Click to start fresh: How to spring-clean your mobile device

Winter is over, and the sun finally begins to ogle from the clouds. Soon, the crisp air of spring will arrive to summon not only day of cheers, but days perfect for cleaning your homes, offices, and other spaces. It's a good time to give your smartphones a thorough cleanup, too. Here's a brief guide to get you started:

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First things first, copy and store your files off of your phones. Both iOS (iPhoto, Image Capture) and Android (Windows Photo Gallery) have built-in applications to safeguard all items on your photo and video galleries. How about your contacts, call lists, music, and your current level or status of your favorite gaming app? You can either do file sharing from within iTunes or use third-party tools like DiskAid, Ecamm's PhoneView, or Macroplant's iExplorer, which allows restoring giant loads of data in a few clicks and swipes.

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Weed out unnecessary apps, files, and all other digital content that take up precious storage space. Mobile tools such as Clean Master removes spam content, speeds up the processor’s performance, and keeps existing data from viruses, system shutdowns, and other headaches. Likewise, CCleane and History Eraser give smartphones a thorough clean, sweeping off stray files, wiping cache data and empty folders, and deleting browser history and call logs.

Update your existing applications, or better yet, replace outdated apps with new, more responsive ones. Before shopping for new apps and upgrades, check if your apps remain active so that you will be spared from bugs and other issues the moment you decide to avail of the latest version of your operating system.

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Download apps that can keep your files and organized from hereon. CoBook and Contacts+ organize your phone and social media contacts and group them automatically based on the fields you have encoded. Attachments.me allows for easier search whenever you need to retrieve photos, documents, and other files you sent through Gmail.  

Seeing the promise that mobile technology holds, technophile and rising entrepreneur Taihwa Terry Ho has invested in the development of apps and similar capabilities. Follow him on Twitter to get tips on making the best use out of your gadgets and software.