July 18: CONSUMER TIPS
10 ways to speed up your phone
Phones slow down with use because they accumulate data and junk. Here are 10 things you can do to ensure your phone regains speed.
- Avoid using launchers: You may be tempted to have a third-party launcher in addition to the in-built one. It is a user interface that lets users customize home screens, launch mobile apps, make calls and perform other tasks. But this will slow down your phone considerably.
- Remove unwanted apps: Too many apps use up the computing resources and internal storage of your phone. Uninstall apps you don’t use.
- Clean up your home screen:Â The less cluttered your home screen, the better your phone will perform. Replace live wallpaper with a static image. Remove unused icons and limit widgets.
- Free up storage: Fuller disks have slow read and write data speed which introduces lag into the phone. Get rid of photos and videos you don’t want. Copy what you need on your computer.
- Erase old text message threads: If you never delete any text messages (or multimedia messages like pictures and videos), it can weigh down the phone’s software.
- Install lightweight versions of apps: Facebook Lite is optimized to work on 2G connections, and on devices with as low as 1GB of RAM. Similarly, there are light versions of Skype, Google search and YouTube.
-  Stay updated: The latest software will have bug fixes and general improvements which  can help your device run better. Ensure that all your apps are also updated.
- Clear app cache: Apps like Facebook tend to collect and store a lot of data in their cache. Over time, this can overwhelm your phone’s hardware. If you see apps crashing and becoming slow, clear their cache.
- Turn off autoapp updates:Â If your phone is running a little slow, it may be because it is updating apps in the background. Update your apps manually instead. Similarly, turn off automatic downloads and turn off or reduce auto-sync.
- Restart your phone:Â Turn your phone off for a few minutes and then turn it on again. This clears its RAM and shuts down unnecessary apps running in the background.
Sources: India today, www.businessinsider.in, www.androidauthority.com
