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All batteries have an expiry date. Same is true for smartphones’ batteries. However, the way you use your smartphone also goes a long way in deciding the longevity of your device’s battery. As such, there are few phone charging habits you can implement in your daily life that can increase the lifespan of your battery. According to Jumia Travel, here are seven tips on how to charge your smartphone and make its battery last longer. Fast chargers are not always the best option Using a fast charger might not be the best thing for your battery’s health. This process involves a higher voltage to be sent to the phone’s battery which results in a rapid rise in temperature. Your phone may even explode as a result of this. Charge your phone with its own charger Always charge your phone with its own charger. Unlike laptops, smartphones use a universal charging interface. However, if the charger you use does not match the original, it will affect battery performance. Remove protective case while charging You might have noticed while your phone is charging, it becomes slightly warm. So, make sure to remove the phone’s protective case while charging. This can act as a barrier and slow down the heat. Don’t use cheap chargers from unknown manufacturers Avoid cheap chargers from unknown manufacturers. They do not include any safety advice to protect against overcharging. Know that adapter failure could permanently damage both your battery and phone. Never leave your phone to charge overnight There are many people who leave their phone plugged in overnight for charging. You just need to stop this habit. Charging overnight affects battery longevity, and it also makes your smartphone overheat. Always charge up to 80 per cent Eighty per cent charge is enough for a day, and it is good for your overall battery lifespan. Crossing the 80 per cent mark can make your battery to overheat, thereby affecting the battery’s life. Avoid charging the phone repeatedly Smartphones should not be charged repeatedly. The rule of thumb should be not to charge until the phone’s battery is up to 20 per cent. #Takeaway Six smartphone battery myths you should stop believing Batteries are one of the most integral parts of any smartphone. A clumsy battery can break down a smartphone like nothing else. But alas, the world of batteries is overflowing with myths, according to www.guidingtech.com. I can leave the charger on forever Well, practically yes, you can. If you don’t love your cell phone at all or you change your devices too often. But if you care for a longer life of your battery, then the best way to charge is not going over 80 or below 10. Every battery comes with a fixed amount of cycles and these cycles tend to wear off the more you charge your phone. In fact, charging your battery to 80 per cent on a regular basis is shown to increase its life by 200 per cent So, do make sure that you maintain the sweet spot of the battery — 10 per cent and 80 per cent, with an occasional zero per cent discharge to calibrate the battery life. Closing apps will save battery If you are one who swears by the mantra that closing apps will improve battery (and performance), then you are in for some news. The fact is closing apps does more harm than good. Chances are that you might actually end up draining more battery juice in the process. Closing an app suddenly might result in losing data. Also if the phone needs to restart the app again, that will require more CPU resources and hence, more battery. Letting the battery drain to zero per cent every day This again is a tale from the ancient days of Nickel Cadmium batteries of the 80-90s. Nickel cadmium batteries had the memory effect, which essentially gave rise to this myth. After these batteries were recharged for a couple of times, they would forget their full capacity and eventually weren’t able to hold the charge. The discharging was done to reset the ‘memory’. The Lithium-ion batteries used nowadays have a smarter way of power management. It counts a cycle when you have used 100 per cent of the battery in multiple uses. For instance, if you used 40 per cent today, and 20 per cent on two consecutive days, then only it would call for one cycle. 4G drains the battery faster It’s true that radio signal consumes lesser resource than cellular data. However, that should never be the cause of your battery life going for a dive. If you have a good quality SIM from a reliable operator, then it shouldn’t be the cause of a meltdown. A 5000 mAh power bank will yield two full charges Often, it’s assumed that a 5000 mAh power bank will be able to yield two full charges for your 2500 mAh battery. How did we arrive at the conclusion? Simple, just dividing the capacity by the full power. But that’s not how simple as it seems. The catch is the voltage at which it charges. The power rating of a power bank is calculated at 3.7 volts whereas the phone charges at 5 volts. Only when a step-down in the voltage is made that the right number of charge cycles can be determined. So, the next time you are on a lookout for a power bank, do make sure to do the math. Charging through a laptop may damage the battery Again a misconception, charging a phone through a laptop will only yield a slower charge and nothing more. This won’t harm the battery in any way. Source

