Cut your bills with an iPhone – three BIG mistakes costing you
YOUR iPhone has some clever tricks that could slash your monthly bills.
We reveal three mistakes you're probably making – and how to fix them quickly.
Vampire subscriptions
It's entirely possible you're paying money for apps you don't even use.
These "vampire" apps quietly drain cash from your bank accounts – and you might not even notice.
It's all linked to iPhone Subscriptions, which run through the App Store.
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Lots of iPhones apps are free, and others require a one-off fee to download.
But some apps work on a subscription basis, which means you fork out monthly or yearly to use them.
These subscriptions will automatically renew, meaning you'll keep paying until you choose to end them.
It means app makers can be paid for maintaining a service – but it can end up costing a small fortune.
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Open your iPhone then go into the Settings app.
Now tap your Apple ID profile at the top, then choose Subscriptions.
You'll be able to see all of the services you're paying out for each month.
And it'll even show inactive subscriptions that you've paused – or that have expired.
You can also get to this feature through the App Store.
Go into the App Store, tap your profile picture in the top-right corner, and then choose Subscriptions.
To cancel a subscription, simply tap on it and then select Cancel Subscription.
You could also switch to a cheaper plan if one is available.
Ditching iPhone over battery life
Over time, your iPhone battery life will get worse.
In fact, after around 500 charges (or roughly two years of use), you'd expect to have 80% capacity.
That means you're getting 20% less usage per charge than when it was new.
If you've had an iPhone for two or three years, it can be tempting to pay for a new model just down to battery life.
But there's a better option: an Apple battery swap.
It's much cheaper to pay for Apple to swap your battery (£79/$79) than to buy a new iPhone.
You'll instantly have like-new battery life, and you'll likely see some performance improvements too.
This could save you from forking out for a pricier phone contract.
Paying for too much storage
If you've had an iPhone for years, you'll probably have loads of stuff on your phone.
This can lead to you paying over the odds for high-storage iPhone models or pricey iCloud or Google Drive storage deals.
But you'll probably find that you don't need as much storage as you think.
There are loads of ways to quickly free up some iPhone space.
Firstly, if you're a regular music or podcast listener, or binge-watcher, you will likely have lots of downloaded content.
This is media that has been downloaded for offline viewing.
In some apps, this process is automatic.
You can check which of your apps are using up lots of space in Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
If you see a media app is using lots of storage, go in and look for downloaded content.
Then begin deleting it to free up some serious space.
There's also a second hack built into that lets you free up space very quickly.
It's called Offload Unused Apps, and it appears in your settings.
The feature removes apps from your phone that you don't use regularly.
But it backs up the personal contents of those apps on the cloud.
That means you won't lose any of your settings or files in the apps.
When The Sun tested the feature, it freed up an incredible 38.17GB of data.
And this could unlock even more on your own device.
Many recent iPhone models have shipped with 64GB of storage as standard.
So freeing up that much storage is a significant amount.
Simply go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and then tap Enable on Offload Unused apps.
There's a third Apple trick built into the iPhone that can also clear some space.
It's called Review Downloaded Videos.
This is an automatic feature that collects videos you've downloaded to your iPhone.
Videos take up much more space than photos, and can easily gobble gigabytes of storage.
Go into Settings > General > iPhone Storage and look for the option to Review Downloaded Videos.
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It will give you an estimate of how much space you could clear.
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You can then go into the setting and see how much space individual videos are using, and then deleting the ones you don't want to keep.
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