9 things you can do to speed your Android phone

After a certain period of time your Android device might slow down quite a bit, with lagging animations, long app starts, delays, etc

The good news is that there are a few things you can do to alleviate your pain and get back to Speed Racer mode again.

In this post I will show you a few methods you you can speed up your Android phone or tablet .

1. Uninstall  All  Those Apps You're Not Using

If you’re anything like me, you have quite a large collection of apps that you downloaded on an impulse. Truth is though, that you won’t use all of them, and, likely, forget to uninstall them from your Android device altogether. They sit in the app drawer, counting their days and plotting ways to make your phone slow by using resources like CPU cycles for background services, taking up memory blocks and fragmenting your storage, and generally cluttering the place up.

To delete any app you've downloaded, you can head into the device settings to find the App "manager." Once open, you'll see lists of apps that are installed on your phone with various sorting options. When you find an app that needs to go away, tap the list entry to open the application's info screen. At the top you'll see a button to Uninstall it. Tap. 

2. Clean Up Device Storage Space

This is also an easy fix. To delete the pictures or videos you no longer need, simply open the gallery app and choose the ones that need to go, and delete them. The same goes for videos. And doing it this way, through the gallery, means you have to see each picture or video before you delete them to be sure you really want to delete them.

Next, open the Downloads folder from your app drawer. There's a good chance you'll find it's filled with images, zip files, sound clips and any number of files that you no longer need. If you don't need them, there's no reason they should be taking up storage space, right? Zap them to oblivion. Again, doing it this way makes sure you look at files before you delete them.

Finally, open the storage page in the settings and move down the list until you see an entry for "Misc." or Other. Tap it, and you'll see a list of miscellaneous files that applications have created on your device storage. If you see something you know you no longer need, you can delete it here. If you don't know what a file is for, don't delete it.

3. Clear Your Cached Data

Cached data is generally a good thing. Intelligently keeping some things in a local storage, means you don't have to download or generate them each and every time you open the app itself. And a well-written app knows when to clear its cache and start it all over again. But like all good things, there are drawbacks.

Apps you rarely use will have cached data that not only takes up space, but is always out of date and will need flushed and rebuilt anyway. Sometimes, cached data can be buggy and cause apps to misbehave — especially when it's woefully out of date.
  You can clear the cache for an individual app in the Application's info page.

Open the settings on your Android, and go into the device storage page. Scroll down the list until you see the Cached data entry, and tap on it. You'll see a pop-up telling you that you're able to clear out all cached data. Say yes with no fear — there's nothing here that an app needs, and anything important will be re-cached the next time you open the app.

4. Check your battery stats for performance killers

There are some apps out there that require a disproportionate amount of your CPU power to keep them running. The easiest way to find them is to have a quick look at your battery usage stats. To do that, visit your Android Settings > Battery > Usage (might vary depending on your manufacturer, but you get the idea).

Do you see any apps that consume a suspicious amount of your battery? If yes, they will also likely contribute to the fact that your Android device is running slow.

5. Remove unnecessary widgets from your home screen

Every time you unlock your device, most of the widgets on your home screen will try to refresh themselves. In most cases this action requires your CPU to work hard. Especially if it comes to widgets for news apps that will try to access the internet to pull new content.

If you see any widgets on your home screen that you can live without – get rid of them (long-press and drag to the top part of your screen or press Delete).

6. Disable location services

Your phone is already slow enough, so we will try our hardest to reduce the amount of CPU power required. One process, which requires a wide range of services, is your location tracker.

If you don’t need your device to track your location at all times (although it can be very useful), it might be a good idea to disable them altogether. 

7. Move apps and media to your SD card

Lots of users report that their devices start running slowly as soon as their system storage gets close to its limits. To avoid running out of space on your Android phone you have two options: move stuff to the cloud or move stuff to your SD card if you’re lucky enough to have a micro SD card slot in your device.

Some of you might also have a large collection of pictures and videos that you might never look at again in the future, but still are too precious memories to be permanently deleted. If that’s the case for you, it might be a good idea to make a copy of your library on your computer using Android File Transfer or moving your collection to the cloud using services like Google Photos or Dropbox.

8. Hard reboot

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Sometimes a good  hard reboot will help you fix some lag and performance issues on your Android device. FYI, the “hard” in hard reboot stands for “hardware”, meaning that you will reboot your device using hardware.

If you have a removable battery, you can take it out for a minute, put it back into its place and start the device. If you don’t have a removable battery, you can emulate the same process by holding your Power and Volume Down buttons simultaneously until the device restarts.

9. Factory reset – your last resort

Now that you did everything in your power to breathe some life into your slow Android phone and you’re still not satisfied, it might be time for the ultimate measure – the Factory Reset.

A Factory Reset will erase all your data and device settings back to the way it’s been when you first turned on the phone. Before you do a factory reset, make sure to back up all your data somewhere, especially when it comes to contact or photos. And SD card is the best place for media, otherwise just use Android File Transfer to move the data you need to your computer. As for your contacts, they will likely be synced to your Google account, but, just to be careful, make sure to have contacts sync enabled on your device by visiting Settings > Accounts > Google > Sync Options.

Please let me know in the comment section if you have any other tips and tricks on how to make your Android Device faster or if I missed anything! Your feedback is very much appreciated, and I will make sure to update the post with the most useful information.