If you noticed that your Android smartphone is taking its sweet
time when launching apps or even just going back to the Home screen, you can
try these simple and quick tricks to help ease the heavy load your Android
phone may be currently experiencing. The time duration it will take you to
complete each task may vary depending on how many apps or services you need to
disable or uninstall. But we can assure you that it's time worth taking to make
your smartphone faster like you always want it to be.
Most of the time, some apps continuously run in your device's
background even if you're not using them. Because of this, a great amount of
system resources goes to waste by apps that are just merely running in your
phone's background. If you have already rooted your phone, it's quite easy to
remove apps that were preloaded on your phone. But if in case removing
preloaded apps is a challenge for you, you can simply disable them to prevent
excessive and unnecessary consumption of your phone's memory. Usually, this can
be done on the Settings menu and disabling a single app should take not more
than 10 seconds of your time. So disabling as much app as you can in 60 seconds
will make a great difference in your phone's performance and speed.
Duration: 60 seconds
It's safe to say that all smartphones come
with an app launcher, that is the actual Home screen where you can see icons of
your apps and launch it from there. If your phone's speed is already next to
sluggish, you can also try installing a new app launcher instead of using the
preloaded one. Aside from your phone getting a makeover, it can also make your
navigation much faster and easier. Some common third-party app launchers that
are reported to be the fastest and easiest to use are LauncherPro, Go Launcher EX,
and Lightning Launcher Home.
Duration: 30 seconds
Apps tend to store data on your phone's app cache as time goes
by, which is one probable cause why you're experiencing lags and sluggishness
whenever you use your phone. Luckily, you can clear the app cache by going to
the properties of each app and select the Clear Cache option. But if you need
to do this on tons of apps that you have installed on your phone, it can
literally take forever before you can say "All done!" So to make
things easier, you can install a free app that does the job such as the App
Cache Cleaner, which clears all of your app's cache instantly. The App Cache
Cleaner also has an Auto Clear feature that automatically clears your phone's
cache after the set time interval.
Duration: 30 seconds
Widgets are small programs, usually placed on the Desktop or
Home screen, that serves as a shortcut to a larger application. Your Android
smartphone normally contains one or more widgets, usually serves as time or
weather indicators, or displays your phone's current data and memory usage.
These miniature programs can be very useful, but having too much of these guys
installed on your phone can eat up a lot of system resources as well. So
another method that you can try to free up some more memory is to remove
widgets and shortcuts that you rarely use on your phone. This can be done by
long pressing the widget that you want to remove, then just drag them off the
screen.
Duration: 30 seconds
Apps like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and even your email requires
connection to the Internet to gather data and syncs with your device in order
for you to get updated information in real-time. However, the nature of these
apps can drain your phone's battery and consume memory at the same time. If you
can do a manual sync on some of your apps to avoid wasting too much resources,
you can disable their background data so that they will stop connecting
automatically.
If you want to disable background data for all apps, go to your
Android phone's Settings, then tap Data
usage. Open the context menu by tapping the icon with three
dots, or by pressing the menu button for Samsung and LG smartphones. Now tap
the Auto-sync data option to uncheck it, then tap Ok when prompted with a warning message.
To disable the background data for Gmail, Google+, and other
Google services, go to Settings and then tap Google under the Accounts section. Tap your Google account name,
then tap all types of data syncing to off such as your email, contacts, and
calendar.
For your Facebook app or your email client, you will need to go
to their settings and look for the option to Never update or Update manually.
Duration: 10 - 60 seconds