How to make your smartphone better. How to make your phone run faster and why optimizers are useless

Each of us knows the effect of novelty. The first days and even weeks you adore the thing you bought. Handle it carefully, blow off specks of dust from it. But over time, the thing becomes boring and sometimes even annoying.

The same goes for our smartphones. But a smartphone, as a rule, is a rather expensive thing, and only rich people can replace it very often. If you don’t consider yourself one of these, then you can restore the effect of novelty with the help. You can also bring back the joy of using your phone by greatly changing its settings and appearance systems.

You've probably already heard that to make major changes to your smartphone you need to get root access, that is full access to all system settings. But that's not true! Let's see how you can change your smartphone without voiding your warranty.

Changing the home screen

Most often, you see the home screen of your smartphone. After all, this is where the icons of programs that you often need are located. Also, most likely, widgets that are important to you are located here. This means that you should start changing the appearance of your smartphone’s system from this screen.

There are dozens of different launchers that will change your home screen beyond recognition. Have you bought an Android smartphone but want to try Windows? No problem, that's what it's for. In addition, there are very, which are not at all similar to any of the systems. They also exist to suit your requirements, but not just once during setup, but at every moment when you use your phone. I also advise you to pay attention to our author Dmitry Gorchakov.

Although most launchers also provide their own set of icons, it is not a fact that you will like it. But you have the opportunity to choose the icons that you like. We have already introduced you on the pages of Lifehacker to for your smartphone.

Install new widgets. This is also a good way to update your home screen. Most likely, you have a clock widget installed on your home screen. Change it to something more functional. You will have access to more information with home screen. For example, I have one widget displaying the time, weather and the next alarm.

And the final touch to changing your home screen is, of course, installing a new screensaver. If you have Android 5 with Material Design, then . You also have the opportunity to put . They will change depending on what the weather is like outside the window.

And now a little about harmful, but beautiful. I'm talking about live wallpapers. Harmful for your smartphone battery, but beautiful for your eyes. On Lifehacker you can learn how to make live wallpaper yourself.

Changing the lock screen

The second step to changing the appearance of your smartphone system is changing the lock screen. This is exactly the screen you see when you turn on your smartphone. You can start by installing a new lockscreen screensaver.

There are also a large number of special applications for this screen. They will radically change the look of your smartphone's lock screen. Just like with changing the home screen, you can give the lockscreen a different style operating system. For example, put it, which is made in the style of an iPhone. There are more that can display weather and other information.

Installing a new keyboard

When using a smartphone, we are almost constantly entering some text. For example, we write messages to friends, dial emails At work, we are looking for some information. And every time we use the keyboard.

Do you only use the default keyboard? Or maybe you have been using one keyboard for a long time? Try something new. Fortunately, there are a huge number of them for Android.

There are ones that are very different from others even in their approach to typing. There are real bison in this area - Swype and. Swype, in my opinion, best keyboard for Android, which only can be.

Besides replacing your keyboard, home screen, and lock screen, you can try replacing your favorite apps with something new. For example, instead of the default music player, start using . In general, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to change your smartphone. Which one to choose is up to you. We just set the direction. Who knows, maybe this article will save your budget from unnecessary expenses.

Articles and Lifehacks

If you are one of those mobile phone owners who are annoyed slow work devices, then you should know how to make Android faster so that it quickly loads photos and does not slow down when playing videos.

To speed up your device:

• Install new firmware on the gadget. Usually, the latest firmware versions eliminate all the problems that were present in earlier versions of the OS.
• Restore factory settings. This method is a hard method, since during the process of installing factory settings, absolutely all files located on the device are erased.

  To prevent this, save the information you need on removable media or make a backup copy.

• Download the Task Manager application from Google Play Market, which closes inactive applications.
• Install antivirus on your device. Sometimes the operation of a gadget slows down due to the fact that the device contains a large number of viruses.
• Download the Start Up Manager program, it can reduce the number of applications downloaded when the device is turned on.
• Run the Cache Cleaner application, which clears the device's memory and frees up a small amount of memory.
• Erase programs you don't use.

Other ways to speed up your device

You can also try other speedup methods:

1. Reboot your device.
2. You can try to overclock the processor, but it is better that this action is performed by specialists, otherwise you may break your gadget.
3. Try using a custom firmware version. Of course, it differs from the professional one, but, as practice shows, in most cases it works better than it.
4. Try not to run several programs at the same time and not play games that your gadget cannot handle.

These simple manipulations will make your device work faster, and you won’t have to look for a new device that will fully satisfy all your requirements.

