YOUR iPhone has three warnings signs that you shouldn’t ignore.
These key alerts can signal when something is amiss on your iPhone.
AppleA green dot signifies that your camera is active – but if it’s orange, your microphone is in use[/caption]
The first two are “warning dots”, and the third is a battery health signal.
Camera and microphone dots
Your iPhone has two warning signs to show if you’re being spied on.
They’ll appear as either green or orange dots at the top of the phone.
They don’t necessarily mean someone is snooping – but they might, and can prompt you to investigate.
The alert was added in an iOS update in 2020, and appears whenever your microphone or camera is activated.
That means if any app is secretly recording you, you’ll be warned about it.
To see the dots, you’ll need to be using a device operating iOS 14, iOS 15 or iOS 16 – go to Settings > General > Software Update to check.
A green dot will appear in the upper right corner of the display when the camera’s activated.
And it shows as orange if the microphone is activated.
By swiping into your Control Centre, you’ll be able to see details about which app is using the microphone.
So if it’s an app that you think shouldn’t be using the camera or microphone, you might want to worry.
If you think something is snooping on you when it shouldn’t be, you should check the app’s permissions in Settings.
You can even deny specific apps access to your microphone or camera, for instance.
And if you’re really worried, you could just delete the app altogether.
Battery health
Your iPhone uses a lithium-ion battery, which has a limited lifespan.
Every time you discharge and charge your iPhone, you wear down its maximum battery capacity.
Over two years (or about 500 charging cycles), you’d expect to have about 80% of battery capacity left.
That means an iPhone that would’ve lasted for 10 hours of use would now only survive an 8-hour stint off-charge.
You can check your battery health by going into Settings > Battery and tapping Battery Health.
If your iPhone has a very low battery health and it’s dying too quickly, consider upgrading to a newer model.
Alternatively, you can get an out-of-warranty battery replacement from Apple for far cheaper than the price of a new iPhone.