Make your Android phone faster
(Reading time: 11 minutes)
Android is one of the most popular operating systems installed on Smartphones. Many people spend good money on Android Smartphone to enjoy comfort this smooth and user friendly operating system. However, sometimes it happens that the phone becomes slow after a period of time. So if you have Android phone and you find it has become slow/sluggish these days, you can make it faster by following these steps.
Restart the Phone
One of the best working ways to make fast your android phone is to restart it after some intervals. Actually, there are many apps that we open, use and then forget to close them. They keep running in the background, even if we don’t use them afterwards. Restarting phone kill such apps and start with a clean memory. If you have enabled auto start and shut down feature in your phone for specific time span at nighttime, this step is not necessary.
It is better to be up to date
The latest software will often contain bug fixes (better source code) over the installed ones and come with many improvements which help Android device to run in better speed with performance. Software updates come through mobile data and the user should be automatically prompted to install them. To check whether we have the latest system in place, just go to Settings > About device > Software update and check for updates. The same thing applies to each of the individual apps, so just go to the Google Play Store, open the menu at the top left and tap My apps & Games and update all of the apps. It is better to check these settings at least once in a fortnight.
Clean your home screen and Minimize app screens
One should clean all the unused icons and limit the widgets only to the ones we really use. The cleaner our home screen is, the phone is better in overall performance. In similar manner, you can also minimize app screens by hiding the app shortcuts you don’t use.
Clear browsing data and close unnecessary tabs in your browser
Please make it a point to clear browsing data from your phone browser (applies to all browsers) after specific intervals. This feature is available in settings of your browser. Also close unnecessary tabs of your browser which are opened either by you or by pop-up ads. Keeping only one tab open and with less of browser data present in your browser will keep your phone fast.
Uninstall or Disable unused apps
We do not want to allow apps to be on our phone that we never use because they take up their space on the device and potentially burden the system resources. Hence, it is better to go to Settings > Apps and swipe over to the All tab. You can see the list carefully and identify the apps you don’t need. You can also identify the apps which take much of your phone resources. Tap on any app you don’t want and then choose Uninstall or, if the option is not there to uninstall, tap Disable. Disabled apps will be listed in a new tab, so you can always enable them again in future if you want. You should also take a look in Settings > Apps at the Running tab. Some apps want to be running all the time and they can impact performance adversely.
Get rid of security and Boost apps
Android may have some security related bugs just like any other operating system, but you don't need to use security app. Google has said this in the past. It is true that the security apps do not do anything, they just consume the precious RAM and slow down the phone. If you want to keep your phone safe, follow safe practices and it is all fine. Similarly, you do not need an boost/optimising app for your Android phone. Android has in-built mechanism to optimise itself. So if you have any such app installed on your phone, uninstall it.
Remove email account from email app if you have Gmail
If you have your email account on Gmail, this applies to you. I have seen many people adding their email account twice in their phone, one in their phone email app and the other obviously in Gmail. Every phone have their default email app but we dont have to configure and use that if we already use Gmail. Gmail is also a default app in every Android phone which is automatically configured by your Google account. So please remove your email account from email app of your phone if you use Gmail as your email client.
Either turn off or reduce animations
Android phones display animations when moving between apps and screens. These animations look very slick and the device looks pretty having those on, but they waste time especially on fast phones. Disabling these animations will speed up navigating between different apps and interface screens on your phone, saving your time and even battery.
Avoid Live wallpaper
Live wallpapers are fun and eye-catching to watch, but an implementation of Live wallpaper can quickly drain the battery of any powerful Android phone. Always remember that Live wallpapers take too much RAM and battery that you can imagine. Hence avoiding them will make your phone faster.
Use Black wallpaper
Most people know that the 'display' is one of the most battery-hungry elements of any Smartphone, but what they don't know that it is actually the 'wallpaper' they choose. Yes, wallpaper can make a significant difference to battery life. A pure black or generally dark wallpaper or background can actually save power as well as improve speed over a lighter one. When you have a black wallpaper, you do not have to reduce the brightness to save power. There is a very good black wallaper available on Google play store, just search for it.
Clear cached app data periodically
If you never deleted the cached data on your phone for the apps you use then you may have some data on your phone that is not required any longer because you may have deleted a number of apps but the cache files for those apps still exist. Hence, this is a important troubleshooting step to clear the cached data for all apps. To clear cache for all the apps in one go, follow these steps. Go to the Settings menu of your phone by pulling down the notification shade and tapping on the gear icon on the top right. Look for storage and tap on it. Now tap on Cached Data. You will notice a pop-up screen which will ask for confirmation. Tap on OK to completely erase all cached data from the system.
