When you get a new phone — or even if you’ve had yours for a while — the default settings aren’t necessarily set up for your benefit. Manufacturers make choices that serve their own convenience or collect data they find useful. Some settings are simply left at defaults that made sense for a generic user, not for you specifically.
Taking ten minutes to go through these five settings could meaningfully improve your battery life, security, and safety. Here’s exactly what to change and why it matters.
1. Turn On Auto-Brightness (If You Have It Off)
Auto-brightness often gets a bad reputation — some people turn it off because they want manual control, or because it once adjusted badly at the wrong moment. But the ambient light sensor in modern phones is good enough that auto-brightness genuinely serves you better than any static manual setting.
Here’s why: most people who use manual brightness set it for the brightest environment they regularly encounter (outdoor use in daylight), and then leave it there. That means your screen is running at full power in a dark room at 11pm, hammering both your eyes and your battery when it doesn’t need to.
iPhone: Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Auto-Brightness. Toggle it on.
Android: Settings > Display > Adaptive Brightness (or Auto Brightness, depending on manufacturer). Toggle it on.
Auto-brightness adapts in real time — dim in dark environments, bright when you need it. Your eyes strain less, your battery lasts longer, and you don’t have to think about it. If it ever adjusts in a way you don’t like, you can nudge the brightness slider manually and it learns your preference over time.
2. Audit Your App Permissions — Especially Location, Camera and Microphone
This is the one most people have never done, and it’s the most important.
When you install apps, they ask for permissions — access to your location, your camera, your microphone, your contacts. You grant them during setup, often quickly, and then forget. The result is that over months and years, you accumulate a list of apps with access to sensitive parts of your phone that you’ve completely forgotten about.
The specific permissions worth auditing are:
Location (“Always On”): Some apps request permission to track your location even when you’re not using them. Navigation apps like Google Maps or Waze genuinely need this. Most other apps do not. An app with always-on location access is continuously using your GPS radio, draining your battery, and building a picture of your movements.
Microphone and Camera: These should be set to “While Using the App” for almost every app — meaning the app can only access them when it’s actively open on your screen. No app needs microphone or camera access in the background.
iPhone audit: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services (for location), then Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone and Camera (for those). Go through each list and change any “Always” to “While Using App” unless you have a specific reason.
Android audit: Settings > Privacy > Permission Manager. You can browse by permission type — tap Location, then “Allowed all the time,” and review the list.
Take five minutes to go through this. You may find apps you’d forgotten you’d even installed, with access you definitely didn’t mean to grant permanently.
3. Set Up Two-Factor Authentication on Your Apple ID or Google Account
Your phone account — your Apple ID or your Google account — is the most valuable account you have. It holds your photos, your contacts, your purchased apps, your payment information, your email, and in many cases your passwords. Losing access to it, or having it compromised, can be catastrophic.
Passwords alone are not sufficient protection. Data breaches happen constantly, and if your password leaks in a breach at one service, attackers try it everywhere else — including your Apple or Google account. Two-factor authentication means that even with your password, an attacker can’t access your account without a second verification step.
Apple ID: Go to Settings > tap your name at the top > Sign-In & Security > Two-Factor Authentication > Turn On.
Google account: Go to myaccount.google.com > Security > 2-Step Verification.
There are two types of 2FA worth knowing about. SMS-based 2FA sends a code to your phone number — it’s better than nothing, but SMS can be intercepted. Authenticator app 2FA (using apps like Google Authenticator or Apple’s built-in Passwords app) generates a time-limited code on your device itself, which is significantly more secure. If you’re going to set up 2FA, the authenticator app route is the better option.
4. Make Sure Find My iPhone / Find My Device Is Turned On
This sounds obvious, but a surprising number of people have never checked whether this is actually enabled — or turned it off at some point and forgot.
Find My (iPhone) and Find My Device (Android) allow you to see your phone’s location on a map if it’s lost or stolen, play a sound to find it in the house, lock it remotely to prevent access, and in the worst case, remotely wipe all your data.
iPhone: Settings > tap your name > Find My > Find My iPhone. Make sure this is toggled on. Also turn on “Send Last Location,” which sends the phone’s last known location to Apple when the battery dies.
Android: Settings > Security > Find My Device (or Google > Find My Device). Sign in with your Google account.
Once it’s set up, test it: go to icloud.com/find (iPhone) or android.com/find (Android) from a computer and confirm you can see your device on the map. Knowing it works before you need it is far better than discovering it was off when your phone goes missing.
5. Set Up Emergency SOS and Your Medical ID
This is the setting people are most likely to skip and most likely to be grateful for if they ever need it. It can genuinely save your life, and it takes about three minutes to set up.
Emergency SOS allows you to quickly call emergency services without unlocking your phone.
- iPhone: Press and hold the side button and a volume button together to trigger SOS — or go to Settings > Emergency SOS to configure it. You can enable auto-call, which dials 999 automatically after a countdown.
- Android: Settings > Safety & Emergency > Emergency SOS (varies by manufacturer). Some phones let you trigger it by pressing the power button five times rapidly.
Medical ID is equally important. It’s a section of your phone that can be read by paramedics even when your phone is locked — no passcode required. It can contain your blood type, allergies, medications, conditions, and emergency contacts. In an accident where you’re unconscious, this information could directly affect the treatment you receive.
iPhone: Open the Health app > tap your profile picture > Medical ID > Edit. Fill in everything relevant — blood type, allergies, any medications, at least one emergency contact — and make sure “Show When Locked” is turned on.
Android: Settings > Safety & Emergency > Medical Information (on Pixel phones). Samsung Health also has a Medical ID feature. If your phone doesn’t have one built in, the free “ICE — In Case of Emergency” app from the Play Store does the same job.
It Takes Ten Minutes — Do It Now
None of these changes are complicated, and none of them require any technical knowledge. They take about ten minutes to work through, and the benefit — better security, better privacy, better battery life, and a safety net if things go wrong — lasts as long as you have the phone.
If you’re ever unsure about your phone’s settings or health, you’re always welcome to pop into GenioTech at 29 Hilltown, Dundee. We’re happy to take a look and give honest advice — no charge for a quick chat, no obligation.