Technologies

Make Your Phone Last Years Longer With These Easy Tips

Doing these things can help your iPhone or Android phone last for much longer, saving you a ton of money.

The superb iPhone 16 Pro or Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, are among the best phones you can buy in 2025. At least until the iPhone 17 comes along. These top-end phones have a lot in common, from their excellent cameras and high performance, but also their whopping price tags. Even wallet-friendly phones like the Google Pixel 9A still cost a sizeable chunk of money. With purse strings continuing to tighten the world over, it’s never been more important to squeeze the most value from whichever phone you buy, and the best way to do that is simply to keep using it for longer, spreading that costly purchase out over the years, rather than upgrading more often.

Doing this isn’t just better for your bank account; it’s much better for the planet, too. Upgrading your handset less often means fewer phones being produced and shipped while fewer old phones end up in a landfill. The good news is that companies like Apple, Google, Samsung and others are supporting their phones with software updates for longer, meaning the phone you buy today will remain safe to use for years to come.

The rest of it is up to you. Keeping your phone in good working condition for the seven or eight years of software support it might receive takes some effort, plenty of care and a few key strategies.

Here then are the top things you can do to help your phone last as long as possible.

Install all available updates

Using a phone that no longer receives security updates simply isn’t safe and should be avoided. Previously it was common for many Android manufacturers to support new phones for only two to three years, but now you’ll find phones like the Google Pixel 9 series coming with seven years of software support. Sadly, some more affordable phones like the new OnePlus Nord CE4 Lite still only receive a few years of updates. If you’re buying a new phone, make sure you check how long it’ll be supported as this will give you more value for money throughout the phone’s lifespan.

Updating your phone to the latest security update will help keep hackers out and keep your phone free of malicious software that could creep in and slow down your phone. Most phones will automatically prompt you to install the latest updates (and you should), but if you’re on an older phone, head into your settings menu and scroll down to Software Update and click to see if an update is available.

The same is true for your apps, which will also need to be updated to remain compatible with the version of iOS or Android you’re using. It’s good practice to allow apps to be automatically updated in the background, but if not, make sure you go into your app store of choice and check that you’re running the latest versions.

Use a case

If you’ve just bought a shiny new iPhone the best thing you can do to physically protect it is to put it in a case immediately. It’ll not only keep it safe should you accidentally drop it, but it will also help keep it from picking up micro scratches from the keys or coins in your pocket.

A screen protector is a great idea too, as once your phone’s actual screen becomes damaged, there’s little you can do to help it. If you get a nasty scratch on a screen protector, you can simply replace it, keeping the underlying phone looking fresh as a daisy for years to come. Even if you don’t plan on keeping your phone for years, keeping it looking fresh may help you sell it for more on the used market when it’s time to upgrade.

Replace a tired battery, not the phone

Your phone’s battery will gradually wear down over time, offering less battery life per charge than it did when it was new. This is true of all phones. Some older phones may have batteries that only offer 50 percent of what they once did. You may even receive warnings from your phone that your battery can’t offer the necessary power and so your processor may be throttled to compensate.

Worry not, as it’s pretty easy to replace the battery yourself on most phones to give it a whole new lease on life. iFixit sells a variety of kits and third-party replacement batteries to suit a huge range of phones, so if your battery is on the way out, it’s worth seeing if you can swap it out yourself.

There are a variety of places you can take your phone (not all of them are especially legit) to have your battery replaced — or even other components like a broken screen — and this could be a good option to consider if you’re not especially confident about your skills with a screwdriver.

Offload old apps and photos you don’t need

If you’ve had your phone for years then odds are it’s pretty clogged up with thousands of photos of your friends, your pets or the plates of food you’ve eaten over the time you’ve had it. It’s also likely you’ve got a variety of old apps and games you downloaded on a whim, played with for a few bus rides and then moved on to the next mobile gaming sensation.

A lack of storage can have a detrimental effect on your phone’s performance overall and can also mean there’s not enough room available for crucial software updates to be installed. It’s worth going through your archives, backing up the photos and videos you want to save to the cloud, and getting rid of anything on your phone that’s needlessly taking up space.

If you’ve had your phone for a long time and it’s really running slowly, it may even be worth backing up all your important data and doing a full factory reset, starting fresh and only installing the essentials you need.

