Getting your phone ready before a trip

There is a small art to prepping a phone for a long trip. Do it wrong and you land with a full storage bar, a drained battery, and half your games needing wifi to finish installing.

Start a day early. Download over a stable connection, open each game once to let it unpack any extra files, and then test it in airplane mode. Doing this at home means you find the problems while you can still fix them.

Be picky about storage. A couple of substantial games you will actually finish beat a dozen you will delete on day two. RPGs and adventure games give the best hours-per-megabyte for most trips.

Finally, check your battery habits. Racing and 3D games drain fast, so pair one demanding game with a couple of gentle puzzlers for when you need to conserve power. A little planning turns a boring flight into a decent gaming session.