If you’ve had your Android device for a while, you’ve probably started to notice some lag that wasn’t there before. Apps load a bit slower, menus take a bit longer to show up. This is actually (and unfortunately) normal—here’s why.
The problems are not either iPhone against Android either. The loss of performance is experienced by all users, regardless of their OS or hardware. So why exactly does this happen? Is there anything you can do to prevent it from occurring? These are some reasons why your smartphone slows down over time will explain it all. It may also shed some light and provide some solutions to the slow down issues.
Apps Running In The Background
You don’t have to have an app running or have to use it in order for it to run in the background. In fact, there are countless of apps which run in the background of your smartphone. While you may have downloaded only 10 to 15 apps, there are at least 40 to 50 running in the background. The vast majority of these apps come pre-installed. They include OS apps and email applications which need to monitor any new emails coming in. You also have many system apps such as Maps, clocks, beaming services and so on. If you go to your settings and look for apps running in the background, you will be amazed to see how many there are. Since all of these apps need and use RAM and CPU, they end up causing your phone to slow down.
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The best solutions is to un-install any apps you don’t use, avoid using live wallpapers and battery draining apps as well. And kill the apps that allow you to disable them in the background.
OS Upgrades
Your device came with a specific version of its own operating system. Whether you have an Android or iPhone, your mobile device has a version the smartphone came with. The OS were meant to work with those devices in mind. However, as new models are invented, the OS systems have to be upgraded to run with those models. That means the specs and hardware change drastically. The end result is your phone not being able to work as well with the new OS. With each OS update that is released, the amount of resources and computing power increases.
Unfortunately, apart from getting a new device, there is nothing you can do about this particular problem. You can choose to use the older version of the OS if you want.
Erosion of Memory
Every mobile device or tablet runs on flash memory. One of the most commonly used memory is called NAND. Although the NAND is affordable and fast, it does have a few problems. These quirks in the NAND memory can sometimes result if performance issues. As the NAND memory is filled, it begins to slow down. As more blocks of memory are taken up, the speed loss begins to take place.
The best solution to avoid erosion or memory degradation, is to stay under the total capacity allowed by your device. Staying under 75% may do the trick as anything higher will cause slowdown. For those that have devices with 16GB of storage, never go over 12 GB. That will not only help keep your NAND memory running better, it will also extend the durability of your memory’s cells.
Updates In Apps
Apps have a tendency to start out well and then begin to add unnecessary bloatware later on. This is why so many apps are constantly adding updates. They will slowly add more permission requirements. With more permissions, it means more features added which don’t even need. To make matters worse, the majority of apps developers don’t seem to care about the amount of resources their apps use. With each update in an app, the amount of CPU and RAM they use, tends to increase.
The best solution is finding a similar app which is not as bloated or filled with unnecessary features. You can even find older versions of an app. Just make sure they have no security holes.
Android devices start functioning slower over time. So how can you escape this? There are some things you can do:
Remove all the unnecessary applications or applications which you don't frequently use. Also keep a check on cache memory and perform periodic cleaning(DO NOT use the ‘cleaner' apps like CCleaner, Clean Master, etc). I'll recommend using SD Maid to suffice your device's cleaning needs. Also, you can use the Greenify app which hibernates applications you choose to reduce resource usage.
If you have some technical knowledge and you wouldn't mind fiddling with your phone, then you can root it and clear up the bloatware(YouTube,News and Weather, etc). Bloatware silently eats up the device's resources. Removing them helps in saving considerable internal memory and also your device's resources.
In a Smartphone where the wait time to launch a application is measured in microseconds it will be near impossible to shutdown a application completely and then starting it again within microseconds, so to fasten up this launch time all application installed in the smartphone are kept in passive state where they are always active but are consuming lower power and when you launch the application by clicking on it, the full application wakes up and consumes more power to execute other instructions. By keeping all application on passive state the memory in RAM is consumed a large scale so we feel it slower, if there are more application in the smartphones which are used rarely even they will occupy space in the RAM. The more the number of apps installed the more the RAM is consumed, the less the free space the slower the system will be. So either install low sized application or install older version of a application ( they will have restriction of functions and OS compatibility) if you cant do that then remove unwanted and rarely used application to save RAM space, that will speed up the Smartphone.
Cleaning a RAM will only clear the Meta data and the cache which will startup again after a few minutes. meta data and cache store the auto fill and search criteria data. It will clear the browser history, personal auto correct words and auto fill data, cleaning a RAM will give a very negligible boost in performance than removing unwanted applications will.