How To Speed Up Your Mobile Phone

When your mobile phone slows down, your world slows down too. It’s a problem we only tend to notice when we need them to be running at their fastest. To speed up android or any smartphone’s phone speed, there are a number of steps you can take.

With these simple, easy to implement tips, you can quickly and easily bring your phone back up to its full capacity and speed. Regularly following these tips will also prevent your phone from slowing down or overloading in the future, too. Prevention is often key to keeping your phone speed high and as close to factory fresh as possible.

Why Is My Phone So Slow?

There are a number of reasons why your phone may slow down over time. Identifying what’s causing the phone to slow down is the first step to bringing your phone speed back in line with your needs. While there is some variation between iPhones and Android phones, most of the settings that you will need to adjust or make changes to can be found under your general phone settings, as well as under application settings.

Find Out What The Problem Is

In order to diagnose the issue, you’ll need to take a look at the system itself. You’ll want to monitor how much RAM your apps are taking up, what memory you have free, how much storage you have available, and how up to date your phone’s software is.

In general, you should aim for 500MB of ‘Free’ RAM to keep your device running smoothly – or 1GB if you want to be very efficient.

Sometimes, it might not be a fixable issue. You can explore all plausible routes with the hope of getting your phone back to its optimal functioning level, only to realise it’s a fault with the phone itself, and not just the software. In these cases, your phone will be showing more symptoms of a fault than simply slowing down. Should this be the case, it’s always helpful to know that our mobile insurance covers mechanical breakdown. In this case, if you’re covered and you are past your manufacturers first year warranty, then your insurance will ensure you don’t have to worry.

However, if it is just a simple case of a slow phone, the following tips can help get it back up to speed.

Android

In order to help you understand how to speed up android phones, check the RAM memory usage details under the Apps tab in the Settings menu. You should be able to click through to take a look at a monitoring screen to show you what’s running, how much device memory is being used up and on what.

iPhone

The same applies to an iPhone. Under the ‘About’ section in the General Settings menu, you should be able to see the amount of available free space. On an iPhone, going through the Settings -> General -> Usage -> Manage Storage section will show you just what is taking up the most space and memory on your device.

Update Your Phone

While your phone may be set to automatically update over night, some phones need to be manually updated or have different settings. It’s important to keep your phone updated to the newest version of its software.

Often these updates come with more efficient software that will immediately speed up your phone and how it runs. It’s also important to try to keep all of your apps and widgets up to date – these new updates will also help to keep your phone running smoothly and efficiently.

Free Up Some Space

Once you have a clear idea of how much storage you’re using, you should be able to see just which apps are taking up precious RAM and storage space. The next step is to take a look at all of the apps on your phone, and have a think about which ones you use regularly, and which ones are just taking up space.

Delete apps on your iPhone and Uninstall apps on your android phone that you don’t use that often. Be brutal, and trim the fat – many apps can take up huge amounts of space and don’t pay off in terms of your regular usage of them. If you’re using an android phone, be sure to uninstall the apps, rather than simply deleting the shortcut from your home screens.

Restart The Device

We tend to forget that we often don’t turn our phones completely off for weeks at a time. We let the battery run low, charge it up, and keep it going. Rinse, repeat. However, shutting the phone down all the way, and then turning it on again. Alternatively, simply restart the phone from the Power or Shut Down menus.

Clear Cookies and Browsing Data

Clearing your browser’s cookies, cache and browsing data is another quick and easy way to free up memory and get your android or iPhone running at speed. Under the settings of your phone, find the applications settings for the browser you’re using – whether that’s Chrome, Safari, Opera or otherwise.

Once you’ve opened the settings, manually click ‘Clear History’ and ‘Clear Cookies and Browsing Data.’ Once these have been cleared, both your browser and phone overall will start running less slowly.

Cut Back On Widgets, Animations and Extras

This tip depends on the type of phone you are running and your current settings. Many smartphones straight out of the box come with a range of animations and special effects switched on as you move between screens and launch applications.

They look impressive and they’re fun for a while, but on a daily basis they are unnecessary and really slow down your phone. Turning these off in your launcher’s settings and disabling these extras will really help to speed up your phone and free up memory.

The same applies for android phones running multiple widgets on your main screens. Consider whether they are really useful to you, and cull the ones that don’t get regularly used. This is a quick way to free up space and will have an immediate impact on the speed of your phone.

Close Background Apps To Free Up Ram

If you’re using an android phone, this is a relatively easy fix – use the button to the left of the home button to list all apps currently running. Select ‘Close All,’ and the apps that were running in the background will all get closed at once. On an iPhone, the story is a little different – you will have to close down all of the apps running individually, and open up the ones you want to use again. It’s a quick, easy step that can quickly speed up your smartphone.