In case you didn’t notice, the Startupbiz team loves technology and its applications. We do our best to make sure our articles are full of useful information, which also pays mind to the use of technological advancements. Arguably one of the greatest technologies to come out of recent times is the mobile telephone. It’s gone through a few changes in its existence, but the version we have of it now is a pretty useful device with its applications. Applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter have changed the world. Some apps on our phones go underutilized, and here are 5 that you are almost certainly underutilising.

Calendar

I find it strange when people say they forgot an appointment or something that is supposedly important to them. While I get that people say this when it is not always true, if it is really important to you, there’s a way never to forget. Your phone has a calendar application that can help you easily remember every important appointment. It’s right there in your pocket. With the tap of a few buttons, you can ensure you don’t forget any upcoming event. My favourite thing to do is to add alerts to the event; 1 week before and 1 day before. This ensures that I’m reminded before the appointment. What’s even more impressive about these calendars is they can be linked to your email calendars, so the appointments stay in your account even if you lose the phone.

Notes

Continuing with the theme of forgetting things, another really useful app is the notes app. This works a lot better when it comes to remembering details. You can do just about anything in notes apps today, including attaching audio and video to the notes. So there’s really no excuse for forgetting any details. It could be something you were supposed to look up, a web address, a shopping list, an idea, or anything else. Just like the calendar, these note apps also have cloud storage backup, so you never lose any details even if you lose the device.

Reminder

The reminder app, at first glance, looks like a duplication of the calendar app, but there is a whole lot more to this app, depending on the version you have. Reminders work best when you want to remember something that is not an appointment but may be time sensitive. Say you want to look up something or need to buy something by a certain day this is the app for that. The reminders are very flexible and can do a whole lot. You can use multiple reminder lists for multiple things. If you have never used it before, become familiar with your reminders app and see what it can do.

Alarm

Yes, I’m leaning heavily on apps dealing with time-sensitive issues because I’ve seen many cases of people realising things too late or forgetting important things completely. You can avoid being one of these simply by using the alarm application on your phone. You can set up alarms for important things during your day, such as wake-up and sleep time. You can even use your alarm app to remind you to take breaks. At one point in the height of lockdown and working from home, I had to set the alarm to remind me to take my lunch break. You can play this however you want or need it to go.

Camera

It’s awesome that phones have cameras, and everybody knows how to use theirs. People don’t always know what to use it on. I recently attended an event where many people handed me business cards. I took pictures of the cards and handed them back to them. I, of course, explained that I’d taken a picture which was immediately backed up to the cloud so I would never lose it. People often forget details that they wouldn’t have lost if they had just used their camera app. Maybe you saw something and have forgotten the price or place; you should’ve taken a picture.

I’ve mentioned ways that I use these apps or ways I can think of using them. Don’t let my limitations be your ceiling, though. Figure out how to use these apps in a way that works for you. The best thing about all these apps is that they come preinstalled on the phone or device. Yes, even laptops have all these apps. So you need not download a new app to access all these functions. And since you already paid to have the app on your phone, you may as well use it.