Keeping Your Smartphone Running Fast Without The Hassle

Smartphones are incredible devices. With the ability to do things computers struggled with just a couple of decades ago, people often take the phone that they have in their pocket for granted, especially once they’ve had it for a while. This can all be shaken up once your phone starts to go slow, though. With storage filling up, loads of apps running, and very little management is done, most people find that their smartphone slows down significantly after a few short years. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. You can keep your smartphone running smoothly for years and years, and most people have the ability to do this with ease.

Closing Background Apps

Many modern phones come with a lot of RAM. This is a type of memory that stores data being used by apps so that it can be quickly accessed by the processor in the device, and this is usually where data being used by background apps will be stored. Most smartphone apps are able to run in the background, and many people don’t realize that they have to make a conscious effort to close them. On both iOS and Android, this is as simple as getting your app list open and closing those that aren’t needed. Apps open very quickly, so there isn’t much of a need to keep dozens running at once.

Removing Bloat Apps

Alongside closing apps, it can also pay to remove certain apps from your phone. Many people use tools known as battery managers when they want to keep their phone running fast and maintain their battery. In reality, though, apps like these can end up doing the opposite. While they will close apps automatically, they will also use resources by keeping themselves running to do their job. In most cases, it will be better to handle the management of the work that apps like this do for yourself. In most cases, this will have a bigger impact on your device’s speed than any app will be able to make.

It’s worth keeping in mind that many versions of Android come with a lot of bloatware preinstalled. This can make the phone slower than it has to be, but you can usually remove them without having to change much on the phone.

File Management & Clean Up

While the flash storage in your phone is much faster than a memory card or hard drive, it can quickly get bogged down when it is filled with files. Most modern storage methods use special caching processes to make sure that files are easily accessible, but this doesn’t work if the files you have stored are surrounded by ones that you don’t need. You can handle this as a manual process and take your time to remove apps, photos, and other files that you don’t use or need, or you can use tools like a duplicate photo finder to make the process less involved. 

The Last Resort: A Factory Reset

If all of the action above doesn’t work, there could be nothing else for it; you may have to perform a factory reset on your device. This will make the operating system act and look exactly the same as it did when you first got the device, effectively wiping away all of the things you’ve done to the device over the years that will make it run slowly. You may need to perform a lot of updates after going through this. You can reset your phone through its settings menu, with both iOS and Android devices allowing you to go through this process with your device.

The Last Last Resort: A New OS

Okay, so a factory reset isn’t the only thing you can do when you’ve run out of other options. Changing the OS on your phone is only really possible with Android devices, and this process can come with some risks. You need to make sure that you are very confident with software and hardware before you take on this task, but there are plenty of device-specific guides available around the web that can help you out with it. It’s always worth keeping in mind that you will need a lighter OS to make your device run faster.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of keeping your smartphone running fast without having to deal with loads of hassle. This process can take a little bit of work, but this will be well worth it for the right results.