The practice of meditation has been around for centuries. In simple terms, meditation uses the practice of mindful breathing and guided imagery to help clear your mind of clutter. Studies have shown that meditation is beneficial to your mental health as well as your physical health. If you have been practising it for years or looking to get started, any number of apps here can set you on the right track to a sound mind, body, and soul. The mindfulness app This app comes packed with features, including a five-day guided meditation practice, meditation reminders, personalized meditation offers, and timers for keeping you on track. There is even a health app integration capability. This is the gold standard app for anyone serious about the practice of meditation. Headspace Headspace is a great app for people just starting out, with 10 newbie-focused 10-minute meditation exercises, known as Take 10. It is designed to help you quickly understand what the practice is all about. There is also a personalised progress page, a reward system for continued practice, and even a buddy system for you and your friends to help each other stay on track. Once you have completed Take 10, the app contains other meditation exercises that can be purchased in the app. Calm With Calm, you can choose from an assortment of guided meditation experiences. The selections range from three-minute to 25-minute sessions. Another option is Daily Calm, a 10-minute programme you can practise right before your day begins or as it is about to end. Other features include more than 20 sleep stories, breathing exercises, unguided meditations, and more than 25 soothing sounds to help you get to sleep. Mindbody Mindbody is where you should start. Users can search and book a multitude of fitness classes like yoga, Pilates, barre, or CrossFit. The app is also an excellent resource to test the waters with a new trainer, class, or studio. You can manage your fitness routine through an exercise tracker. There is even a section where you can access discount deals for exercise classes. Buddhify Users have access to over 11 hours of custom meditation with buddhify. What is unique is that each exercise is tailored to target a specific aspect of your life. Need help going to sleep? The app has you covered. Need help staying offline? Check. Need a work break? It’s here. The tracks range from five to 30 minutes. A check-in system lets you evaluate how well you are meditating and tracks your progress overtime. Insight Timer This meditation app features over 4,500 free guided meditations from over 1,000 meditation practitioners. It also features 750 meditation music tracks. Insight Timer also lets you customise your intervals and background sounds so that your meditation session is exactly what you are looking for. Source

As you've probably noticed in recent days, iPhone rumor season has hit fever pitch. The conventional wisdom is that there will be three iPhones this year instead of the traditional two. The "iPhone 7S" and "iPhone 7S Plus" would be the traditional "S phone" upgrades we get in odd-numbered years, keeping the same basic design we've seen since the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in 2014, while adding some new under-the-hood hardware improvements -- the requisite faster CPU and better cameras, along with (possibly) something like inductive wireless charging The third iPhone would be a top-of-the-line model. And thanks to that recent HomePod firmware leak, we appear to know a lot more about it than ever before: An all-new, almost no-bezel design would fit a Plus-size OLED screen into a standard iPhone-sized body. Supposedly, it even drops the Touch ID home button in place of facial recognition. But what we don't know is the name. It's apparently referred to as "D22," and may have been nicknamed "Ferrari" (further reflecting its status in the lineup as the lust-worthy sports car you want, but may not be able to afford). So, what will that high-end iPhone be called? There's zero definitive information, so we can only guess. To that end, here are the top candidates that have been making the rounds on the Internet for the past few months. iPhone 8 This is the default name that most have been using for the high-end iPhone. And because it's the No. 1 "new iPhone" term on Google Trends, it's become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: As more publishers seek to cash