As you install more apps (and games) on your Android smartphone and use it in your everyday life, you will begin to notice that with time your device will start becoming slow and lag during use. Especially on phones with small RAM.
Questions like: what’s wrong with my phone? Is my phone infected with virus? Is there something wrong with the system software? etc. will start popping into your head. Well, it’s really simple- your phone is overloaded.
What makes your Android device to become slow during use?
1. App Cache: as you use apps and games on your phone, it stores certain files and temporary app data. For instance, Chrome browser caches certain website files to make pages load faster. But when the cache grows big it begins to slow down your device.
2. Too many open apps: When you have too many apps open at the same time it will impact heavily on the performance of your phone. This is because all these apps are open in the RAM and all at the same time. Have you considered the RAM capacity of your phone? Also, background apps contribute to the consumption of free RAM. Having too many background (and auto-run) apps in your phone will significantly slow down your phone, especially low-end devices.
3. Game/App requirements: Before you install any game on your smartphone, consider it’s hardware and system requirements. Like PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile and NBA 2K19, you need at least 2GB RAM and a decent processor for the game to run on your phone. But even with the 2GB RAM available on your phone, the game will still lag. 2GB RAM is the minimum requirement to run the game, not the recommended.
4. Faulty system software: Due to rooting or other forms of Android system software modification, you may end up slowing down the functioning of your phone if some system files get damaged or corrupted in the process of modification. Which might also result in system (and user) apps force closing. This doesn’t contradict the fact that you can actually improve the performance of your phone through rooting it. You can uninstall system bloatware apps to create extra free space and make more RAM available for app use. Just be sure you know what you’re doing.
Besides the aforementioned possible causes of slow and laggy smartphone functioning, there could be others like the type of phone you use (it’s hardware/software configuration). I outlined those instances because they are the most common.
What you should do when your phone becomes very slow and lags
1. Clear your phone’s cache regularly: Apps like CCleaner (or Xiaomi’s stock Cleaner app) can help you clean your phone’s cache entirely with one click. There are also other really good apps that can help you clean your phone’s cache (CCleaner is used here as an example of of such apps). If you’re an Advanced Android user, you can manually clear your phone’s cache by navigating to Settings > Apps then clear cache for individual apps by clicking the storage option.
2. Cut down on the number of apps you install on your phone: You only should install and keep apps that you really need and really use. Uninstall every other app that you don’t use because they occupy useful space on your phone.
3. Close open apps not in use: Any app that is not in use at a time, close it and make sure it’s not on the running apps list. This will save some extra space on your phone RAM and help other open app(s) to run smooth.
4. Factory Reset: If you’ve tried the above options and none helped, maybe it’s time you did factory reset to restore the phone to it’s default state. If you’ve chosen this option, you should backup all your important data. All data on your phone will be lost during the factory reset process. Detach your external storage card, backup contacts, messages, important app data, documents, photos, etc.
5. Flash your phone with it’s stock (factory) firmware: If all other solutions above, including factory reset doesn’t make your phone as fast as it was when you purchased it, you should go with this option. Download your phone’s stock ROM from our collection here on Leakite (you can use the search option to find your exact device firmware) and follow the flashing instructions in the ROM page to learn how to flash it.
6. Check that your phone can actually run the app/game: Like I earlier mentioned, some applications and games are designed for devices with higher specs than your phone. Just because your phone meets the minimum requirements doesn’t guarantee a smooth running experience. If you notice lots of lag, you might have to upgrade your phone if you think the app/game is worth it. Be sure to check the (minimum) requirements of certain ‘big’ games before you install on your phone, to avoid disappointments.
These tips should help you speed up the performance and speed of your phone provided you follow them religiously. You don’t have to always factory reset or flash your phone’s stock firmware when it becomes slow, clearing cache and closing all open apps not in use should help to an extent. Factory reset and firmware re-flash should be done when other options don’t seem to help the situation. This is to avoid loss of valuable data in case you forget to backup before flash/reset.
Do you have other tips and recommendations to help speed up a slow Android device, please share with us in the comments section.