Smartphone emergencies happen at the least expected times; that’s why they’re called emergencies. If you’re an online bridge player like most of us here, then you especially don’t want these tech issues to sneak up on the quality of your game.

Here are some useful tips & tricks for the most common smartphone emergencies.

    #1: Rice

Rice is one of the most useful objects that you can have in the house for tech-related emergencies combined with liquid. This is because rice has a knack for absorbing moisture. 

I’ve dropped everything from remotes to smartphones in water – and all of them were those “don’t ask” type of situations where it’s just better not to explain how it happened – and rice has come to the rescue a lot more times than I want to count.

Remove the battery and SIM, then place the phone itself and the battery in a bowl of rice. Let sit for several hours to overnight.

Surprisingly, this works more than it doesn’t.

#2: Wet Wipes

A dirty smartphone screen is a lot more than just a health risk.

It can also lead to a lot of misclicks. When the phone can’t track your movements properly, then it can turn the keyboard into a disastrous landscape that’s impossible to navigate.

Keep wet wipes close at all times. You’ll find that they’re useful for a million different things other than wiping your smartphone (and often, you’ll notice that your touch screen is generally more responsive).

#3: Sensitivity Settings

Touch screen issues are common when it comes to smartphones.

Either they aren’t picking up cues, or they’re so sensitive to touch that you click on a bunch of things that you didn’t mean to.

BBO has the ability to “confirm” plays before you make them with a second click. (This should be set to the default if you’re used to misclicks – and you’ll find this in your BBO profile settings.) 

You can also set smartphone screen sensitivity. 

Navigate over to your main smartphone settings and look for anything that refers to the touch screen or keyboard. Here, sensitivity can be altered to be either more or less and it happens to fix most sensitivity issues.

#4: Android’s “Task Manager” 

Should your battery be running down too fast, it’s usually something over-using resources. Press and hold the button to the utmost left (or the right, with some phone models) and you’ll get the equivalent of Windows’ Task Manager. 

(Yes, I know they’re technically no longer buttons, but still…) 

From the task manager, you can remove “background processes” that remain open. Basically, this might be any app on your phone that you’ve opened in the past few days to weeks. 

Close these, and your battery should automatically last longer. Smartphones also tend to work better (and faster) as a result.