Here's a familiar experience: you buy the fastest Android
smartphone you can find and, at first, it lives up to your expectations. In
addition to looking and feeling stylish, it's blazing fast with any task you
throw at it.
However, a few months or maybe a year down the road and
things aren't as sparkly as they were. Besides the physical aging where your
once squeaky clean gadget is now riddled with scratches, booting takes forever,
transitions between screens isn't seamless anymore, and not even the basic apps
run smoothly.
When this happens, don't stress yourself. It's normal for
any computer, big or small, to grow slower over time. Although this might
prompt you to start thinking of buying a new phone, you could save the money
and your gadget by performing a few tricks.
Below, we look at some of the best measures you can take to
push your slow handset further and perhaps even regain its lost glory.
1: Delete and disable unused apps
If you're an active smartphone user, you probably have your
app drawer flooded with all sorts of applications. And while some are essential, it's likely that you
haven't used a good number of them since the day you installed.
Having too many apps won't be a problem if your phone has
ample storage, but if not, space conservation is critical. Additionally, some
of these unnecessary apps might be running in the background, hogging limited
resources.
Getting rid of dispensable programs is, therefore, the smart
way to go. Go to Applications in the Settings menu, or simply long-press on the
unwanted app and drag it to the "Uninstall" button at the top or
bottom of the screen.
Some pre-installed programs and bloatware won't give you the
option to uninstall them completely, but disabling them will render them
inactive and free up some RAM.
2: Clean your storage
Besides useless apps, you might have too much music, videos,
and other files filling up your phone's memory. A squeezed internal storage
capacity can affect performance, so try and keep a healthy amount of free space
by deleting old or nonessential files.
To free up some more space, go through your frequently used
applications and clear cache data.
Don't know what cache data is? Well, this is the information
an app saves on an active memory space so that it can quickly be retrieved when
needed. In other words, cache speeds up your device by decreasing an app's
loading times.
However, cache data often builds up and gets old over time,
eventually choking up your storage.
3: Do away with live wallpapers, pointless
widgets, and animations
Among the reasons users love Android, is the flexibility it
offers when personalizing the interface. Live wallpapers and widgets are,
therefore, some of the cool features that come with owning an Android device.
That said, having them in prolonged use can negatively impact battery life and
slow your device.
Live wallpapers and data-intensive widgets like Facebook
always occupy part of your RAM, leaving less space for newly-launched
applications. The same goes for animations, such as screen transitions and icon
shadowing. But although you can easily remove a live wallpaper and a widget,
disabling stock animations will require you to unlock Developer Options on your
Settings App.
4: Update your software
Software updates aren't always about new features. In fact,
manufacturers often use OTA upgrades to fix bugs, improve security and enhance
performance. An update will often cure a slow and aging device.
It's imperative to ensure your smartphone is running the
latest version of Android available at all times. In most cases, a new update
will appear as a notification, but you can trigger a manual search in Settings,
every once in awhile.
5: Backup and reset
As a measure of last resort, consider reverting your phone
to factory conditions. The process will involve creating either an offline or a
cloud backup of your vital data and triggering a complete reset of the OS.
After resetting, the memory is left clean, and the software the way it was when
you bought the phone.
The idea of doing a reset is to give your gadget the fresh
start it desperately needs. When your phone boots back up, everything will be
fast and smooth again. You can then start employing good app and storage
management practices to push the next reset date far into the future.
Conclusion
Mobile phones are practically mini-computers. And just like
their larger counterparts, slouching will start showing sooner or later.
Sure, the more high-end smartphones on the market will give you more time, but
after a while, even they won't be as quick as they first were. Nevertheless,
the above tips will help prolong the life of your device by keeping it fast and
reliable, despite its age.