Clean out your ports

Finally, give your phone a good cleaning as it can have surprisingly helpful outcomes. Pocket fluff can be a real problem for your phone, with the charging port in particular often getting clogged up with bits of nonsense. The result is that when you plug in your charger, it can’t quite connect and as a result, your phone won’t charge.

It’s easy to think that something has actually broken — the charging port itself, or the cable — but really it could be as simple as the port just being stuffed full of lint. Get a wooden toothpick in there periodically and try and ease out any dirt and debris you find to ensure your charger can fit without having to be aggressively wiggled.

It’s also worth using an old toothbrush (clean and dry) to gently brush away any debris you might find around the speakers and microphones to ensure you can clearly hear — and be heard — on your phone calls.

Steps You Can Take Right Now to Avoid an Overheated Phone

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Technologies

Need Gift Ideas? Google’s Holiday 100 Shopping List Includes Switch 2, Home Movie Projectors

You can shell out hundreds for a new gaming console or spend less on classic games and backpack charms.

The spooky season has just ended, and Google is already turning its attention to holiday shopping. The search giant just released its annual list of 100 top holiday gift ideas based on the hottest trends of 2025.

The Google Holiday 100 list is an annual shopping guide compiled from searches for various products conducted between May and September. Using that data, Google creates a catalog of the year’s top trending gift ideas across various industries, including tech, toys, fashion and wellness. You can view the entire Google Holiday 100 list here.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Nintendo Switch 2

This year’s breakaway technology hit was the Switch 2, Nintendo’s latest family-friendly video games console. Unsurprisingly, it appears on 2025’s Holiday 100 list. The console was released in June and has sold more than 10 million units thus far, with Nintendo hiking up sales expectations even among uncertain economic conditions and tariff pricing.

Google Pixel Watch 4

The Google Pixel Watch 4 is a standout wearable that made the Holiday 100 list. Its inclusion isn’t just Google stuffing its own product into a list. If you’re buying a gift for fitness-focused folks, CNET’s Vanessa Hand Orellana wrote that the latest iteration of Google’s smartwatch «hits a sweet spot between universally appealing design, seamless compatibility with the Android ecosystem, potentially life-saving safety features and robust health and fitness tracking.»

Red-light face masks

Your algorithm may have served you up a boatload of red light therapy content from health and beauty influencers this year. Search volume for red light masks has spiked in the past few months, so the LED masks have been included in the Holiday 100 buying guide this year. Just make sure to purchase one of the best FDA-approved masks.

Movie projectors to backpack charms

If you’re looking for gifts across other categories, Google has some top 2025 searches for big and small. Home theaters are apparently in this year, as searches for movie projectors spiked by a whopping 945%. Searches for backpack charms also hit an all-time high this year, so those are a safe bet for stocking stuffing for any young kids.

Checkers (the actual board game)

Even though many gifts given out at Christmas this year will surely be high-tech gadgets and accessories, the board game of checkers is also on the list. There’s always room for the classics.

As you prepare for the Herculean task of yearly holiday shopping, Google’s Holiday 100 is a good place to start. But if you’re looking to beat the crowd on the best tech deals around, CNET is already collecting pre-Black Friday deals.

Technologies

Look Up Tonight to Spot November’s Supermoon, the Brightest Moon of 2025

Has the moon been looking brighter and bigger to you for the past few days? Here’s why this month’s supermoon is even more super.

It’s already a great month for skygazers, with a trio of meteor showers and the return of the northern hemisphere winter constellations. On Tuesday night, it also features the second of four supermoons in a row. This month’s supermoon will happen on Nov. 4-5, and November’s beaver moon is special because it’ll be the brightest full moon of 2025.

In addition to being a supermoon, November’s full moon is known as the beaver moon. There is some debate as to why it was named this way. Some believe that this was the best time of year in the old days to set beaver traps to get pelts for winter clothing. Others believe that it coincides with the busiest part of the year for beavers, who are now stocking their lodges with supplies for the upcoming winter.

Here’s what time it’ll look its biggest and brightest, and what else you need to know about the November supermoon.

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The brightest supermoon: When’s the best time to see it?

The moon will reach peak illumination at 8:19 a.m. ET on Nov. 5, making the evening of Nov. 4 and the morning of Nov. 5 the best times to view the moon.

Since moon phases shift slowly, the moon will appear almost full for nearly a week. If you are unable to view the full moon on its best night due to weather or other reasons, you can still see a mostly full moon at any point from Nov. 3 to Nov. 8.