Every user's desire is for their device to work faster. This is where scammers profit. Lately on Google Play appeared Android program called Defrag Pro. Android doesn't need defragmentation, but many users have already installed it and left it positive reviews. Android isn't like Windows and doesn't require as much maintenance - but still, there are some things you can do to make your Android device run faster.

You may have heard that "Android fragmentation" is a problem, but this applies to unofficial versions of Android - file system Android doesn't need defragmentation.

What can you do to make Android work faster?

These easy-to-follow tips work on all devices:

• Home Screen Optimization: Loading screens with widgets and live wallpapers will slow you down, especially if you have older, slower devices. Reduce the number of widgets you use and you'll notice a performance boost. Of course, widgets may not slow you down that much, especially if you have a new device. While animated Android wallpapers are pleasing to the eye, they can cause slowdowns, not to mention drain your battery life.

• Killing and uninstalling bad apps: Task Killer programs are not needed because Android usually does good job to manage processes for you. However, in some cases, the application may take a long time and slow down the system. You can mark these applications in the task manager as having high resource usage. You can also use the application as a Watchdog Task Manager, which monitors applications. Once you notice an application is incorrect, kill it. If it continues to work incorrectly, you need to remove it.
• Installing a different browser: If you are one of the majority of Android users stuck on old version Android, like Gingerbread, you will notice a performance boost from installing a new browser. Android's built-in browser is only updated with the operating system, which means the Gingerbread browser hasn't been updated in a long time. The new one for Android runs on Gingerbread and is significantly faster than the built-in browser. Users of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and above can try Google for Android. Opera Mini is another good choice- Opera Mini renders pages on the Opera server before sending them to the device, saving the device's processing power and reducing network usage. Opera Mini is more suitable for slow devices that take some time to load web pages.

If you are a geek

These tips will require rooting the device or installing a custom ROM (read-only memory (ROM) - non-volatile memory used to store an array of immutable data), which is not necessary for the average user. However, rooting your or tablet may be easier than you think.

• Overclocking your device: Just like you would with a desktop or laptop, you can overclock your phone or tablet to speed up the process. However, this will require root access. SetCPU is a popular choice for overclocking a device's CPU. Keep in mind that overclocking can be dangerous - the phone will generate more heat and this can damage your hardware. Overclocking also reduces the battery life of your device.
• Installing Custom ROMs to Get New Version of Android: New Versions Android is better than the old ones. For example, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is significantly more responsive than older versions, thanks to Project Butter, which aims to dramatically reduce the lag. If the phone does not have an official update to more new version Android, it can often be upgraded by installing custom ROMs. Custom ROMs are a new build of the operating system Android systems, customized for your device and developed by the community. One of the popular custom ROM that supports various devices, this is CyanogenMod.

• Controlling auto-launch of programs: If you root Android, you can control auto-launch of applications: which applications are allowed to automatically launch on the device and which are not.

What doesn't work

These things simply don't work, or may be counterproductive.

• Android defragmentation: for decades Windows users they say defragmentation hard drives allows you to speed up your computer. With this in mind, it is not surprising that scammers would create defragmentation Android applications. You don't need to defragment Android for the same reason you don't need to defragment an SSD on a Windows computer. The SSD automatically manages where data goes - defragmenting doesn't speed anything up. In fact, defragmentation can actually hurt - solid state drives have a limited number of write cycles, so defragmentation may shorten the lifespan of Android storage.

• Launch Task Killer: The Task Killer application terminates programs and removes them from memory - which sounds like it should speed up the process. However, it can slow things down. Android will manage processes itself - processes running in background, do not use resources like they do on Windows. When Task Killer kills a process, the application will take longer to load next time - it may also start backup, slowing down work. Let Android manage the processes itself.

Leave your comment!

Tweet

The essence

If it were not for technological progress, our phones would remain like this:

Modern phones are used for more than just communication. You can install a lot on them useful programs. Unfortunately, due to the crookedness of some developers, phones begin to slow down. Because of the tricks of other developers, many programs that supposedly speed up the phone live and thrive. Don't be fooled by promises!

The programs work on modern phones not the same as on desktop computers. Instead of running optimizers, remove unnecessary programs and your phone will be fine:

• will earn money faster;
• will live longer without recharging;

And you will feel better - there will be less distracting garbage in your information space.

Details

What causes programs to slow down on a PC?

Why are programs on computer may slow down:

• the speed of the processor, video card, or hard drive is not enough;
• overheat;
• No free space in RAM.

