But do you think it’s true? Could you make your Android phone faster than what it’s capable of? At most, all we want is to make the Android device work as if it’s new because installing apps and using them on a daily basis slows down our smartphone. These apps run in real-time and consume memory, storage, and other resources of the device.
So, what could be the many ways to use our Android devices efficiently, in such a way that we could reduce the lags and freezes as much as possible if not completely? Having said that, let me tell you some useful Android tips and tricks:
19 Tips and tricks to make Android Faster
1. Keep the apps you use, rest are garbage
Almost every Android tips and tricks guide you might read would recommend you to keep only those apps that you use on a daily basis. Doesn’t it sound obvious? Would you store unnecessary things in your house just because they are free? Well, our homes are often clogged with such stuff but do we need to do the same thing with our smartphones?
Various apps that live inside our smartphones run all the time and need to connect to the internet to keep working. And if these apps are of no use to us, they would only put a burden on the hardware and increase our data bills. Getting rid of such apps would be a wise move in the path to speed up Android.
2. Clear app cache to make your Android phone faster
There are some apps which you don’t need on a regular basis, but they are important enough to have a place on your device. Like, the apps you use to book flights, hotels, and order food. To make Android faster, try to remove the cached data for such apps in the Settings to ensure they don’t consume much space when they are not in use.
Clearing the cached data, sometimes, helps in making the app more smoother as it removes old data which might make it lag and lead to freezes and crashes. When the data gets deleted, the app can keep newer versions of the same things. This method is helpful in the case of big apps like Facebook and Instagram which store tons of images and other data on your device.
A free Android tip: Do keep in mind clearing the app cache in many cases deletes the preferences the app has saved.
3. Clean the system memory several times during the day
Android has excellent task management skills. It can close unwanted processes on its own, whenever required. But this old-school thing, I can tell you, it would help a lot if your device has a scarcity of RAM.
Nowadays, almost every launcher includes the option to free the system memory. If it’s not there, you should consider installing some memory cleaning app. And here I am not talking about the apps which claim to make your Android phone faster by running in real-time performing cleaning operations. And all they do is they make the device even slower.
Clearing the RAM of the smartphone can give you an instant performance boost as it closes various unwanted apps capturing the precious memory of the Android phone.
4. Use lighter versions of apps, if available
Many of the popular apps like Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, Opera have their ‘lite’ versions too. These lightweight apps are often designed for entry-level smartphones and for the users who want to keep things simple.
Using lite versions for apps can improve the performance of your Android phone. And they also reduce your data bills, as it’s one of the reasons why such apps exist.
5. Update your phone, regularly
Every newer version of Android comes with various performance improvements. So, upgrading your device, if your vendor is kind enough to release one, can do wonders and speed up Android.
Alternatively, you can head over towards custom ROMs for your Android device if you think the device maker built the phone and just forgot the fact that it exists anymore. That is the case of the Mi Pad my friend brought more than a year ago. Even though the device has capable hardware, it still runs Android KitKat. Please note that using customs ROMs usually comes in the category of Android performance tips for experienced users.
6. Don’t update your phone too much
Now, this might sound a little bit unusual. Well, keeping your Android phone up to date is among the Android tips and tricks almost every user would suggest. But everything has a downside too. If your device is low on storage and it’s a few years old, upgrading it to a newer version would consume extra resources.
The device storage could even shrink down to the limit that it messes with your daily routine and all you have is a new Android and handful of essential apps. Because your phone doesn’t have the space to hold more apps.
7. Think before you install an app
It’s almost a decade since Android came into existence and the number of apps for the platform has now grown into millions. But out of these uncountable number of apps and games, not all of them are designed by developers with good intentions.
Many Android apps are fake and want to take control of your device, steal valuable data and send it to their masters. For instance, the System Update malware lived in the Play Store for three years, undetected.
Google has recently rolled out Play Protect tool for scanning such apps. Indirectly, you can make your Android device faster by this option. However, you should check the authenticity of an unknown app before you install it, even if you’re downloading it from the Play Store.
8. Format your SD Card to improve Android performance
If you’re experiencing frequent crashes on your Android phones, a corrupt SD could be one of the reasons. Formatting the SD card would not only delete the unnecessary junk of files created by the Android system and various apps, but it might eventually give a performance boost as a result.
9. Set apps to update only over WiFi
Many apps need to update themselves in the background to keep the information fresh all the time or do other things such as upload files, photos, videos. Thus, disabling background data can make an Android device faster, up to an extent.
That’s because apps are barred from connecting to the internet and using system resources. Also, turning off background data for mobile networks would help you save your internet bills.
Alternatively, if you want to prevent Google from syncing your device, you can turn off the auto-sync on your Android device. And turn-off auto update in Google Play by visiting Settings > Auto-update apps > Select Auto-update apps over WiFi only.
10. Use fingerprint sensor
Most of the Android phones, nowadays, include a fingerprint sensor. Now, using the same won’t bring any performance boost on your device. But, surely, it would decrease the time you waste to enter the pattern or pin to unlock your device. On an average, fingerprint sensors can unlock your Android phone in around 0.5 seconds. The time could range between 5-8 seconds in the case of pins and patterns.
