Seven Must-Have SmartPhone Accesories

If you love your smartphone, why not purchase some accessories to complement it? We take a look at some of the must-have smartphone peripherals you should buy for your devices.

We won’t be talking about any fancy bling here, because those kinds of customization are always up to you to decide upon. We’d love to recommend a ton of specific items, but not everyone is using the same gadget so we’ll stick with general ones to make this list a bit shorter. List is not in any particular order.

Smartphone Case

Everyone loves a smartphone case. Those flip covers, hard shells, bumper cases and jelly protectors not only provide added protection against bumps and drops but also add personality to our rather plain-looking, same-faced smartphones. Besides the generic-designed ones, there are shops that offer customizing your phone cases for an additional fee.

Here’s a tip: While it may be expensive to buy a hard shell or a premium flip cover for your gadget, it provides maximum protection. Be vigilant where to get a genuine one, and stick to those you trust. As for cheap jelly cases priced as low as Php20USD 0.34INR 29EUR 0.32CNY 2, you may get yours from merchants on lower-end malls, as they offer them at a cheaper rate than those in huge shopping centers.

RELATED: Ten Tech Gift Ideas under Php1,000USD 17INR 1,445EUR 16CNY 124

Powerbank

Unless you’ve got a smartphone with a massive battery capacity to boot, you can never deny that powerbanks have been a staple for the internet-savvy who often drain their smartphone juice fast because of mobile data. Selling for as low as Php645USD 11INR 932EUR 10CNY 80 for a 10600mAh pack (Xiaomi), who couldn’t resist having one?

Here’s a tip: Our powerbanks need care as much as smartphones need them. If you’re not going to use one for a long time, store it half to full charged at a cool, dry place, and remember to discharge-recharge every month to maintain and lengthen its lifespan.

RELATED: 12 Bang-for-the-Buck Power Banks You Can Buy • New Powerbanks: APC, Pyxis and Emie

Screen Guard/Tempered Glass

As you may recall, we discussed before that most of us have this tendency to purchase screen guards for our devices even when they are scratch-resistant. Screen guards provide added protection for your display against smudges and scratches.

Here’s a tip: How often should you replace your film screen guards? While we recommend not to fix anything that ain’t broken, you should replace your screen protector once you’ve noticed that it had discolored — you’ll notice that when the hues on your device are slightly off than the norm. You may want to replace it too when it suffered from a lot of scratches. You wouldn’t want to swipe on a rather rough surface, do you?

OTG Flash Drive

Aside from the usual microSD card that most smartphones have, a rising feature devices have nowadays is USB-On The Go (OTG), enabling you to use your Android device as a USB host and connect, for example, a USB stick directly to the smartphone. The same goes for instances when you need additional space, and an OTG flash drive helps alleviate that dilemma.

Here’s a tip: Do you want to know if your smartphone supports OTG? Here‘s a simple app you can download to check it. Besides a flash drive, you can use other peripherals on your device such as a USB game controller to handle your games beyond the touch display.

Camera Peripherals

If you love taking shots from your smartphones, why not invest in mobile photography equipment? Monopods, lenses, mounts, bluetooth shutter devices and external flashes, such as the Lenovo Vibe Xtension Selfie Flash, are getting fame for being mobile photo-friendly accessories.

RELATED: Ten Apps for a Killer Instagram post • From Good to Great: 5 Tips to Improve Smartphone Photos

Audio Peripherals

For the music junkies, you can’t miss out spending on a quality audio accessory. Headphones, in-ears, Bluetooth speakers and wireless headsets, and mobile docks are just some of those that you can purchase. Good ones start at Php400USD 7INR 578EUR 6CNY 50 (Genius).

Here’s a tip: To distinguish the left side of in-ears without microphones easily from the right, here’s what I usually do when I use them: I tie a knot on the right side’s cable. That way, I wouldn’t have a long time figuring out which side is which.

MicroSD Card

Rounding up out list is everyone’s essential for images, music, movies, and apps. A microSD card has become a staple for every Juan, and they sure do help in providing additional storage for all our media files.

Here’s a tip: Besides microSD card classes like what we have discussed before, how do you differentiate microSD, microSD-HC and microSD-XC cards? These are just labels for identifying capacities they can bear. microSD-High Capacity (HC) cards can store between 4 to 32GB, while microSD-eXtended Capacity (XC) cards can hold larger amounts of files ranging from 32GB up to 2TB.

That rounds up our list of must-have smartphone accessories. Do you have any other accessory in mind that’s not on this list? Tell us at the comments section below.