On Thursday morning I took my usual train to work when some lovely individual decided that he would do his Christmas shopping by grabbing my phone out of my hand just as the train stated pulling away.

He was on the platform at Koeberg Road station and had the audacity to look me straight in the face as the train pulled away.

Goodbye phone.

But there is a silver lining here, when I went to MTN to report my phone stolen and needed to be blocked, they said I was due for an upgrade!

That was a lovely surprise because I thought was only in January and that I’d have to wait a few weeks for a new phone.

So now I have a brand new LG G4 and it’s so much more beautiful and responsive than my G2. But I’m really heartbroken at the loss of my phone cover. It was really one of my favourites.

New phone cover! Ebay FTW!

A post shared by Zayaan Schroeder (@zayaan27) on Jun 23, 2014 at 11:09pm PDT

Apps that I really needed

When I went through the list of apps I had installed on my phone not a lot of them were ESSENTIAL. You’d think that the first thing I would install was all my social media (and while they were on the list of important apps – for both work and personal purposes), they didn’t make the cut for things that were absolutely needed!

There was a lot of nonsense or nice to have apps but when I get a new phone these are the Apps that I need to have installed.

Avast Antivirus and Security

Avast Mobile Security keeps your device safe from viruses, malware, adware and spyware. It’s the first thing install on a new phone because it scans every app you install.

Download here

Android Device Manager

In the event that your phone gets stolen or is lost you can do a few things with this app:

• If you’ve lost your phone in the house (you know this is a thing that happens!) or wherever, you can go to the Google Device Manager on your desktop and have it ring on a loud volume even if it’s set to silent. This has happened to be about 5 million times.
• You can locate your phone from the website too provided that your phone and location are on. If your phone’s been stolen, chances are the they turned your phone off and I rarely have my location on because it drains my battery although when travelling on the train from now on I will turn it on.  
• If your phone had been lost or stolen you can lock it remotely and no one will be able to access it unless they have the PIN and password that you have up. You can also leave a message on the lock screen for whoever finds it.
• You can also remotely erase all your data from the phone. I we cookery freaked out because my phone is filled with pictures of The Munchkin and sensitive information like my home address is saved in Google Maps. The downside to this is once you’ve wiped your phone you can’t lock it remotely. It seems to be one or the other.

Download here

Super Backup

This app backs up your contacts, texts and apps. My texts I don’t really care about. The Play Store keeps track of my apps so I mainly use this for contacts. Although I should back it up more often…

Download here

WhatsApp

And then lastly WhatsApp because staying in touch with my loved ones is key for my existence and sanity.

Download here (I suspect most if not all you won’t need this link because who doesn’t have WhatsaApp? Oh, you? Then what are you waiting for?!)

What are your must-have apps that you download when you get a new phone?