Performance Tweaks: More Functionality (and juice) on Your Smartphone

By now, we pretty much all have smart phones, and we want the most out of them, whether it’s the most speed for multi-tasking a bunch of apps at the same time, or the longest battery for getting us through an intense day of internet usage at work and on the commute home.

Indeed, we have all experienced the hassle of a laggy, unresponsive phone that reminds you it might be time to cave for that newer model. And we’ve all heard the dreaded low battery alert when there isn’t an outlet in sight. When we absolutely have to do something on our phone and it’s just not cooperating, to say these problems are an inconvenience is an understatement.

Without further ado, read on for a few tips on how to avoid the above scenarios and get the most out of your smartphone.

Turn on power saver mode

Some phones may have a particular setting to alter the clock speed and animation settings such that the least amount of power is consumed. CyanogenMod, a popular Android mod, is one example of an OS that employs this hack as a setting.

Turn off all connectivity

Turn off all your radios, including Bluetooth, data, GPS, and wireless connections when you really don’t need to use them. If you need a certain piece of information, you can try downloading it or loading it in your browser, then disabling everything by even going into airplane mode (be warned, you won’t be able to receive calls, so reserve this for the most dire of circumstances).

Disable animations

Usually accessible as a developer option in your settings, turning off animations is a particularly good choice for older phones that chug along at a slower frame rate. This will also save you battery life in the long run.

Get rid of unwanted and unused apps and widgets

Widgets are typically connectivity and animation intensive, so the fewer of these you employ, the better for performance and battery. Slimming down by going through the list of apps to only keep what you use (updating these) and deleting the rest will ensure you aren’t running unnecessary background processes, you aren’t getting unwanted push notifications, and you aren’t wasting space. Apps like Clean Master on Android and iCleaner on iOS will also help clean things up by getting rid of accumulated junk files and apps you may have forgotten about and never used.