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You can preorder Apple's new iPhone 17 models starting today. It's the unofficial kickoff to months of smartphone companies and mobile carriers pitching you to BUY A SHINY NEW PHONE RIGHT NOW.
Or you could use this time to give your current smartphone a makeover to give it fresh life.
Extending the life of your phone is good for your wallet and the planet. It will also make Apple, Samsung and phone carriers sad.
• Tackle poor battery life
Hunt for battery hogs. There may be apps secretly gobbling your battery power, which also means they're probably slowing your phone down, said Nathan Proctor, who advocates for more accessible product repairs for the consumer group U.S. PIRG.
Check the apps using the most juice from the "Battery" section of your iPhone's Settings app, or search "Battery usage" in an Android phone's settings. Proctor said that after seeing how much battery power was used by a Sudoku app, he deleted it.
When I checked my iPhone, I was surprised that WhatsApp had eaten nearly half of my battery life over the past 10 days, although I hadn't used the app recently.
Many apps keep constantly refreshing themselves behind the scenes. That can be useful for navigation, email or news apps, but it's often not necessary.
I stopped WhatsApp from refreshing itself constantly from my iPhone's Settings app → General → Background App Refresh. You can see there all the apps updating themselves behind the scenes.
Or on Android, from the battery usage setting, you can tap each app and then flip off the option for "Allow background usage."
• Replace the battery. "It's actually the easiest way to make a phone feel brand-new again," said Chad Johansen, who runs CPR Cell Phone Repair stores in New Hampshire.
His stores, part of a nationwide chain, charge $119 to replace the battery on a four-year-old iPhone 13, and Johansen said that they can typically do the job in 45 minutes to an hour. His shops offer customers free (nonalcoholic) drinks while they wait.
Johansen said they offer free diagnostics to help customers see whether the battery needs replacing or if tweaking their phone habits would do the trick.
A great local repair shop can be a better bet than an Apple or cellphone store. Ask around and consult online reviews including for locations of the nationwide chains CPR Cell Phone Repair and UBreakiFix.
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• Update the software
• With the latest software, your phone is safer, gets new features and may work better.
• From the Settings app for iPhones - General - Software Update
• From the settings for an Android phone, try System - Software updates
Apple is making its new iPhone software, iOS 26, available free for anyone who has models from the past six years - the iPhone 11 and up. You should find iOS 26 for download on those iPhones starting Monday.
• Clean your gross phone If your selfies look blurry, it might help to clean your filthy camera lenses with a soft cloth or alcohol wipes.
If your phone is finicky when you plug it in, Wirecutter's cleaning regimen recommends using a wooden toothpick, very gently, to clear dust and goo from the charging port. Replacing your charging cable might help, too.
• Consider switching carriers
The biggest cost of owning a smartphone isn't the phone. It's the mobile service. And Americans typically pay much more for cellphone service than our peers in other countries.
You could save hundreds of dollars a year by switching to a lower-cost mobile carrier, such as the home internet providers Xfinity and Spectrum that also sell mobile service or the highly ranked U.S. Mobile and Consumer Cellular.
Buying a phone separately from phone service may also persuade you to hold onto your device longer. When your carrier promises you a "free" new iPhone, know that they're dangling goodies to lock you into years of (possibly escalating) bills.
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