As it is with any other desktop or mobile
operating system, the performance of your
Android OS will start to diminish after you use it
for some time. Mobile operating systems are
supposed to be lighter and faster to keep up with
our need to be on the move, yet still give us
access to everything. Want to have the best of
both worlds? Then, it’s time to do some
housekeeping.
If you have noticed that your Android phones
performance have been ‘slowing down’,
particularly after you’ve been loading it up with
tons of Android apps (we don’t blame you) from
the Google Play store, we have a few tips to
share with you.
With just a few tweaks and changes, you’d
probably be able to breathe life into your Android
specifically those that have been updated to
Android 4.0 and above.
1. Know Your Device
It is important that you learn about the
capabilities and drawbacks of your phone. Don’t
overburden your phone with resource-hungry apps
which would otherwise degrade your phone’s
performance at your expense.
2. Update Your Android
If you haven’t updated your Android phone to the
latest firmware, you should. Google brings great
improvements to each new release of the
Android operating system, including updates that
ensure stability, higher performance speed and
connectivity along with other user-friendly new
features.
Tablets can also run on ICS and Jelly Bean now;
you should be able to update it until Android 4.1
Jelly Bean via System updates (Check under
‘About phone’).
3. Remove Unwanted Apps.
Every app you install in your phone take some
storage space and runs some background
processes. The more storage space occupied or
the more background processes running on your
phone, the slower your phone’s performance.
Don’t install apps you hardly use. Keep only the
apps that you need and if you have got an app
that isn’t really useful, you can uninstall or
disable it .
4. Disable Unnecessary Apps
‘Performance assistant’ was introduced in
Android ICS to help you disable apps that you
don’t need . Disabling apps is different from
uninstalling apps – uninstallation remove
application files from the phone but no file is
removed/deleted when you disable it. These
disabled apps are not shown on the home screen
or app tray but you can re-enable them for use
whenever you need them.
5. Update Apps
You should regularly update your phone’s
installed apps from Google Play. Try to get
updates your apps when they are available in
Google Play. Developers fix bugs and add
features in new released versions of apps.
Updated apps perform better and faster , and will
less likely crash your phone.
6. Use High-Speed Memory Card
The memory card is the storage space of your
phone. Phones with low internal memory can get
a boost from high-capacity memory cards for
maximum storage space. But it adds not only
capacity but also speed to the mix. You can get
between 2GB to 32GB worth of storage space to
support high speed read/write operations. Always
go for memory cards of Class 6 or Class 10 for
your Android phone if you seek performance for
your phone.
7. Keep Fewer Widgets
Widgets are not apps, which only run once you
choose to activate them. No, widgets are always
running in the background ; they are active all the
time. While some Android users use it to keep
track of the weather, and their important dates,
others use widgets like ‘Extended controls’ for
quick access for essential configurations such as
switching Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or their GPS on or off.
They do have their uses but bear in mind that
having too many of them running on your
homescreen will cause your device’s
performance to slow down.
8. Avoid Live Wallpapers
You must be loving Android’s live wallpaper
feature. Phones (from different manufacturers)
come with different live wallpapers but you
should know that live wallpapers that are badly
made will need more CPU cycles to run, thus
draining the battery faster . Everytime you
activate the home screen, you run not only your
apps but also your live wallpaper.
9. Stop Syncing
Sync is a very good feature which synchronizes
your data with Google servers. Keeping sync on,
you can get notifications whenever new mail
comes in or when you get new notifications or
updates for apps. To do this, it does a refresh at
every preset interval (e.g. it checks your mail
every 5 minutes for new incoming mail), and this
will eat into your android’s performance for other
activities.
You can keep Sync off for unrequired services or
only have it on when you need to transfer or
upload materials to Google servers.
10. Turn Off Animations
What animations? Well, if you haven’t noticed,
your phone screen actually fades out and in as
you switch from one task to the other. To see
this in action Go to Settings > Developer Options
> Window Animation Scale > Animation scale
10x . Then choose Window Animation Scale again
to see the fade in effect in ‘slow-mo’.
When you choose Animation off , the screen just
snaps to position without animation. You can
also turn off Transition Animation Scale in the
same way. If you are a heavy user, you’d
probably notice that your Android performs faster
with all animations off.
Bonus:
Use Task Killer/Manager
Download any free Task Killer apps or Task
Managers from Google Play. Some of the good
ones are Advanced Task Killer and Super Task
Killer Free. Use a task killer to kill background
processes and other apps that you don’t need or
you don’t use.
Set options to automatically kill unnecessary apps
(based on your selections) after every set period
of time. Some of the examples include Update
Manager (updates don’t come every minute/hour)
or any manufacturer-installed app which you
don’t require.
Root Your Android
As Android is built on the Linux kernel, like any
other OS, it also can be rooted. Rooting your
Android gives you administrator level access on
your phone , which means that you can uninstall
the apps that came with your phone but may not
be what you want to use.
You can then flash it with custom ROMs that
may be a better fit to your job requirements or
personality, or to enhance the performance and
battery life of your phone . You can even update
your phone to the latest OS or updates that
could otherwise be unsupported for your phone
model.
When Not to Root
There are a number of factors against rooting
your Android device; for one thing, most
manufacturers deem your phone warranty voided
if your phone has been rooted . You also need to
know what you are doing to avoid screwing
everything up, beyond repair . This is called
‘bricking’ a.k.a. turning your phone into a useless
brick. So think it through before you use this
method to enhance the performance of your
Android.
Use Lightweight Background Apps
Everyone enjoys listening to music but imagine
how much memory the music player app requires
to play a whole album for you. It’s the same with
other types of background apps you may have.
Use lightweight apps for these purposes , e.g.,
you can install a music player that requires 1 MB
installation space (and thus less RAM too) than
the ones requiring 10 MB or more.
This way, your phone will have more free
memory, boosting your phone’s battery and
performance .
Conclusion
If you follow the above-given suggestions, tips
and tweaks will help in making your Android
faster and smoother while in use.
Have other
Android-related performance-enhancing tips and
tricks? Let us know.
