Speed up Android
Every device slows down over time. CHRIS MARTIN reveals how to speed your Android device
Android is one of the most used platforms in the world thanks to it’s performance and user friendly design, but no matter the quality of the software or hardware, a device is going to start to slow down after some time. We’re going to show you how to inject some life back into your Android smartphone or tablet with our handy guide.
Find out what is slowing down Android
While you can just jump to the steps below, we’re going to show you how to see exactly what is taking up the resources on your Android device. This will give you an idea on what exactly is slowing you phone down to make your clean up as efficient as possible.
The Trepn Profiler ( fave.co/2OgWkfr), which is produced by Qualcomm, will allow you to see the real-time usage of your CPU, a snapshot of the network traffic for your data/Wi-Fi, and will also show you the load on your GPU and RAM. Head into the app store and download the app, fire it up and take a look at what exactly is slowing your phone down.
Delete unused apps
A common cause of a slow Android smartphone or tablet is that you’ve filled it up with app, many of which you probably downloaded on a whim and don’t actually use. Like a PC, your Android device will slow down if it’s become bloated with applications.
Our advice is to go through all your installed apps and pick out ones you don’t use to free up some space. Remember to uninstall them fully rather than just remove the icon from your home screen.
With more available space on your Android device, things should run smoother.
Get rid of media
The next thing to cull is media. In the same way that apps can easily take up a lot of space, music, photos and videos do the same – even more so if you’re shooting 4K video regularly or keeping your entire
music library stored on your device. Trawl through all the media you have and get rid of anything you can to create more space. Perhaps videos you’ve transferred to your PC or photos you’ve taken multiple times.
Remove widgets
Widgets are a great feature of Android but they take more processing power to run compared to simply displaying an icon.
If you’re using a lot across multiple home screens, consider which ones you don’t use much or could do without. Having fewer will lighten the load on your Android device and help speed it up.
Clear your RAM with an app manager
Android will automatically kill apps if it needs memory that isn’t being used wisely, but you can still have a user effect on what’s going on in the background. For starters, you can open recent apps and clear anything you’re not using by swiping it off the screen.
To check what’s using up the memory, go to Settings > Apps > Running. This may be different, depending on your device, so also look for an application manager or smart manager. Apps using the memory or cache isn’t necessarily a bad thing, things are done like this to avoid loading everything each time you open an app.
You can often speed up your device by stopping an app or clearing the memory entirely. Although there are tools built into Android for app management, there are some apps which you can download from the Play store such as Advanced Task Killer.
Reboot
It’s the classic ‘have you tried turning it off and on again’, but it really does still work for most technology. A good old-fashioned reboot is likely to help you out if things are feeling sluggish, at least for a while.
Factory reset
If all else fails, we recommend trying a factory reset. It’s not ideal, but a clean slate might be just what you need if you can’t figure out why your Android device is so slow. You’ll need to re-download apps and the like and make sure you back up any data, such as photos, that you don’t want to be gone forever.