t is a familiar problem in the modern world. The more you need your phone to run fast, the more it seems to slow down. According to the Daily Telegraph, mobiles have recently overtaken desktop computers for browsing the web. This means that the importance of having your phone run at a reasonable speed is greater than ever. The growing demand for 4G data connections clearly illustrates the need for speed among mobile users, but if the actual device used to connect is running slowly, then it does not matter how fast the data network is.
You might think that buying a top-of-the-range phone will make you immune from slowdown for months or years to come. Unfortunately, even the highest specification smartphones can get sluggish after a while. More apps and background processes continually contribute to the load on a device’s processor until something has to give. It can begin to seem as if increasing lag is simply part of owning a modern mobile phone.
Free Up Space
Whether your phone is an Android or an iPhone, there are numerous steps which you can take to get it back to running at full speed. From deleting apps and widgets to tweaking arcane settings pages, there is always a way to squeeze a little more speed out of a device.
In most cases the problem can be fixed by using the phone’s own settings. In some instances, though, the problem might be down to a hardware issue. If the device itself is at fault, and not its software, then a warranty or insurance claim will be the best answer.
You should start with checking the memory usage of the apps that the phone is running. Culprits might include unneeded or out-of-date apps, unnecessary widgets, or superfluous animations and effects. Around 500MB of free RAM is a good target to aim for, so see if you can clear the cache, your browsing history and your cookies and site data, that should free up a lot of memory.
You then need to check that your software is up-to-date. These updates usually contain more efficient software that will immediately solve any speed issues. You should also ensure all of your apps are up-to-date- again, the updates will include more efficient processes which mean that your phone should generally run a bit smoother.
Two final fixes that might be obvious but are the minimum you should be doing; 1) restart your device. Give it a clean slate, particularly if you’ve recently updated a bunch of stuff. 2) close all of your background apps regularly. Every time you open one and forget to close it, it continues to run in the background, using up bandwidth!
This helpful article comes accompanied with illustrations that will show you how to do everything should you get lost. Only for iPhone and Android users.
