In a bid to declutter things in my life, I’ve found that I have a ton of rubbish on my smartphone. Its not the shopping list I had written done from a few years ago, or the blurry photos of random objects and events I have stored away (and that’s not even looking at the photos/videos that get dumped on my smartphone from chat apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram), its the number of random apps I have installed.
It never used to be like this when we all started out with smartphones as we all bought the cheapest one available; the one with the lowest storage capacity, and after jest a few weeks we all learnt how to do a bit of ‘housekeeping’ by deleting things that we really don’t have much use of. Now, armed with 64GB of internal storage (you might remember I’ve given up on SD card storage on phones), its like I have a Tardis on my phone; I can just shove tons of stuff on there.
Just on the home screen itself, I’ve found 5 apps that I probably use once a year. I don’t use the weather app, being in HK I’m constantly reminded on when the next chilly spell or downpour is by my colleagues, or I resort to using the HK Observatory app to satellite track the typhoon that is near so maybe, just maybe I can get an extra day off work. And the HK Observatory app is hidden on the 3rd page in some obscure app folder. I hardly use the GoPro app as well as I’ve found switching on the wifi on the GoPro really drains its batteries, but that app is sitting on the home screen as well.
I must put my hand up and admit that I still occasionally use freemyapps. Downloading and installing the listed apps on freemyapps gives you points, and once you hit 6000 points (apps normally have a range of 10 to 50 points) you can redeem it for spending vouchers or donate to a charity to the sum of USD$10. For the last 2 years I have not paid for a single Starbucks coffee. The downside to all this is I have pages upon pages of apps which I’ve downloaded and opened for just 30 seconds which I never use.
Probably out of a hundred apps I download, I’ll find just the one thats useful, and even then its a case of ‘I think its useful’ at the moment in time, but in realty when looking back its actually a case of ‘when the hell did I ever use this app?’.
