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We are all guilty these days of spending far too much time in front of one digital screen or another. The smartphone in particular has become a constant habit for millions. One staggering statistic is this: Fully 90% of 18 to 29 year-olds sleep with their phone on their bed and consult it sporadically throughout the night. Staring at the bright light of the phone in the pitch dark is a perfect recipe for developing eye strain and a number of longer term eye problems.

You know if you are not happy with a mobile phone service provider you can easily contact UnlockBase to unlock your phone and free yourself up to find a better deal within minutes. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy for your vision. We are all given just one set of eyes, and like it or not, it’s a lifetime contract.

In the digital era, not only young adults, but also children and even retirees are experiencing symptoms such as eye strain, headaches, dry eyes, blurred vision, neck, back and shoulder pain.

With so many of us using mobile phones by day and night and then computers throughout the day at work, digital eye strain has become a major job-related problem Studies show that eye strain and other visual symptoms now occur in 50 to 90% of computer workers.

Digital eye strain, which can produce blood shot, tired and dry eyes, does not only affect vision. Physical fatigue, decreased productivity and an increased numbers of work errors are also common.

These 5 easy steps are designed to help you reduce your risk of mobile phone and computer eye strain and give your eyes the rest they so badly need.

1. Take an annual eye exam

Routine eye exams are important to prevent or treat digital vision problems. These should be taken yearly. Tell your eye doctor how often you use a phone and or computer at work and at home. You should also measure how far your eyes are from your screen when you sit looking at your screen. Bring this measurement to your exam so your eye doctor can test your eyes at that specific working distance.

2. Get the lighting right

Eye strain often is caused by excessively bright light either from outdoor sunlight coming in through a window or from harsh interior lighting. It can strain your eyes more to look at you phone outside than it is with lighting that is half as bright as that of your device. You should close drapes, shades or blinds and use fewer light bulbs and fluorescent tubes.

3. Reduce glare

If you wear glasses, opt for lenses with anti-reflective (AR) coating. AR coating reduces glare by minimizing the amount of light reflecting off the front and back surfaces of your eyeglass lenses.

You can also go to Settings on your mobile phone to adjust the brightness of the display. As a test, look at the white background of this Web page. If it looks like a light source, it’s too bright. If it seems dull and gray, it may be too dark.

4. Give your eyes a workout

Eyes need exercise just like every other part of the body. Look away from your screen every 20 minutes and gaze at a distant object (at least 20 feet away) for at least 20 seconds. It’s called the 20-20-20 rule. It also helps to take regular walks outdoors and looking at greenery and hills in the distance to provide a different field of vision for your eyes. Looking into the distance relaxes the focusing muscle inside the eye to reduce fatigue.

Look far away at an object for 10-15 seconds, then gaze at something up close for 10-15 seconds. Then look back at the distant object. Repeat 10 times. Take frequent breaks during your computer work day.

Many workers take only two 15-minute breaks from their computer throughout their work day. Studies show discomfort and eye strain were significantly reduced when computer workers took four additional five-minute “mini-breaks” throughout the working day.

5. Take frequent breaks

Finally, do not be glued to your seat all day gazing at a screen. Get up and walk around regularly to give your eyes and your mind something else to focus on.

It’s well known that over time Desktop PCs and laptops start to slow down due to all the bloatware and performance tasks the computer undertakes each day. And unless great care is taken each uninstalled program leaves junk behind to slow things down even further. It’s no different with smart phones. Over time the performance of your Android OS will start to diminish. In order to get the best out of your phone you have to be careful what you download onto it, and be ruthless about offloading any unwanted or clunky apps that slow down performance. It is extremely tempting to trial swathes of new apps on Google Play store, but here are 7 top tips to keep your phone in tip top shape.

1. Less Is More

A smart phone’s RAM and OS can be quickly consumed by resource-hungry apps which sap performance and make everything seem slower and more labored. If you notice typing messages is becoming slower, apps are taking longer to open, and your phone seems to be working too hard to do simple tasks, it’s a sure sign you have an overloaded phone, and it’s time to uninstall as many apps as you can spare. Keep your phone lean and mean. Apps eat away at your storage space and can slow down background processes. The more storage space occupied or the more background processes running on your phone, the slower your phone’s performance. If you don’t want an app, long press on the icon and click Uninstall.

2. Update your Android

Always ensure your phone is updated to the latest version of firmware. There are important performance tweaks with each new release of the Android operating system. They help to improve stability, produce higher performance speed and greater connectivity. You can check if your phone has the latest upgrade by going to Settings and clicking on About Phone, then Check for Updates.

