Android allows you to change many of its features and depending on how we have configured our device, it can respond more or less quickly while we navigate through the system. The applications and how we use them also play an important role when it comes to the resources that the operating system consumes. Knowing well the operation of applications and phone settings can make our device perform operations more quicklyWe see some tips to make our system lighter.
Update your smartphone
First of all, it is worth making sure that our device is fully up to date. From time to time a newer version of Android comes out, an updated user interface, a patch or a bug fix. Any of these actions can help speed up Android.
To find out if your phone needs an update, go to Settings> About device> Software update.
It is worth continually checking for updates for specific applications, especially on emulators. Sometimes a single update can make a big difference. That goes for Google Play Services too, as it controls almost everything on the device.
Install a custom ROM
If Google isn't coming up with updates, installing a custom ROM may do the trick. This is essentially installing a custom version of Android.
It will allow us to install mods created by the community to provide better performance or more features, or jump to the latest version of Android when the terminal no longer officially supports it.
There is inherent risk in doing this. We will have to root, which has a very real chance of bricking the device. Some applications - such as banking - do not work. But if you're confident in your tech skills or playing with an old or spare device, this method can breathe new life into an old gadget and really speed it up.
Clear Home Screen
It is important to clean the main screen from time to time. If you have a home screen with wallpaper that is covered in widgets displaying news, weather, and social media, you may notice a slight tug when moving from one screen to another. If we have enabled something like the Bixby feed, it would be better to disregard it. Switching to a better home screen can also help speed things up
Reduce animations
This little trick is quite well known. It won't actually speed up your phone, but the reduced transition time between screens and apps makes everything seem faster.
To make this change, we must access the Developer Options in the device settings (also in Software Update).We look for where it says "Build number" and touch that option seven times. Now we go to the Developer Options menu where it says Transition Animation Scale If we set this to “off”, apps will simply appear, rather than making decorations appear. We can also disable Windows animation scaling and Animator duration scaling.
Force GPU Rendering
Another trick we can play with is Force GPU rendering. This will use the phone's graphics processing unit (GPU) instead of software rendering for some 2D elements that are not yet taking advantage of this option. That means faster UI rendering, smoother animations, and more breathing room for your CPU
The GPU consumes more power than the CPU, so we can also reduce battery life by 5-15 percent.
Switch to SKIA
If we have Android Nougat or higher, we can try changing the GPU rendering engine to SKIA, which according to some users reduces the lag in games. Using this setting actually decreases performance in Dolphin, for example. Again, this is in the Developer Options menu along with some of our other settings for speeding up Android
While we're at it, we can also try Force 4x MSAA. This is an anti-aliasing method that won't make games run faster, but it might make them look better. However, this would drain the battery and could cause some slowdown, so your metric may vary. However, there is no harm in trying these configurations. We make comparisons and stay with what we like best.
Browse faster
If we want to speed up the browsing experience, we enable "Data saving" mode in Chrome This compresses pages, allowing lower data usage and faster loading times. This trick will slightly hurt the image quality, but they will still be more than acceptable. Of course, the web page must first be sent to Google for compression before being sent to mobile, so our data speed is an important factor in this process. This in the Chrome settings menu. We can also test in other browsers.
Clear cache data or use CCleaner
Cached data is information stored by apps to start faster and thus speed up Android. A browser can cache images from a website that you visit frequently, so it doesn't need to download the image every time you load the page.
Cached data should make the phone faster. But it can also have a negative impact if the cache is overloaded - not to mention if it takes up unnecessary space on our device. For those applications with too large caches, we can delete the cached data individually by navigating to the application information> Storage> Clear cache There are applications to speed up all this process, such as CCleaner.
Disable automatic synchronization
If you have a relatively modern phone, it is likely to perform very well under most conditions. The only time we might notice slowdowns is when you download and install new apps. Something similar is constantly happening while apps sync.We go to the Accounts menu in the settings and we will see that the option "Automatically synchronize data" is activated. We probably shouldn't change this, unless we have an older device exclusively for gaming or browsing.
By selecting individual apps from the list, we should be able to disable some individually or modify their settings in their own menus. Let's keep in mind the apps we're installing and forget that they might be syncing in the background. We must ask ourselves if the applications need to be synchronized every half hour, or if once a day would be enough
Background Services
We should think about removing any unnecessary back-end services. Background services are applications that run continuously in the background. A positive example is the SMS application, which runs in the background so that we can listen to messages.But many more also have background processes: 7Zipper for example needs to be able to continue unzipping large files while we do other things. This is often a good thing, but other applications that we may not already have in mind can take liberties.
We go to the Developer Options menu again and look for "Background check". Here we will see which applications are allowed to run in the background We get rid of the ones we don't need and things can be speeded up. This is also good for battery life. Facebook is a good place to start because of excessive spending.
Avoid task killers
Android devices are actually very efficient when managing their own memory: there's often a reason why apps stay active. Starting an app from scratch takes longer and uses more battery than switching to one that's paused.If we open an application that requires more memory, Android will automatically close the less important ones to free up space.
For this reason, the use of task killers or task managers can actually slow down the device. If they helped us before, that probably means that one or more of our apps is malfunctioning. The best way to deal with this is to identify and uninstall them individually. The same goes for cached data, so we should do it from time to time.
Overclocking
If we are interested in increasing performance, overclocking is probably a good option. Overclocking consists of increasing the clock speeds of components - such as the CPU - so that through BIOS they work faster than what they were designed for.
It's a tried and tested method for PC gamers to maximize hardware performance and can work just as well on a smartphone, as long as you have a good overclocking app installed. This also carries some risk. OEMs put restrictions on clock speeds in place for a reason: They prevent overheating, battery drain, and potential damage to internal parts of the phone.
Let's not expect this to make much of a difference in most cases where we use it either. Of course, let's not forget to check out the game's settings menus. Lowering the graphics settings can often cause a laggy - or lagging - game to improve in that regard.
Reset All
If nothing works and we see that the phone no longer works as fast as before, a drastic option is to simply perform a factory resetThis can remove any junk the device may have accumulated and hopefully get our phone working like new again.
