Roughly 85 percent of Americans have smartphones and many rely on them not just for texts and calls, but also web browsing, getting directions, ordering stuff online, and much more. Yet even if you know your way around your smartphone, there's a good chance that you can boost productivity and reduce friction by enabling the right services and installing certain apps.
Take spam calls, for example — we all get them, but with both Android and iOS, you can block many by toggling on the built-in spam blockers. There's no simple way to block all spam text messages, but you can block certain numbers, including spammers, through the built-in messaging platforms.
Besides spammers, you might be bombarded by notifications day in and day out. Fortunately, you can turn off notifications from websites and low-priority apps in the settings menu. Have a friend on Facebook who can't stop posting and is filling up your feed? You can snooze that friend. The same is true for some other social media sites as well.
Privacy is another major issue. Many phones and apps will automatically share your location, and not just with authorized apps, but friends and family, too. So long as you're in control, that's fine, but you may enjoy peace of mind by turning off location sharing.
If your battery regularly runs low, it's smart to turn off Siri and Google Assistant. Turning off haptic feedback and using adaptive brightness features can also stretch your battery. Both iOS and Android feature low power modes as well, so you may want to toggle those on.
Finally, if you're constantly running out of storage space on your phone, remember that you can store things like photos on the cloud. Besides cloud services offered by Google and Apple, you could opt for apps like pCloud or Tresorit.