3. Disable Little Used Apps

Some apps you might want to keep even though you don’t use them every day. You can disable these apps by using Performance Assistant. Disabled apps are not shown on the home screen or app tray but you can re-enable them for use whenever you need them.

4. Regularly Update Your Apps

Apps change over time. They are regularly improved and updated, and it will improve the performance of your phone if you regularly update your phone’s installed apps from Google Play. Developers frequently fix bugs and add useful new features in newly released versions of apps. As a result of this, regularly updated apps perform better and faster, and will be less likely to crash or slow down your phone.

5. Use A High-Speed Memory Card

The memory card in your phone is the storage capacity available to you. The more space you have, the more you can store. If your phone has low internal memory, why not boost it with a high-capacity memory card. A good storage card not only adds storage space but also helps to speed up your phone. Storage cards are available in a range of sizes from 2GB right up to 128GB. Always go for memory cards of Class 6 or Class 10 for your Android phone to improve on performance.

6. Learn to Live Without Live Wallpapers

While live wallpapers on your phone can be a lot of fun and attract plenty of attention, many of those provided by the various phone manufacturers are poorly made, chew up a lot of megabytes and will require more CPU cycles to run. This is a sure-fire way to drain your battery fast. Unless you have a high capacity, high performance RAM phone, try to avoid using a live wallpaper.

7. That Syncing Feeling

While Sync is a useful feature as it synchronizes your data with Google servers, keeping sync on permanently means you can reduce your phone’s performance. Sync notifies you whenever new mail comes in or when you get new notifications or updates for apps. In order to sync your phone it performs a refresh at preset intervals. To reduce the amount of processing your phone performs, you can opt to keep Sync off for unrequired services or have it on only when you need to transfer or upload materials to Google servers.

As technology changes so do the skills of the people who repair the hardware and increasingly the software too. While you can still find TV repair services, you are much more likely to find smart phone repair service stores in your local mall or high street. And all for a product that people could not see the need for just two decades ago.

What you can expect from a Smart Phone Repair Center

Essential repairs

Because we carry our phones with us everywhere we go, it presents many opportunities for them to become damaged, either internally or externally. For example, dropping your smartphone on the sidewalk is almost guaranteed to break your screen. While accidentally dropping your smart phone into water is going to cause all kinds of challenges to dry it out and get it working again.

These are but two of the many challenges facing smart phone repair companies each day. But even if there is no external damage to the phone, sometimes the smart phone can just decide to freeze up and not co-operate at all.

Software freezes

In the world of smart phone repairs, such problems are every day occurrences, and you can expect a good service center to be familiar with them. In the event of a repair being necessary, it’s important for you to know the brand, model number and IMEI of your phone as soon as you purchase it. Should you have to take your phone to a repair center, these details will be the first things they will ask of you. If you are not familiar with your IMEI number, you can access it by punching in *#06#.

Spares and replacement parts

If you damage your phone or you need a part for a smart phone when yours breaks down, you’ll want to get it fixed in a flash. The quickest, safest and easiest way to do this is by finding a smart phone repair center close to you.

Because they will be familiar with most phone models, whether on the iPhone or Android platform, you can expect them to quickly access spares or replacement parts. Trying to fix the phone yourself can lead to the phone shutting down altogether, and at the same time possibly voiding the warranty. Most repairs should be fixable inside of a couple of days. Repair centers know you depend on your phone, so turnaround is deliberately streamlined not only to help you, but to maximize their profits.

Cellphone unlocking

Increasingly, smart phone repair service centers are also offering cellphone unlock services such as those offered by UnlockBase. In fact, UnlockBase is a market leader in turnkey cellphone operations for many leading smart phone service centers, so if you wish to get your phone unlocked locally, check if they are using UnlockBase as their unlock service provider.

What you cannot expect from a Smart Phone Repair center

Privacy

Remember, when you leave your phone at a repair service center, you are also leaving a large chunk of your life in the hands of a complete stranger. If the repair center needs to make repairs that require accessing your phone’s content, they can quickly discover all your photographs, messages and downloaded videos, so if you have anything embarrassing, or worse, incriminating on your phone be sure to remove such items before you hand it over. You cannot expect a service repair center to repair your phone and not see its private content.

Data loss

Of course, phones that break down are also at heightened risk of losing all your vital data and information. Do you know the phone numbers of every contact on your phone? No you don’t, and in many cases you can’t expect a repair service center to retrieve the irretrievable. So it’s a good idea to store your information on the cloud, and there are several online options such as Google Drive available that can store all your information securely.