One if the biggest mistakes iPhone users make is assuming all of their phone problems can be solved by simply deleting a few apps that are known as battery offender — think Facebook and Snapchat. Deleting certain apps can help, but it’s not always the cure-all you might expect. “The biggest complaint among iPhone users comes either from the battery, or storage that simply fills up due to too much clutter,” Clark says. “Most users would quickly look to the apps when their iPhones start slowing down due to clutter, but that often offers an incomplete solution. Your phone performs great after you delete apps, but it comes around to the same aggravating spot within a few days or months.”
What will work in your favor, especially if you have an older iPhone? Being extremely careful of how much media you download — and then taking care to store that media so that it doesn’t clog up your phone’s storage and wreak havoc on battery power and performance.
“In my opinion, the biggest storage issues within iPhones come from the media,” Clark says. “People simply store too many videos and photos on their devices. And no, one doesn't have to delete their sentimental photos in order to save space. Besides, deleting is only a short-term solution to the bigger issue.”
What you should do to ensure the most efficient iPhone possible is to make good use of your device’s not-so-secret storage weapon: iCloud.
“Keeping your photos and videos in the cloud, without saving another copy on the phone helps a lot if you want to save on storage,” Clark says. “This can be done by opening settings>photos> then turning on iCloud photos to enable online storage of all your photos. While at it, you should also remember to check the "optimize phone storage" setting and ensure that the option to download and keep a copy of the photos is switched off. Uploading all your photos to iCloud and deleting the copies will save you some space almost instantaneously.”