For all of those days, the moon will be measurably brighter in the night sky compared to any other full moon in 2025. The reason for this is because of the moon’s elliptical orbit. Since it’s not a perfect circle, the moon’s 27.3-day journey around the Earth brings it closer to us on some days, a phenomenon known as perigee. If there is a full moon during this time, it’s branded as a «perigean full moon,» which you may know better as a supermoon.

Not all supermoons are equal, and November’s will be a little more special than others. According to The Farmer’s Almanac, the beaver moon will be a scant 221,817 miles away from Earth, making it the closest full moon of the year. That means it’ll be the biggest and brightest of the year.

In practice, the differences are fairly minor and likely won’t be visible to the naked eye when compared side by side to other supermoons. A supermoon is only about 7% larger than a regular full moon. According to NASA, the biggest difference is when comparing a supermoon to a micromoon, where a supermoon will be about 14% larger and 30% brighter. So, if you notice that your backyard patio is lit up more than usual, it’s because of the supermoon.

Also due to the moon’s orbit, November will also bring a micro new moon, which means the moon will be as far away from the Earth as it can get — a phenomenon known as apogee. November’s new moon occurs on Nov. 20, but you won’t be able to see it.

Technologies

Stay Informed About Your Flights This Holiday Season With Your iPhone’s Tracker

Your iPhone is hiding a flight tracker. Here’s how it works.

Thanksgiving is only a few short weeks away and if you plan on flying during the holiday season, keeping up-to-date on changes to your flights is crucial. Airports can be hectic during any holiday, but with the government shutdown continuing, flights are liable to change or be cancelled more often.

Luckily, it’s never been easier to get up-to-date information about your flight. For starters, your airline probably has an app, and if not, you can check its website. If you’re in a hurry, you can Google the flight number. Or you can just use your iPhone’s built-in flight tracker that’s sneakily tucked away.

That’s right: Your iPhone has a flight tracker that you may have never known about. It’s there for when it’s needed. Below, we’ll show you have to access it in not one, but two places, so you never have to go hunting for your flight info elsewhere again.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source on Chrome.

For more on the iPhone, check out everything Apple announced at WWDC 2025.

How to track your flight via iMessage

Before we start, there are a few prerequisites you must meet:

Make sure iMessage is enabled (it doesn’t work with SMS/MMS).
You’ll need your flight number somewhere in your text messages, whether you’ve sent that information to someone (even yourself) or it’s been sent to you.
The flight number must be sent in this format: [Airline] [Flight number], for example, American Airlines 9707.

Launch the native Messages app on your iPhone and open the text message thread that contains your flight information. You’ll know the flight tracker feature works when the text with the flight information appears underlined, which means it’s actionable and you can tap on it.

If your flight is still several months away or it’s already passed, you might see a message that says, «Flight information unavailable.» You might also see another flight that’s not yours because airlines recycle flight numbers.

You can check your flight status from Spotlight Search, too

If getting your flight information from Messages wasn’t easy enough, you can also grab the details right from your iPhone’s home screen by swiping down and adding your flight number into Spotlight Search. Even better, this works with Spotlight Search on your Mac computer, too.

How to access the hidden flight tracker

Although the airline name/flight number format highlighted above is the best way to go, there are other texting options that will lead you to the same result. So let’s say we stick with American Airlines 9707, other options that may bring up the flight tracker include:

AmericanAirlines9707 (no spaces)
AmericanAirlines 9707 (only one space)
AA9707 (airline name is abbreviated and no space)
AA 9707 (abbreviated and space)

I would suggest you keep the airline name spelled out completely and add a space between the two pieces of information — like in the previous section — because for some airlines, these alternative options may not work.

Real-time flight tracking

Once everything is set, tap on the flight information in your text messages. If the feature works correctly, you should see the following two options appear in a quick-action menu:

Preview Flight: View the flight’s details. Tap this to view more information about the flight.
Copy Flight Code: Copy the flight code to your clipboard (in case you want to send your flight details to someone else via text or email).

If you select Preview Flight, at the top of the window, you’ll see the best part of this feature: a real-time flight tracker map. A line will connect the two destinations, and a tiny airplane will move between them, indicating where the flight is at that exact moment.

Underneath the map, you’ll see important flight information: