Phone Medics

In the early days of the iPhone, users enjoyed service plans for AT&T (and later Verizon) that promised unlimited data. Unfortunately, it was too good to last. After a few years, the carriers decided that giving smartphone users unlimited data was either technologically problematic or insufficiently profitable (there’s some debate on this point), and they began to be replaced by limited data plans. Once that happened, we had to start worrying about how much data we used, because the last thing anybody wants is to burn through their monthly allotment and start being charged by the gigabyte. With that in mind, we’re going to spend the next couple posts talking about some of the ways you can manage your cell phone’s data usage, so that you still have some data left at the end of your month. In today’s post, we’re going to talk about how to handle data usage on your iPhone. Next time we’ll cover Android. Turn Off Wi-Fi Assist When you go looking for ways to reduce your data usage,...

In a world where we are increasingly dependent on electronics, water has become the boogeyman. We live in constant fear of dropping our phones into our pools, sinks, and toilets. But while water damage is scary, everybody knows that the best way to fix it is to just drop your phone into a bag of rice, right? Unfortunately this is one of those times when what “everybody knows” isn’t really true. The reality is that putting a wet phone into rice won’t help at all, and might actually hurt. You see, the common wisdom is that since rice is a dry food that absorbs water as it cooks, then it must be able to absorb the water out of a wet phone, but that isn’t actually the case. Yes, we cook rice by forcing it to absorb hot water, but that doesn’t mean that the rice will actually absorb the water out of your phone just because it happens to be nearby. In fact, rice doesn’t absorb water out of the air very efficiently at all (that’s why we boil it). To make matters worse, rice is also dusty,...

As more and more of our everyday life is lived online, passwords are becoming more and more important. You need a password for just about everything you do online, and a lot of things you do offline, too: social media, email, banking, shopping, logging into wifi, logging into your personal computer, logging into your work computer, and even unlocking your phone, if you’ve got a passcode lock. All these things require their own password. It can all be very difficult and confusing to manage. In today’s post we’re going to give you some tips and tools for creating strong passwords, keeping track of your passwords, and what to do if you forget a password. Good Password Practices First things first, we’re going to talk about some tips for creating and using strong passwords. The first and most important tip is pretty simple: don’t pick something that’s easy to guess. “Password” is a lousy password. Variations on your or your family members’ names aren’t great either. Those are all th...

Cell phones have taken an increasingly important role in people’s lives since they first started to see widespread adoption in the ‘90s. With the rise of the smartphone a decade ago, that process has accelerated, to the point that for many of us, our cell phones are vitally important tools for certain aspects of our lives. They’re the keeper of our calendar, our contacts, our family photos, they’re our means of communication with friends and family, how we find our way in a new place, and so much more. As our phones have taken on greater importance, the need to secure them has also grown. That’s why today’s post will be focusing on ways to secure your cell phone and its data. Keep Your Phone Backed Up The first step to securing your cell phone is keeping your data backed up. That may seem odd at first, since we don’t normally think of backups as a security feature, but think of it this way: what’s the most important thing on your phone? It’s the data, right? When we panic ove...

In previous articles we’ve talked about keeping your computer safe from malware  and from excess apps and files that can slow down your performance . What we haven’t talked much about before is the best way to protect your phone. The truth is that while your phone is safer from malware than your PC in many ways, you still need to be careful about what you download, and be aware of what certain apps are doing with your data. Malware Now, you may be thinking, “can my phone really get a virus?” The answer is “yes, but…” While there are legitimate malware threats out there that can infect your phone, there aren’t many programs that really infect your phone the way malware infects your computer. This is especially true for iPhones, since Apple’s “walled garden” development philosophy heavily restricts the access third party apps have to the device’s basic functions. So, in other words, malware for phones does exist, but most of the time the threats to your phone are going to com...

At Phone Medics Plus we’re dedicated to helping you keep your phone in great shape for as long as you own it, but we also know that there will come a time when you want to upgrade to a newer phone. We want to be there for you during that process, too, so that the transition from your old phone to your new phone is as smooth as possible. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of things you should do before you sell your Android phone. Backup Your Stuff The first thing you should do is backup your phone. We talked about how to backup your Android phone in a previous article. To recap, there are several ways to backup your Android device’s data. Use your Google account to backup all of your account data, calendars, contacts, web bookmarks, app data (for Google apps and apps that use Google Play Services), wifi passwords, and device settings. Use an app like Google Photos to backup all your photos and videos, and an app like SMS Backup and Restore (free in the Google Play S...

Whether you’re the kind of person who has to have the latest model iPhone, or the kind who prefers to stick with the same phone for a few years at a time, eventually there will come a time when you want or need to part company with your iPhone. At Phone Medics Plus, we want to help you make that transition as smoothly as possible. With that in mind, here’s a quick guide to getting your iPhone ready to sell. Unpair Your Apple Watch If you own an Apple Watch, then the first thing you need to do is unpair it from your phone. To do that, open up the Watch app on your iPhone. If the app doesn’t open to the My Watch screen, tap the tab at the bottom. From the My Watch screen, tap your Apple Watch, then tap the orange letter i in a circle next to your watch’s name. At the bottom of the screen you should see “Unpair Apple Watch” in red letters. Tap that to unpair your iPhone and Apple Watch. If your watch is an Apple Watch Series 3, you’ll also need to decide whether you want to keep ...

