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Maintenance

Cleaning, batteries, backups and keeping things working.

1,200 pages

Most of the power a device uses is accounted for by three things: the display, the radios, and whatever is allowed to wake it.

Running two devices well is a matter of deciding what syncs and what deliberately does not.

Most faults that matter show up in the first fortnight, but only if you deliberately look for them.

Direct transfer beats restoring from a backup almost every time, provided you plan an hour for it.

Updates are the single most effective security measure available, and the least popular. Both facts are worth taking seriously.

A backup you have never restored from is a hypothesis, not a backup.

A device that has stopped receiving patches is a liability regardless of how well it still works.

A case is the cheapest insurance available, and the wrong one causes overheating and blocked charging.

Cleaning consumer electronics is mostly a matter of knowing what not to use. The wrong solvent removes an oleophobic coating permanently.

Changing several things at once is why most troubleshooting takes longer than it should.

Most reclaimed storage comes from caches and offline downloads rather than from the files you can see.

Most perceived slowdown is storage pressure, background activity or thermal limiting rather than the hardware ageing.

Battery longevity is driven by heat and time spent at extremes of charge, not by how often you plug in.

Wiping a device properly is more than deleting your files, and skipping a step can leave it locked to your account and worthless to the buyer.

The default settings on a new device are tuned for convenience. A few deliberate changes close most of the practical risk.

Most of the power a device uses is accounted for by three things: the display, the radios, and whatever is allowed to wake it.

Running two devices well is a matter of deciding what syncs and what deliberately does not.

Most faults that matter show up in the first fortnight, but only if you deliberately look for them.

Direct transfer beats restoring from a backup almost every time, provided you plan an hour for it.

Updates are the single most effective security measure available, and the least popular. Both facts are worth taking seriously.

A backup you have never restored from is a hypothesis, not a backup.

A device that has stopped receiving patches is a liability regardless of how well it still works.

A case is the cheapest insurance available, and the wrong one causes overheating and blocked charging.

Cleaning consumer electronics is mostly a matter of knowing what not to use. The wrong solvent removes an oleophobic coating permanently.

Changing several things at once is why most troubleshooting takes longer than it should.

Most reclaimed storage comes from caches and offline downloads rather than from the files you can see.

Most perceived slowdown is storage pressure, background activity or thermal limiting rather than the hardware ageing.

Battery longevity is driven by heat and time spent at extremes of charge, not by how often you plug in.

Wiping a device properly is more than deleting your files, and skipping a step can leave it locked to your account and worthless to the buyer.

The default settings on a new device are tuned for convenience. A few deliberate changes close most of the practical risk.

Most of the power a device uses is accounted for by three things: the display, the radios, and whatever is allowed to wake it.

Running two devices well is a matter of deciding what syncs and what deliberately does not.

Most faults that matter show up in the first fortnight, but only if you deliberately look for them.

Direct transfer beats restoring from a backup almost every time, provided you plan an hour for it.

Updates are the single most effective security measure available, and the least popular. Both facts are worth taking seriously.

A backup you have never restored from is a hypothesis, not a backup.

A device that has stopped receiving patches is a liability regardless of how well it still works.

A case is the cheapest insurance available, and the wrong one causes overheating and blocked charging.

Cleaning consumer electronics is mostly a matter of knowing what not to use. The wrong solvent removes an oleophobic coating permanently.

Changing several things at once is why most troubleshooting takes longer than it should.