I’ve been dropping my iPhone a lot lately — enough to make me really grateful for my Spigen protective case. It’s slim enough to not feel bulky, and the lip on the front of the case has protected my screen from cracking on 30+ clumsy occasions. The kickstand feature is my favorite. — CD

Our house phone sounds awful and we get poor cell phone connectivity at home. But we have wifi and I’ve started using FaceTime Audio as much as possible to make phone calls. It works on any Apple hardware and the sound quality is crystal clear, even when using cellular data. — MF

Most carriers lock your subsidized phone so you can’t use a 3rd party SIM card with it. This is inconvenient if you want to buy a cheap SIM card in a foreign country. AT&T says they will unlock your phone, but only under certain conditions. I’ve tried before and it’s a waste of time. I gave up and used HangUnlock. It cost $2 and took less than a day. — MF

I’m still waiting for the ideal phone carrier who will let me use my phone anywhere in the world without thinking. True global coverage at reasonable rates. In the meantime I buy sim cards when I am outside of North America. They are cheap and useful. Downside is my phone has a new number. My solution: I put the foreign sim in a second phone, an older phone I no longer use. (We all seem to have one of those. If you don’t a friend will.) That way, my primary phone number still works on wifi in hotels and cafes, but I get full roaming capabilities such as Google maps, web searches, or texting locally on the other phone as I need them. — KK

When texting, at the end of a sentence hit the space bar twice and it will easily put a period in the right place. — KK

For many years, I paid $275 a month for an AT&T mobile phone plan (for a family of four iPhone users). Then I switched to T-Mobile. It’s $175 a month, we get unlimited data, and best of all, international data is free. It’s great to travel to another country and freely use the internet (for maps, reviews, texts, Instagram, etc). Phone calls are also free in Mexico and Canada, and other international calls are usually $0.20 a minute. — MF

If you use 2-factor authentication that sends a text message to your phone to get a code, beware of the port-out scam. This happens when a bad person impersonates you and tricks your phone company into issuing them your phone number. You can prevent this by calling your carrier (dial 611) from your phone and telling them to add a security PIN to your account. Anyone who tries to access your account will be asked for the PIN. Read more about port-out scamming here. — MF

For the past 2 years I’ve been using the free Nomorobo service to stop spam calls on my landlines, and it works fantastically. A few months ago I started using the paid Nomorobo app on my phone, and suddenly all those dumb spam calls have ceased. There are a number of phone spam eliminator apps, but Nomorobo is one that does not scarf up your friends’ phone numbers in order to make its white list. — KK

When I get a call from a fraudster (like a “Microsoft tech support” scammer or an IRS impersonator), I merge their call with the Jolly Roger bot ($12/yr). This is software that has canned voice responses designed to confuse and waste the time of the criminal who calls you. The Jolly Roger website has recordings of some entertaining conversations. — MF

Truecaller is a free, ad-supported smartphone app that blocks telemarketers’ calls. When a call from a spammer comes in, your phone will display a red screen that says “Identified as Spam.” And if a telemarketer slips through, you can easily add the number to Truecaller’s database. — MF