Thousands of cellphones are stolen, lost, or damaged every year. Is your phone important to you?

Unless you carry a inexpensive, disposable, pay as you go cellphone such as Tracfone, Virgin, or Cricket, you can have quite an investment in your phone. Smartphones can easily cost a few hundred dollars, some quite a bit more, plus all the data you have in them.

Several factors need to be considered when deciding whether or not to purchase insurance. If your phone is a few years old, the cost of replacing it may have decreased to the point where insurance is not recommended. Likewise, if you are going to be replacing your phone soon, it might be smart to hold off on the insurance. More »

Smart phones, all the Androids, iPhones and Blackberries, for all the amazing press they get, haven’t been around for long enough for most people to have much experience with them. If you just only just treated yourself to one of these recently, you’re probably knocking yourself out playing with all the apps you could get your hands on. And as you go about your iPhone business, you’re probably noticing how a smartphone battery doesn’t last nearly as long as a normal cell phone battery (normal, as opposed to smart, not as opposed to abnormal).

With a regular cell phone, you don’t need to plug it in more than twice a week if that. The smart phone on the other hand, if you make use of its features and its screen a lot, wouldn’t mind it if you let it suck off the power outlet maybe once every 12 hrs. Some of the most power intensive use you could put your iPhone to is surfing the net. While trains, planes and coffee shops everywhere do what they can to be generous with the power outlets for you to feed your habit with, there is a better way to stay out of low battery danger – prevention.

It’s all about understanding how to work the features on your phone to make the battery last longer. To start with, phones that run on the CDMA technology, the kind used by Verizon, typically are more power-inefficient than the GSM standard – what you see on an AT&T. That means, your iPhone is more likely to be power efficient at finding and holding onto a signal, than is a Verizon-powered Blackberry or Android. If you possibly can, it would be a good idea to choose a phone on the network that gives you the most chance of battery longevity.

But once you have your phone, it’s entirely up to you how you tweak your phone’s features to make the most of it. The back-light on your phone’s LCD, is a real power hog. If your phone is able to detect ambient light and automatically turn the brightness up or down, this can be a really useful feature. A genuine Blackberry holster for instance, is designed to let the Blackberry know when it is inserted, so it can turn off the display right away.

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Almost everybody carries a cellphone now days, which means that accessories are big business. Walk into any electronics or mobile communications store and you’ll find an aisle or two dedicated to accessories such as screen covers, holders, straps, battery chargers, replacement batteries, car kits, Bluetooth headsets, and more. Some of these products are completely superfluous, but others are necessary to keep your handset in top working condition. Cell phone cases fall into this latter category.

I change handsets quite frequently because I like to have the latest smartphone on the market. Whenever I get a new one, my very next task is to look through cell phone cases as well until I find something I like. Smartphones in particular are very sophisticated gadgets, with prices that often rival low-end laptops. Clearly these are devices that need to be taken care of properly, which is precisely what cell phone cases can help you do. There’s a huge selection available both in stores and online, so you have no excuse for putting off your purchase.

Silicone cell phone cases are very popular — mostly with the younger crowd — for a couple of reasons. First, silicone is a durable material that can protect phones from the dings and scratches that come from everyday use. You can’t just keep storing your device in your backpack or jeans pocket and expect it to remain scratch-free for its entire shelf life. The screen or casing is liable to get scratched up simply from rubbing against rough denim or coming into contact with pens, textbooks, or other devices. A silicone cover can take care of this problem. Silicone cell phone cases are also popular because they come in a variety of colors. Clear, red, pink, blue, black, purple… you name it, they’ve got a silicone cover for taste! More »

There is one good thing about the recent cell phones wars that was never present when the PC was starting to dominate it’s market niche. There is a lot of healthy competition. Even though the IPhone has a dominant market share in the smart phone wars, they still do not dominate every aspect of the industry. They have not made significant inroads into the business category. This is where Blackberry based phones are still in charge.

Now Apple has another competitor that is slowly taking away a bit of market share. There are a bunch of new phones being released to the market, that are based on the Android operating system. Each phone adds something different to it’s design but overall they all work the same. Even though they are proving to be a worthy competitor to Apple, you should ask yourself a question. Is an Android based phone, the right one for you? More »

There is something that every IPhone user dreads. They have all heard these horror stories and they do not want to be one of the people who experience it first hand. All of these stories basically start out the same. The person was either already on the phone or about to pull their phone out of their pocket. They then either lose focus or hit something, which causes the phone to drop out of their hand. The phone speeds down to the floor and now the front screen is cracked, or worse broken. Now the IPhone becomes harder to use, if you are able to use it all. You start to think that this is a nightmare and you will have to get a new phone. This used to be the case but not necessarily anymore. Now there are IPhone repair kits, that a normal person can use to fix their phone.

Before we start to talk about the repair kits, you must be able to see how badly the phone was damaged. If the phone was only damaged on the external layer, then you should not have a problem. A new phone will be unnecessary. But, if you hit the phone so hard, that some of the actual components that are inside of the phone, were damaged, then you might have to go get a new phone. Nobody likes the thought of having to get a new phone, especially when their old phone still has all of their information inside of it and it wasn’t backed up. But there is no other option. If more than the external case was damaged, a new phone is definitely necessary. More »