(ThyBlackMan.com) Your phone is as essential to your daily life as your wallet or your car keys. What’s more, your phone represents a significant financial investment that you don’t want to waste. That’s why it’s so important to do everything you can to prolong the life of your smartphone, ensuring it can help you in all that you do for many years to come. Here are a few ways you can show your phone some love as you help keep it protected.
Shield Your Screen
For any smartphone, the screen is the portal through which you access all your vital information. With this in mind, protecting your screen should be one of your top priorities. Screen protectors like those sold by BodyGuardz are designed to prevent the screen from cracking when the phone is dropped. They also help to prevent dings and nicks which accumulate after several months and years of use. Consider it a shield for your smartphone screen.
Protect the Rest as Best You Can
With the screen covered, it’s important to protect the rest of your phone, as well. Given that you’ll probably drop your phone on multiple occasions during the time that you own it, you’ll want to give your phone the best chance of survival by using the best case you can afford. 
When it comes to phone cases, especially if you have a popular phone model, there are literally thousands of options to choose from.
Depending on what you do for a living, the “military-grade” protection offered by many phone cases may or may not be necessary. The most important feature of any phone case is the lip that wraps around the front of the phone. This lip is what protects the screen in the event of a drop. Ensure that this lip protrudes slightly from the edge of the phone to provide protection, even on uneven surfaces.
Don’t Forget the Battery
Screen protectors and cases do a great job of protecting the exterior of your phone, but what about the interior? To truly prolong the life of your smartphone, it’s important to protect battery life with various techniques. All those extra minutes add up over months and years, significantly contributing to the overall life of the phone.
Start by turning off auto-sync, which will keep apps from needlessly working in the background. Pick a wallpaper which is dark and muted to reduce the amount of brightness required to power the phone. Disable location tracking and Bluetooth to further increase the life of your phone battery.
Follow Your Gut
As smartphones have become ubiquitous, so have people seeking to harm your phone through viruses and malware. That’s why it’s so important to trust your gut in order to protect the performance and longevity of your smartphone. If you receive a suspicious email that contains a link, don’t click on the link. If you notice a strange app that you don’t remember installing or that seems to be harming the performance of your phone, get rid of it. Though phones are typically less susceptible to viruses than computers, they can still be brought down with phone-specific viruses and malware. Avoid this fate for your phone by being cautious and going with your gut.
Staff Writer; Ron Moore