In order:

1. The first is obvious: the slower the processor counts, the slower the programs run.
2. Overheating is the scourge of not only laptops, but any computers in general. When overheating, the processor is forced to reduce its computing speed to reduce heat generation.
3. RAM is a victim of marketing. For some reason, everyone is sure that the speed of calculations depends on the size of RAM. But memory is not a computing device; it simply stores data.

Members of the cult of fans of clearing RAM are sure that the reason for the brakes is a lack of free RAM. Like, the program clogs up all the space, and that’s why it slows down. Their mantra: “the more free memory, the higher the speed”. However, logic is alien to such people. You and I know that:

• Every RAM cell must be used. The space free from programs is occupied by a cache for instant access to files. Bottleneck - hard drive, the brakes are caused by it, the cache partly saves the situation.
• If a program takes up a lot of memory space, you need to close the others that are not currently in use to give space to the first one. Under no circumstances should you run any optimizers; they stupidly dump the software into a swap file.

Why does the program slow down when there is not enough RAM? Why doesn’t it crash with an error, because there’s no memory left? It's all about the swap file - the contents of the RAM begin to be unloaded onto the hard drive, at this moment making it difficult for everyone to access the latter running programs. Everything will slow down, but nothing will close. In Windows 10, they decided to fix this issue by creating intermediate compressed memory - a kind of swap file in RAM and compressed to save space - but again, this only applies to problems on desktop computers and tablets with Windows.

How Android works

(I can’t say anything about iPhone and iOS, because no.)

In the mid-2000s, at the very beginning of the life of the Android operating system, mobile devices were:

• with a meager amount of RAM,
• slow flash memory,
• slow processors.

On a computer, if there is a lack of memory, you can reset some of the data to the hard drive; the user may experience slowdowns. This is not possible on phones and tablets - flash memory cells tend to die after several (tens) of thousands of write cycles, and the device will quickly break down.

And why such a crutch with a swap file, if you can do it differently. In Android, the concept of how programs work is different:

1. Programs consist of components that can be closed individually.
2. No swap (but can be enabled). There is not enough memory - “extra” programs will be unloaded into zRam - an area of ​​​​compressed data in the RAM itself - or will close correctly, without errors.
3. Programs are launched not only by clicking on a shortcut, but also by an event. Installed program can be considered constantly running, because the user does not control this moment.

For example, the kernel of the SMS reading program is running all the time. If the user wants to read SMS, the component responsible for displaying the correspondence will be loaded. If the phone has very little RAM, the program will close and then launch only to receive a new SMS.

What happens when memory is cleared by supposed optimizers

Programs crash instead of unloading unnecessary components. This doesn't make sense, because when the event that the program is responding to occurs, it will run again.

Programs on your phone are launched not only at the will of your finger - they react to thousands of different events and live their own lives while they are installed.

A program closed by optimizers may start in a second or an hour, but it will definitely happen. It turns out to be a Sisyphean task:

The phone is slow > The user starts clearing memory > All programs close > The phone is responsive for a few minutes > Brakes due to background startup closed programs > "Optimization" again > … > …

Starting from scratch is slow and resource-intensive. Why kill programs and device?

What you really need to do

Determine which programs are using up your processor and remove them.

The phone may slow down due to frequent access to flash memory, but this is difficult to track.

What needs to be done for optimization:

1. Go to Settings - Battery:

And look at the list. Above are the potential culprits for phone slowdowns.

What does battery use have to do with it? Frequent load on the processor - the battery is consumed faster. Android keeps track of these.

If in the first four paragraphs there is some kind of inconsistency system program, which should not use the network and GPS, think about it - do you really need it?

Don’t forget that the list will include programs that actively use the network and GPS; these also actively use the battery, but do not cause slowdowns.

2. Go to Settings - About the system and press seven times the line Build number. Return to a higher level - a new item will appear For developers:

A new item has appeared - “For Developers”

In it, click the switch at the top right that turns on developer mode. Then work with the phone for half an hour as usual, return to the developer menu and click on

The higher the program, the more often it is launched. In the screenshot above Viber, Google Services Play and WhatsApp are fine. If you have software there that you launch once a month, the culprit has been found and must be removed.

Don't forget to turn off developer mode using the switch in the menu.

3. Another way to find the cause of the brakes is in the same menu item Show CPU usage. When turned on, a list of processes will appear in which you will see internal name of the brake culprit only when the phone slows down:

In first place will be open program and other processor-intensive processes

By catching the moment of the brakes and carefully looking at the line, you will understand what kind of program it is. On extreme case Google it.

