Summer is the most dangerous time of year for your phone

The summer months are filled with cookouts, outdoor festivals, days at the beach—and an increased chance of danger for your phone. Get informed and learn tips from Asurion Experts to help your phone avoid the summertime blues.

Believe it or not, phones can't swim

From June through August, Asurion sees a more than 50% increase in liquid damage claims—such as dropping phones in the swimming pool or lake—compared with claims filed during the rest of the year.

Move over, Halloween

July 4th is now the scariest holiday of the year (for your phone, at least). Independence Day activities will lead to more phones lost, stolen or damaged than any other holiday celebration, with Halloween and Mardi Gras coming in second and third place, respectively.

Summer surge is alive and well

That is, the surge in lost and stolen phones. Asurion’s claims data indicates the summer months see more than a 50% jump in smartphone loss and theft. In a recent experiment, Asurion purposefully “lost” smartphones in three major cities across the U.S. to test the likelihood of them being returned. Basically, while it’s great that so many lock their phones for security (71%, in fact), this makes it more difficult for someone to return your phone. In our study, we saw that displaying your contact info on the lock screen meant that your phone was 3x more likely to be returned by a good Samaritan; however, fewer than 1 in 4 actually add this extra layer of protection.

How to keep your phone safe this summer

1. Add contact info to your lock screen

The easiest way to do this is to place a text label on any photo in your gallery and include an alternate phone number or email address. From there, go to Settings > Wallpaper and Themes. Select your edited image, then press Set as Wallpaper > Lock Screen.

2. Enable Find My iPhone or similar service

Many people assume this is automatically activated with every phone, but it needs to be manually turned on in their phone settings.

For iPhone: go to Settings, tap your name at the top of the Settings list, then tap iCloud, and look for Find My iPhone to confirm it's on. Set “Send Last Location” to ON. This will automatically send the phone's location to iCloud any time that the iPhone's battery is critically low.

For Android: download an app from the Play store, such as the Google app Find My Device. Then just follow the set up directions once downloaded.

3. Don't assume the worst

Many people don't call the establishment where they accidentally lost or left their phones, thinking there's little chance of getting them back. During Asurion's experiment, we heard from many organizations that had drawers full of lost phones waiting for owners to reclaim them.