My Android is Running Slow: 5 Things You Can do to Fix it

Are you getting tired of your Android phone being a tad slow or sluggish? Don’t make your first option upgrading the phone; however, upgrading should give your hardware a performance increase. AKAscope has compiled five great tips and tweaks you can use to speed up the Android Smartphone! While some of these tweaks may not work for certain models, you can find at least one or two tips here that will help you out in your time of need.

Again, we ask that you take note that not every tip and tweak will work for each phone. Some of these tweaks will be trial and error on your part. Please find our top five tips and tweaks down below:

5. Home Screen Launcher:

While you may not see a problem with your current launcher, using an alternative launcher will bring in a noticeable speed improvement. I would highly suggest snatching up the application “LauncherPro” which also made it to our list of the top must-have apps for the Samsung Galaxy S II. LauncherPro will not only give you a new and improved look for your device, but from the install alone you should see a speed increase.

Take note that with LauncherPro, you will have several options to increase the speed of the device. Some of the options include: Home screen scrolling speed, App Drawer opening speed and screen preview opening speed. While other launchers will have similar options, none have surpassed LauncherPro quite yet. The development team is also always looking to fix any issues from past updates, or even coming up with new ideas to make the launcher superior to others.

4. Lose the Widgets and Live Wallpapers

There’s no arguing that Widgets and Live Wallpapers allows you to customize your phone to your liking, but having these running constantly will not only drain your battery, but will also make your phone sluggish. For instance, running a Live Wallpaper can have the same affect of running a game on your phone; most of these wallpapers are taking up the same processing power as playing said game for an entire day. The same can be said to Widgets. Yes, Widgets may help you access and receive alerts right away, but is it worth losing performance?

Widgets are constantly synchronizing and running to bring you updates and alerts. They are a great source of getting your information fast – and right on the home screen, but again, we’re facing the exact same problem as we did with Live Wallpapers. Losing at least a few of the less important Widgets will free up performance and in return, you should see a bit of a speed-boost.

3. Task Killers

Much like Widgets and Live Wallpapers, applications will take control of your performance and in return: slow down your mobile device when in use. Did you know that sometimes when you “exit” out of an application, you are not necessarily free from that application marring your Android’s performance? While this is not always the case, there are a few apps that will continue to run in the background of your device without you knowing. It may not sound all that bad, but you have to account for the fact that even though maybe one or two of these apps are still running, they’re constantly taking up your memory. In order to fully understand what apps are still running and how to exit them is by using a ‘task killer’ application.

One task killer application that comes to mind is the “Advanced Task Killer”, which can be purchased free from the Android Marketplace. Running this application will give you a complete list of what apps are running and the option to fully exit them. Not only are you able to free up your device from constantly running apps, but you’re able to see exactly how much performance is being used from them.

2. Don’t use multiple Home Screens!

Android phones come with at least five home screens and they can certainly be a great source to organize and keep your applications sorted, however, using multiple screens should only be used if your phone can handle the amount of processing required. Multiple home screens goes hand-in-hand with the Widgets tip – the more pages you are using, the slower your performance will get.

If you must, pick the most important Widgets and applications and try to fit them on one or two pages. This will free up your phone from being sluggish and allow you to get the most out of your performance.

1. Factory Reset

This should be your last option to increase the speed. By “nuking” your entire Android phone, you will be starting fresh with a clean slate. Again, this is a last resort – only do this if you can’t live with your Android’s lackluster performance any longer. If you do this, you will lose everything unless you backup your memory! That means contacts, messages, pictures, videos – everything! If you’re set on doing a Factory Reset, we again want to make sure you backup anything and everything that you wish not to lose!

To reset your phone:

Settings > Privacy > Factory Data Reset