Let’s face it, sooner or later we have all looked this up on the internet because of persistent lags on our phone, or just the general slowing of the smartphone experience. Here are a few ways by which you can make your android phone work faster and get rid of some of those lags –
Table of Contents
Regular Updates
If your phone is not too old, chances are that the manufacturer releases regular system updates and security patches for your device. It is important to keep your software up to date because with every new update, the company focuses on optimizing your overall experience by providing bug fixes stability improvements.
There are very few brands that actually do provide fairly regular updates. However, there are users who do not update their phones even when one is available, and this is a bad practice, to say the least. So, head over to your phone settings, and check for software updates now!
Clear Cache & Free up Storage
You may not be aware of this, but applications take up a lot of memory in the form of cached data. This is data that is stored on your device once when you use an app or visit a website and make the next visit faster and smoother. Over time, this keeps on increasing and when the device storage begins to near saturation, the phone gets slow.
A very good way to get rid of this unwanted data is to either go to a pre-installed cleaner, or use an app like Files by Google. Not only do these allow you to clear your phone cache, but they also analyze your storage for large files, duplicates and unused files and lets you free up further space.
Uninstall/Disable Unused apps
More often than not, the phones today ship with a host of pre-installed applications which are of little to no use to us. There are also applications that we install and stop using over time but never remove from our phones. These take up unwanted space, drain the battery, and utilize RAM. A very good way to prevent this is to uninstall or disable these applications. While uninstalling, a very useful tip is to get to the app info page, and clear all data before you uninstall the app. This frees up extra space which usually does not happen with a simple uninstall and this makes your phone work better.
Turn off Features not in use
How often have we transferred a file over Bluetooth and forgot to turn it off? Or walked out of home and disconnected from our Wi-Fi but left it on? Though not much, leaving these on affects all the resources of our phone in ways that can be avoided with just a little caution, and a very good practice is to turn them off as soon as we are done.
Battery Optimisation
So many of us have faced battery issues on our phone, wherein our batteries start draining faster than usual or take longer to charge and even this has an effect on how your phone runs. This is usually due to a notorious app that is using up too many resources and too much battery. You can get the better of this by heading over to battery settings on your phone and looking at your drain histories, even though newer versions of android provide for auto-optimization.
Remove Live Wallpapers
If you are using a live wallpaper, chances are this is contributing to your phone getting slower. This can be fixed simply by replacing your wallpaper to an image!
Different Launchers and Animation Speeds
Rarely do we see phones that give us the stock android experience, and very common are sights where we see smartphone brands incorporating heavily skinned launchers on to their phones, like most Chinese brands. A very useful tip is to use third-party launchers like Nova Launcher which gives you a ton of personalization options and improves your overall Android experience.
However, if you want to stick to your default launcher, one workaround that could make your phone feel snappier would be to reduce the animation speeds from the developer options. Brands usually add heavy animations, such as for opening and closing apps, to make the experience visually appealing.
Nothing Works? Factory Reset
If none of these ways make your phone work faster than before, the next step is to factory reset. This removes user data from the phone and resets it back to the default factory settings which usually fixes the problem. Do remember to back up your data before you perform a reset or else you might lose all/most of your files.
However, if resetting your phone does not do much to improve your experience either, I’m afraid it is time to buy a new phone.