Turn off or reduce auto-sync
It is common for Android users to add various kinds of accounts to their Smartphone. This will lead to the data getting automatically synchronized in the background, and also pull out the new data and updates. This kind of synchronization will lead to have an impact on the performance of the phone and even the battery life. You can switch off this feature by simply going to the Settings option present in the phone. There you will find the Auto-Sync option under the Account and you just need to turn it off. However, it could be uncomfortable for certain people whose mobile functions depend on the usage of Auto-Sync. If you don’t want to turn off the synchronization feature, you could reduce the number of apps for auto sync and frequency of the synchronization and also delete the accounts which you don’t use anymore.
Wipe cache partition
The cache partition is separate from your app data cache and it contains temporary files. It’s worth cleaning this out every once in a while. You’ll have to boot into recovery mode to do it. The method of entering recovery mode varies depending on your device, but you’ll find it easily with a quick Google search. Once in recovery mode you use the volume keys to navigate and the power key to select an item. You’ll have to choose wipe cache partition.
Try third party launchers
Many people believe that using third party launchers will make your phone fast. However, I say that it is not a thumb rule. It solely depends upon which launcher you use. Further, different people have different experience of particular launcher in respect of speed of their phone.
Delete old and unused data
You need to delete the old and unused files like images, files, music, videos etc. to help you in making your android Smartphone run faster. It is burden for your android Smartphone to handle that situation; the final outcome will be decrease in your phone speed. I suggest to backup your files to either Dropbox or Google drive first and thereafter delete those files in your Smartphone, to make it light and fast.
Remove bloatware
Bloatware are nothing but the third party apps which are pre-installed in your android phone by device manufacturers usually. Companies install a lot of system apps which make android performance too much poor. So, you should remove bloatware to make your phone faster. Please note that you can remove bloatware of company apps, only after you have rooted your android phone. Rooting the phone means to take privilege as super user, and its slightly complicated process differs from phone to phone. However, you can learn it from various articles on internet.
Limit or disable background data
If you want to disable background data for a specific app of your choice which you think is consuming a lot of data, please follow these steps. Navigate to Settings menu and tap on the option Data usage. You can find all the apps in the descending order of data consumption by them. You can find two more options when you tap on applications which are foreground and background. At the bottom of the screen, you will find the option to restrict background data. Check this option to restrict the background data. If you want to disable background data for other apps then you have to repeat the same procedure for those apps also. Path is Settings > Data usage > Desired app.
Adjusting animation settings
By either reducing or disabling animations, you will notice an immediate performance boost. Look for the Developer options in the Settings menu and enable them. If you don't see a Developer options entry in the menu, just go to the About device and tap on the Build number until you see a message saying that they have been enabled. Then come back to settings and open Developers options. Scroll down to the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale. These 3 settings we want to change. Change their values from 1.0 to .5 (0.5). Restart your device.
Reset the phone (factory reset)
If the tricks above do not help you in making your phone as fast as you want, you can try this method as the last resort. Some people also think that you do a factory reset periodically if you want your device running in first class condition. It’s a shortcut to clean up your device and getting rid of any junk you’ve stored, but it means wiping all of the data and settings. If you decide to try it then make sure you back up everything that’s important to you first, because you are going to delete all the data on your phone. To proceed further, you can find this option in Settings > Backup & reset > Factory data reset.
Install a Customs ROM
The most impressive thing about the openness/freedom of the Android platform is that if you're not satisfied with the installed OS, you can replace it with one of many modified versions of Android (called ROMs) on your device. A new ROM can bring you the latest version/or 'the one you prefer' of Android system before your manufacturer does, or it can replace your manufacturer's version of Android with a clean, stock version. Or, it can take your existing version and just add it up with some new features you want. If you're familiar with Linux, it is similar to installing a different Linux distribution. Each version of the OS has a specific goal in mind, and differs a lot from the others. Which one you choose depends on your priorities and how you use the device. You'll need to unlock your bootloader and flash a custom recovery, but once you get the trick of it, it's not too difficult. I have installed customs ROMs on my phones, and I am happy with the results. However, you should first learn how to do it. A lot of reading material is available on internet, which can be of your use, before you decide to install a new ROM on your phone.
