Clean up some space on your phone

Maintaining your smartphone is a priority if you want to be able to use it to its full potential.

There are two things that I think you should be doing regularly

1. Updating your operating system whenever you are notified of new updates.  This helps with the security of your phone, and makes it more efficient as bugs get fixed in updates.  Very occasionally this will mean that some apps do not work straight away because the app designer (usually 3rd party)  hasn't kept up to date but generally speaking, they will start to work again straight away.  I have met people who won't update their phone operating system for fear of losing some data on their phone.  This is commonly known as cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Believe me, I update my phone every time and I have not lost any data yet.  You can back up your data if you have space (for example in the iCloud) but really you shouldn't have that much data saved on your phone anyway.   You can choose which apps you back up data on.  On my iphone, you do that in the settings, under iCloud. Here is a screenshot of my phone data saved in the cloud. You can see that I back up less than 1GB of my phone data. Apple charges for more than 5GB so I personally don't go for that option, and that brings me to the second point. 
2. Keeping as much data in the cloud as possible. I only back up my contacts, calendars and a few other apps using iCloud and that takes a lot less room than 5GB.  I also try to use apps that work in "the cloud" anyway, so there is no need to save data on my phone.   For example
   
   "Scrabble" is a free app but there is also a premium version for which I paid a minimal amount.  I don't remember exactly what I paid for it as it is a while ago, but it is listed as $US9.99 in the app store now, and that is a small price to pay for the pleasure of playing scrabble with people all over the world.  The data is all stored in the cloud, linked to my facebook profile.  Whenever there is an update, the app collects the data from there when it links to my profile.The other thing that I advise all smartphone users to do is to store all of their photos in Google Photos.  Download the Google Photos App, now before you use up all of your space.  Google Photos backs-up to the cloud that is absolutely free and must be one of the best apps you have ever used.  Once you have connected to wifi it will back up all your photos (thus saving your phone's data plan) in the cloud and you can delete all the photos on your phone, or just keep a few thus maximising the space on your phone.  I love Google Photos because there are so many features and I have thousands and thousands of photos stored in the cloud for free. 

 Tomorrow I will share a little video with you to highlight some of the features of Google Photos.  Until then, install the app because it will take a while for your photos to back up if you have quite a few on your phone.  All you need is a gmail account to sign in with and wifi to back up with. Open the app and start backing up your photos now!