The list displays and system processes, you can't do anything about them.

When the processor load display is turned on, the battery is quickly consumed, do not forget to turn it off.

4. Have you deleted everything you can, but your phone is slow? Just reboot. In space probes, programs can work for years without failures; on the devices of ordinary earthlings, programs often glitch. Turning your phone (not the screen!) on and off will help you live until the time when you can buy a phone quickly.

What Android optimization programs do

Optimization is a business. Like fortune telling, financial pyramids and much more. People believe and pay with money and personal time that could be spent on useful things.

The authors of most programs on Google Play make money from advertising. Optimizer cleaners play on the user’s fear by reporting fictitious problems with their device. The user should open their creation as often as possible and see advertising, or even better, point a finger at it.

All optimizers do at least two things, both of which are useless in their own way:

1. Forces close all running programs.
2. Clear program caches.

The first, as I explained above, only treats symptoms. The second can be done manually, going through all the programs in Settings - Applications - All. But they need program caches for fast work, they will create them again.

Users' faith in these optimization methods is so strong that they are willing to tolerate anything, even the most blatant type of advertising. Look at the comments about one of the optimizers installed on more than million devices:

Fortunately, there are optimizers who do their job honestly. They just work differently:

Greenify(I wrote about it in the entry) disables the reaction of programs to external events, which is why they lose functionality, but do not load the processor in the background - the phone does not slow down and battery power is saved.

Amplify Battery Extender acts more cunningly: it disables the reaction of programs to events only for most of the time, so that the programs start and do their business, but less often. The battery charge is saved - the phone itself will wake up less often.

The various system tweaks stand out. For example, regulating work with RAM. Everything here is purely individual for each version of Android, drivers, and available hardware resources. This optimization method has a right to life, but it takes time to select the correct values.

Why do programs freeze?

Because not all programmers are equally good. Due to a lack of experience or a simple oversight, programs may wake up too often, have an ill-conceived structure, or use algorithms that require large amounts of resources.

I think there is a separate place in hell for those who decided that showing ads in notifications is a good idea. Such advertising is very annoying and makes the program/game start over and over again.

Results

Look for the culprit of the brakes and remove it. This advice also applies to iPhones.

Screen brightness

The screen eats up the lion's share of the battery charge. First, turn on adaptive brightness control if your smartphone has such a function. If this feature is missing, manually set the brightness to the minimum level acceptable to you.

Wallpaper

Want your battery to last longer? Then firmly and forever say “no” to animated wallpapers.

If your smartphone has an OLED display, then installing black wallpaper will help extend the operating time. Read about why and how it works.

Time before display turns off

You can leave your smartphone on the table, and its screen will work in vain for a few more minutes, using up precious battery power. Reduce the time until the display turns off when not in use. Usually 15–30 seconds is enough. Experiment and find the optimal time for yourself.

Order in applications

When you pick up another smartphone, you can feel a strong sense of surprise at the amount of garbage in it. Remember the correct sequence of actions with applications:

• Option one: installed → didn’t like it → deleted.
• Option two: installed → not using → deleted.

The problem for users is that last point they are often ignored. As a result, the device turns into a real landfill. What's wrong with that? Many applications like to take on a life of their own. They hang out in the background, launch their processes and eat up precious memory, which increases power consumption and reduces system performance.

Additionally, unused applications are updated and exchanged data, resulting in increased costs. mobile traffic and an even greater reduction in battery life.

Consider a monthly Smartphone Day. Spend a little time analyzing your current collection of applications, removing irrelevant ones, and looking on Lifehacker for more advanced analogues of existing ones.

Automation

Every day, a smartphone user faces a routine. Small but necessary actions, if there are many of them, take a lot of time and are annoying. Send something somewhere, copy it, send it, put it aside, and so on and so forth.

The problem is solved using the IFTTT (If This Then That) automation service. What can he do? All. At the moment, IFTTT has created and made available for free access more than a million applets (recipes) - ready-made tools for automating a particular action or task.

Physical protection

As smartphones become more and more sophisticated, they lose their durability. If an old Nokia 3310 can play football and hammer nails, then a brand new iPhone or Google Pixel much more tender. You need to take care of the safety of your expensive electronic assistant in advance and purchase a protective case. This is especially true during active recreation and travel.

Plan in case of loss

Losing a smartphone is a real tragedy. This situation is also accompanied by the loss of important and private information. In this case, Lifehacker advises using cloud storage. They are now perfectly optimized for mobile devices and implement all the necessary functions automatically.

We hope these tips will help you use your smartphone more efficiently.