before recharging it and after doing this several times the indicator should reset.

• Not overcharging. Make sure you remove your iPhone from the charger once it is fully charged, or turn your phone off while it is charging. When you over charge your iPhone you can cause it to overheat.

5 – Protection

Because your iPhone is with you all the time, it can see a few hard knocks in the course of a day, and these can all add up to damaging your handset. Therefore, to protect and preserve your iPhone for optimal performance take the following precautions:

• Cracks around the dock. Many iPhones experience cracks around the dock connector and headphone jack, as this is where the plastic of the screen is the thinnest. Apple are aware of the flaw and will replace your handset if it happens. However, to avoid cracks and scratches on your iPhone screen use a hard case and a thin skin protector over the screen. While the iPhone is scratch resistant it will still come in contact with keys, coins and more in your pocket or bag.

• Replace your protection. The transparent skin protectors for your screen can stop your iPhone from getting scratched, but make sure you replace them every few months for optimal protection.

• What where you put your iPhone. With everything at your fingertips on your iPhone, it will often be in your hand, but when you need two hands for something you are likely to set down your phone wherever you can. This leads to your phone being placed on the ground or on the roof of your car, and then forgetting where you’ve put it. Also don’t let your iPhone float loosely in your bag, instead keep it in a separate pocket.

• Clean out your speakers. At the bottom of your iPhone handset there is a speaker and a microphone which can experience problems over time. If you find you can’t hear your callers or they can’t hear you, you may need to clean out your speakers. You can do this with some strong rubbing alcohol on an old toothbrush, and using a can of compressed air to clear out the speakers. Make sure you don’t use too much alcohol as you don’t want any moisture to enter your iPhone.

Alban has been an early adopter of the Iphone. When he is not providing tips on how to maximise the use of an Iphone, Alban writes articles at Personal Loan Finder

One reason iPhones are so popular is geo-locator technology. It enables apps to be created that can offer services to users based on their physical location in the world, such as with a GPS. There are hundreds of location-based smartphone apps available on every network, and more are being added daily. Some of the most popular location-based apps right now are Fandango (find movies in theaters near you), OpenTable (find local restaurants and make reservations), Foursquare (compete with others to become mayor by “checking-in” to locations), and Yelp (read and write local restaurant reviews). There are, however, some safety concerns to be aware of for users of location-based apps.

Safety Concerns with Location-Based Smartphone Apps

There has been a lot of talk in the media lately about location-based smartphone apps and how they can be a threat to the safety of users. This is because some of these location-based apps tell other people your location, which leads to burglaries and personal safety issues.

Some apps are connected through Facebook and other social networking sites, which enables all of your contacts to see where you are. For instance, Foursquare is a location-based service that allows you to “check-in” to a location. This information is then accessible by your contacts on your social networks. There are obvious problems with this. For instance, if you go on vacation and then “check-in” using FourSquare, all of your contacts who also use the app will know that you are not at home, and everyone knows that most burglaries happen by people you know when they know you won’t be around.

Using apps that track your location can also bring about personal safety issues. For instance, if you log that you are at home alone or at the park by yourself, predators may find this the perfect opportunity to act.

Another safety concern of location-based apps is privacy. In general, smartphone companies do a good job at keeping user information secure when they gather data; it is app markets that should not be trusted. Anyone can be an app creator, which means there are going to be people ready and willing to scam others out of their money and personal information.

How to Protect Yourself When Using Location-Based Smartphone Apps

The most important thing to remember before giving information to location-based smartphone apps is that it can be viewed by anyone in your networks of contacts who also use the app. More than likely, you have contacts that are mere acquaintances, or that you have met online through common interests. There may even be people in your networks that you have never met or do not know personally. This means you should not log your location or say anything that could potentially bring harm to you or your belongings, such as being on vacation or being alone.

Also, only use location-based apps that come from trustworthy sources. This is the best way to avoid scams, identity theft, and malware. Just like with computers, smartphones can get viruses and other malware that can affect the workings of the phone and steal personal information.

Location-based apps are useful and fun, so people definitely should not avoid them altogether. People just need to be careful not to endanger themselves while using the apps, and be on the lookout for untrustworthy apps.

About the Author: When he’s not out skiing the Utah powder, Greg Buckskin is a writer and blogger for Comcast.USDirect.com – home to Comcast Deals.

One of the small enhancements to the 3.0 version of the OS for the iPhone is the ability to email more than one picture at a time.  When you go to your photos and view all of the pictures in the album, you now have a arrow icon in the lower left corner.  This icon gives you the option to select various photos and perform an action against them.  You have 3 actions available: Share, Copy and Delete.  Share is nice because it allows you to select up to 5 photos and and email them to someone., but you will notice that it it disables after you select more than 5 photos.

So how do you share more than 5 photos at a time?  Easy, just select all of the photos you want and then select the Copy action.  Then navigate over to the email app and create a new message, tap and press into message body area to get the new paste menu.  Once you select paste, all of the images that you copied when in the photo album will appear in your message.  Provide a recipient and subject for your email and click send.

Enjoy!

One of the first questions I get from people when they get an iPhone is to find out how to protect the iPhone screen.  They are usually shocked when I tell them that I do nothing.  When I first got my iPhone I looked into how I could protect my new toy but I have never been a fan of screen protectors since they usually make your phone look worse as they usually scratch easier than the screen on the device.

I then went on a search to see if anyone has done any scratch tests on the screen and here are some videos that I found that show the durability of the iPhone screen. Here are 3 videos that I found that show off the durability of the iPhone screen. The first 2 are from PCMag and really put the iPhone through a pretty good test.

So what is my recommendation to protect your iPhone? Invest in a good case to protect the shell of your phone, but I wouldn’t worry too much about protecting your screen. While I have never personally put my phone through a test like in any of the above videos, I have dropped my phone a few times, face first and the screen has survived unscratched.

What are your thoughts?