11. A simple restart is what your Android phone needs sometimes
This thing applies to our computers; restarting the machines can help them make their way through hard times. Similarly, it can also be the case of Android devices. When you reboot your device, it deletes temporary files to speed up Android and also cleans up the phone memory.
12. Keep your stuff in the cloud, free your internal memory
The new storage fashion of 2017 is uploading files to the cloud. This not only makes our data accessible across devices but frees up valuable internal storage on the Android phone which can be used by apps installed on the device. Keep in mind that internal storage plays an important role in the performance of your Android phone.
13. Don’t put too much stuff on the home screen
Filling your Android home screen with live wallpapers and tons of widgets sounds nice. But under the hood, all these things put extra load on the hardware and affect the device’s performance.
Sometimes, you might have seen your Android device struggling to load the contents of the home screen when you’re using some heavy app or playing games.
Keeping your home screen as clean as possible can be one of the many ways you can make your Android phone faster. It doesn’t have to load all the content every time you return to the home screen or wake the device from sleep.
14. Install apps on the internal memory
Smartphones with little internal memory would go out breath after only hearing this. But having around 16GB of internal memory is pretty standard, even in the case of many budget Android phones.
The reason why I am telling you to install apps on the internal memory is that it’s considerably faster and reliable than most external SD cards. And that’s probably one of the reasons why premium smartphones like iPhone and Pixel don’t have an SD card slot. Although, device security is another important reason to ditch the slot.
Both SD cards and internal memory are flash-based storage, but the compatibility plays a significant role here. Not to mention the type of SD card one uses, whether it’s a UHS-I, UHS-II. A UHS-II or the more recent UHS-III card might be faster than the internal memory.
Nowadays, storage companies like SanDisk are working on creating SD cards that could match internal memory and make Android faster and more efficient. Still, internal storage is better in most cases.
15. Try other launchers made for Android
Custom launchers are a great way to transform your Android device into an entirely new version of itself. A custom launcher might not be able to provide a significant hardware-related performance boost, but some of them suck a lot less memory and CPU than others. Thus, installing a lightweight custom launcher can practically make your Android phone faster.
Moreover, the range of the shortcuts, customizations, and other options can help you operate your Android device quickly, if not, make it faster. These apps can reduce the time people probably waste in finding various apps and settings on their phone.
16. What to do when your Android phone freezes?
It’s hard to digest, but some evil apps and processes make our device experience the temperatures of hell. But repeatedly tapping the screen or pressing buttons would only make things worse when your Android freezes due to an app crash or when all RAM gets consumed.
Try to show some calmness and sophistication during such situations. In most cases, it’s only the app, and pressing the home button would lead you to the home screen. After that, to make Android faster, you can kill the affected app from the Recent apps section.
If nothing happens when you press the home button, gently long-press the power button and try to ‘Restart’ or ‘Turn Off’ the device. You can remove the battery if the device is stubborn enough to refuse a restart. May you have all the time if your smartphone has a non-removable battery because you’ll have to wait till the battery gets discharged.
17. Root your Android
Is rooting an Android device going to make your Android faster? No, it’s not. That’s because rooting doesn’t involve sprinkling some holy water to achieve incredible performance boosts. In reality, it’s what you do after rooting your Android might make the device faster, or worse, it might make it slower if you do things the wrong way. Please note that rooting is a part of advanced Android tips and tricks; so proceed with caution.
Most people root their devices to remove bloatware — apps pre-installed on the phone — which one can’t delete directly. Getting a great insight into the Android system may allow you to terminate the processes which are only a burden to the system.
You can even try some custom ROMs. If you remember, CyanogenMod was one hell of a popular ROM with its current descendant in the name of LineageOS. There are other popular ROMs which might have a considerable edge over the stock ROM on your device.
Note: Rooting your device will void its warranty.
18. Make Android faster with developer options
There is a much popular way to make an Android device faster by tweaking some settings in the Developer Options. However, I personally don’t like this suggestion as it leaves the device without any special effects.
You can enable Developer Options on Android by going to the About section and tapping the build number five times consecutively. Then, you’ll be able to see Developer Options in the Settings. You can disable animations on the device. Set Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale to off.
This change reduces the time wasted on rendering various visual effects on the screen when you operate, making it work quicker in some sense. Go ahead if you’re fine that your device appears to be running a decade old software when it’s not.
19. Reset Android phone
Last and but not least, the ultimate option to make your Android phone faster is to perform a factory reset. You can consider it if your device has slowed down to the level that can’t do basic things.
There are two ways to reset on your Android device. First is to visit Settings and use the factory reset option present there. This would perform a soft reset of your device which involves resetting device settings and wiping all the data like your photos, videos, apps, cache, etc.
For deeper cleaning, you’ll have to boot into recovery mode and hard reset the device. After you turn off the phone, on most Android devices, recovery mode can be accessed by pressing Power and Volume Down button for around 5 to 10 seconds.
However, you should stick with the first method in most cases, as it would fix things for you. And, do remember to backup your data before doing anything.
So, these were some of the Android tips and tricks for your phone with a hope that you’d be able to give it some adrenaline rush.
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