in on the search engine optimization (SEO) value of "iPhone 8," more stories about "iPhone 8" flood your feeds. (Yes, this is one of those stories.) Will Apple actually go with this name? Apple pundit John Gruber suggests that 3 new iPhones could get some form of the "iPhone 8" moniker if the lower-end S models offer a surprise design overhaul, too. iPhone Pro This nomenclature would bring the iPhone line into a degree of symmetry with Apple's laptop and iPad lines. MacBook, MacBook Pro. iPad, iPad Pro. iPhone, iPhone Pro. OK, iPhone would be a bit messier. After all, if Apple follows its normal tradition, the existing iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will remain on sale with $100 knocked off the price. The iPhone SE, which was refreshed in March, would presumably remain as the entry-level iPhone. And the "iPhone 7S" and "7S Plus" would be in the line, too. (Or some of those models could stay, or none of them; Apple could totally shake things up.) But "iPhone Pro" would be the first-ever use of that name -- a nice nod to its "newness" -- and the Pro designation as "king of the hill" would line up with everyone's general understanding of Apple's product lines. The only problem is that it somehow sounds "unfun" -- like a phone that's destined for you to toil away on work-related tasks. iPhone X (or iPhone 10) The iPhone numbering scheme got derailed almost immediately. The second iPhone was called the iPhone 3G, the fifth iPhone was the iPhone 4S, and so on. There have been at least 2 iPhones released every year since 2013, and Wikipedia counts at least 15 different models to date. But since 2017 is the tenth anniversary of the iPhone's debut, it would be a great opportunity to reset the clock, as it were -- similar to how Microsoft jumped from Windows 8 straight to Windows 10. The problem with the Roman numeral, though, is that everyone will inevitably mispronounce it as "iPhone Ex," as they did with the OS X operating system. iPhone Edition (or iPhone Anniversary Edition) When the Apple Watch first launched, the line included a gold model that started for a cool $10,000. The so-called Apple Watch Edition still exists, but now in a ceramic body that starts at a somewhat less stratospheric $1,249. With all signs pointing to the high-end iPhone starting at prices near $1,000 and going up from there, the analogy to the luxury watch lines up nicely. Still, "iPhone Edition" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Alternately, teeing off the iPhone X/10 idea above, some think Apple might go with something like "iPhone Anniversary Edition." The problem with that, as many have already suggested, is that Apple rarely invokes nostalgia (giant pricey coffee table books notwithstanding). The company wants to keep consumers focused on its view of an ever-better future, not have them pining for some sort of idealized past. Just 'iPhone' Apple could opt for stripping things back down to ultimate simplicity. It did this in 2015 with its newest, sexiest laptop losing the Air name and just going with "MacBook." Likewise, the iPad Air 2 was replaced by "iPad." Two problems here. Just "iPhone" sounds more like a baseline model, which doesn't help distinguish it from a line that would likely retain one if not two "Plus" 5.5-inch models -- even though they would be stepdowns to this king of the hill model. Meanwhile, "iPhone" has, as we say in the business, terrible SEO. The default search terms would immediately become something like "new iPhone," "iPhone 2017" or "OLED iPhone." That's the opposite of good branding. Apple Phone Steve Jobs was all about the iNames -- iMac, iCloud, iTunes, iPhone and iPad. But starting with Jobs' own introduction of the Apple TV and continuing into the Tim Cook era, it's been more about "Apple [insert generic product name here]." With Apple Music, Apple Pay and Apple Watch being the buzzwords of the day, would the company ever hit the ultimate reset button and walk away from the iPhone name? My guess? Not in a million years. Throwing away one of the most valuable brand names in history just doesn't sound like a smart idea. The wait will be over soon For my money, "iPhone Pro" sounds like the best bet, but somehow still not quite right. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple pulls something totally unexpected but familiar out of the ether, not unlike the "HomePod" name. (We generally called that product the "Siri Speaker" in the rumor phase.) And if you dislike the eventual name, just remember to take a beat. Believe it or not, the name "iPad" was originally mocked and derided, as was the moniker for the Nintendo Wii. Both of them went on to become smashing successes. The good news -- regardless of the eventual name -- is that the wait should soon be over. Expect Tim Cook to be on stage in just a few weeks, proudly holding the new iPhone high above his head. Source