In our last article we told you all about how LCD screens work . In that piece, we talked a little about the history of LCDs and how important they’ve been to the rise of personal mobile electronics like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Today we’re going to talk about another crucial component of this technological revolution: the touchscreen. The first touchscreens were designed in the 1960s, but the technology was expensive and imprecise. It wasn’t until the 1990s that there were serious attempts to bring touchscreen technology into the consumer world. IBM was the first company to attempt to bring the technology to mobile phones, with the Simon in 1993, while Sega made an aborted attempt to incorporate touchscreen technology into mobile gaming. It wasn’t until the early 2000s, with the introduction of PDAs and early smartphones, that touchscreens began to see use in mobile electronics. Pretty much all modern touchscreens fall into two basic categories: resistive touchscreen...

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screens have played a major role in the rise of personal digital technology. The first LCDs were used in calculators and digital watches in the 1970s, and the technology began to make its way into televisions and computer displays in the 1980s. During the early 2000s, the technology made its way into smartphones and PDAs. In 2007, the same year Apple introduced the first iPhone, LCDs surpassed CRT (cathode ray tube) displays in both sales and picture quality. Every LCD consists of 6 basic parts. At the back of the display is a backlight (though in some devices like calculators and digital watches, it’s just a reflective surface). In most displays - including the one on your phone or tablet - the backlight consists of an array of light emitting diodes (LEDs). In front of the backlight is a polarized film (like you’d find in a pair of polarized sunglasses). This film only allows the light waves that are oriented vertically to pass through. Next is a layer o...

At Phone Medics Plus, we’re always here for you to repair your devices when they break, but we also want to help you keep your devices safe so that they don’t break. That’s why we offer a full range of protective products for your cell phone or tablet. That includes a wide selection of phone and tablet cases , tempered glass screen protectors, and now, we’re excited to announce that we’ve added a brand new product to that lineup: Qmadix Invisible First Defense liquid glass screen protectors. Traditional screen protectors are great at keeping your phone safe from scratches and cracks, some even do an okay job of keeping away fingerprints, but they can also be bulky, difficult to apply, and have an unsightly edge that can spoil the aesthetics of your phone, especially if you have a curved screen. Qmadix Liquid glass screen protectors offer a comparable level of scratch protection with no bulky layer or ugly borders, and without the difficulty of making sure you’ve got everything lin...

At Phone Medics Plus, we’re here for you when your phone gets damaged, but we also want to help you protect your phone from damage. That’s why we sell a variety of cases to help you keep your phone safe. Certain things in life are inevitable. The old joke goes that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, but the truth is, there are a few more things that you can’t really escape. One of them is a damaged phone. If you own a cell phone, then sooner or later it’s going to get dropped, wet, or dirty. Maybe it slips out of your hand as you're opening your car door, maybe it gets dropped in the sand on your day at the beach, or maybe a careless elbow and a knocked-over glass splashes it with water. One way or another, the odds are good that sooner or later your phone is going to experience some rough times. The best thing you can do to prepare yourself for that fateful day is to have your phone in a good case. But what, you may ask, makes for a good case? That’s an exc...

At Phone Medics Plus, we’re not just committed to providing the best possible repair service for your phone or PC. We also want to make sure you have the tools to get the most out of your experience with your device, and to make sure that even when something does go wrong, you can get back on your feet as quickly as possible. That’s why we’ve spent our last two blog posts talking about the best ways to backup your data. In our first post, we talked about the best backup solutions for your iPhone , then we talked about how to backup the data on your PC . In today’s post, we’re going to finish up by talking about the best ways to backup the data on your Android device. As with PCs and iPhones, there are two basic ways to backup your Android device: on-site and off-site. On-site backups are saved to your own computer, while off-site backups are saved to the cloud. There are a wide variety of applications out there that will help you create both kinds of backups. Manufacture...

At Phone Medics Plus we are committed to doing our part to care for our environment and help our community. That’s why we accept your used personal electronics for recycling. As technology becomes a bigger part of our lives, it unfortunately also becomes a bigger portion of our garbage. Electronic waste, or “e-waste,” is the fastest growing form of waste in the nation. Millions of tons of e-waste go into landfills every year. Cell phones are a major component of this waste. The average cell phone is used for 18 months or less, and an estimated 140 million cell phones are thrown away every year. Not only does this waste take up an enormous amount of space in our landfills, it also represents a significant environmental threat. Many of the materials and components that are in your cell phone can be harmful to the environment. Phone in landfills can leak chemicals like cadmium, lithium, nickel, beryllium, and even arsenic into our soil and groundwater, where they present a hazard to ...

Phone Medics Plus is proud to partner with Family Promise of Brevard to help families in need in our community. We accept donations of used cell phones and late model laptops and PCs for those who are facing the challenge of homelessness in Brevard County. Homelessness brings many challenges, especially for families. A period of homelessness is one of the most difficult times in any family’s life. It is a time of fear and uncertainty, and escaping it can be extremely difficult. A cell phone or PC is a simple but powerful tool for navigating this difficult time. By donating your phone or late model laptop to Family Promise of Brevard, you’re providing families in need a lifeline to vital resources that can help them escape homelessness. With your used phone or PC, a family in need can search for jobs, search for housing, stay connected to their social support network, and have access to numerous other resources. Family Promise of Brevard was established in Palm Bay in 2007 as on...

The hurricane season may be nearing its end for this year, but it's far from over. With Hurricane Michael about to make landfall in the Florida panhandle and a few other systems threatening to spin up in the Atlantic, now is a good time to take a look at some of the ways your cell phone should factor into your emergency preparedness plan. Weather Apps In preparing for a hurricane, as in many things in life, one of the most important tools you have is information. While you can access information about hurricanes from a variety of sources, including local news, there are a number of smartphone apps that can help you get a handle on what’s going on. The two most popular are Hurricane Tracker and Hurricane: American Red Cross, both of which are available for iPhone and Android. Manage Battery Life Hurricanes and power outages go hand in hand. If you’re in an area that gets hit, you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose power for at least a few hours. When that happens, you want to...