9 ways to boost the performance of your smartphone

There’s nothing more frustrating than a smartphone that isn’t functioning as quickly and reliably as it should be. The good news is that some simple tweaks can often put the zip back into your smartphone’s performance.

Alcatel shares some tips about speeding up and smoothing out your Android smartphone’s performance:

1. Restart your phone

Often, restarting your smartphone will be enough to sort out its performance issues. We tend to keep our smartphones on all day and all night, but like any other computing devices, they benefit from an occasional reboot.

2. Get the latest software updates

If your smartphone is sluggish, try updating to the latest version of Android. Each new version of the operating system features performance tweaks and bug fixes that can make a huge difference to the user experience. To check whether you need an update, go to settings – about device – software update.

3. Declutter

A smartphone running multiple apps in the background and approaching its storage capacity may be slower than usual. Try shutting down apps you are not using as this will help free up processing power and memory for better performance. Also, back up photos, music and other files to a memory card or a cloud service such as Dropbox. Then, delete them from your phone. Getting rid of the clutter can make a big difference to performance.

4. Reduce or disable background data

Disabling background apps or limiting how much data they use will not only speed up your phone, but also help you cut down on how much data you use each month. Navigate to Settings – Data Usage, and scroll down to see which apps are using background data.

5. Clear your app cache

Applications such as your web browser may store data in the cache so they don’t need to download them each time you access the app. While this can reduce your data usage and save you time waiting for downloads, it can also slow your phone. Delete images and other cached data you don’t need by going to settings – storage – cached data.

6. Turn off or reduce animations

Here’s a clever little trick that only few Android users know about. Go to settings – about phone, and then scroll down to “build number”. Tap it seven times to get access to developer options, also in the settings menu. In this menu, you’ll find categories like window animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale. Set each to .5x or switch it off.

7. Watch out for resource-intensive apps

You might have downloaded a resource-hogging app onto your phone. Download the Watchdog Task Manager app from the app store to find out about the system resources each app on your phone uses. This can help you identify an app that might be slowing down your phone.

8. Revert to factory settings

If all else fails, try performing a factory reset to restore your phone to the state it was in when you first bought it. This may get rid of apps and data causing it to slow down. Remember that you’ll lose your data, apps, images and music in the process, so first do a device backup so that you have copies of the important files and data on your phone.

9. Install antivirus software

A good antivirus application will scan your phone for any possible viruses and malware, which can be the cause of your device being slow.