Not the last factor when choosing a smartphone is its design, body and materials from which it is made. And for many users it is even more important than technical characteristics. What makes the case of modern smartphones, what are the advantages of this or that material and what should you choose - these and not only questions will be answered in this issue of the HARD heading.

Plastic. The cheapest and most common material for the manufacture of cases of smartphones. There are many varieties - from cheap ABS plastic to alloys with carbon fiber and fiberglass impurities. Today, the most popular solution for a plastic case is polycarbonate. Let's look at its main pros and cons.

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Carnival

Ever wonder why your computer warns you about ejecting those USB drives before you remove them? It’s because computers use something called write caching to improve performance: if you copy something to your drive, it’ll tell you it’s completed the task, but it’s actually waiting until it has a few other tasks to perform so it can do them all at once. Efficient, right? When you press eject, your PC finishes anything in the queue to make sure you don’t incur any data loss. Windows does a better job of avoiding problems than OS X and Linux, but we recommend ejecting all your drives anyway. It’s small price to pay for keeping your data safe. While we’re on the subject: if you’ve ever wondered why your external drives never have as much space as the box claims they do, we’ve got answers for that as well.

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Carnival

Hewlett-Packard

It’s a tale as old as time: your internet gets finicky, so you unplug your router, plug it back in, and all of a sudden it’s magically working again. But why does this happen, really? It could be a number of things: maybe it’s overheating, maybe it’s getting bogged down from too much traffic (like BitTorrent), or maybe it’s just a crappy router. Luckily, there are a lot of things you can do to fix it. Check out our guide to fixing your constantly-resetting router for more—and while you’re at it, make sure you’re waiting the full 10 seconds when you unplug it. There’s a reason for that, too.

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Hewlett-Packard

Homtom

Everyone knows viruses and trojans are bad, but a lot of people don’t know how exactly they work. Viruses, for example, are programs that copy themselves and infect a computer, spreading from one to another—just like, well, a real life virus. Trojans, on the other hand, are applications that look normal, but secretly have code that’s doing something else—like letting someone else control your computer. We highly recommend reading this explanation for more detail on the different types of malware, as well as the biggest myths surrounding them. And, as always, make sure you’re running a good antivirus program—even if you have good browsing habits.

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Experian

Homtom

Most of us put a lot of effort into finding free Wi-Fi, but public Wi-Fi networks have their own share of problems—particularly that it’s very insecure. Even if a Wi-Fi network has a password, other people on the network could see what you’re doing, or—if they were so inclinded—steal personal information and passwords. Luckily, there’s a lot you can do to stay safe: make sure sharing is turned off, use HTTPS whenever possible, and run your traffic through a VPN. Follow this guide for the details, and you should be a-okay.

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Experian

Homtom