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Business News/ Technology / Apps/  Tricks to speed up your old smartphone until you buy a new one
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Tricks to speed up your old smartphone until you buy a new one

You can speed up your old Apple iPhone or Android smartphone with these tricks

Apple iPhones users can manage storage in Settings. iOS 11 can automatically uninstall apps which are rarely used, if the iPhone’s storage is running low.Premium
Apple iPhones users can manage storage in Settings. iOS 11 can automatically uninstall apps which are rarely used, if the iPhone’s storage is running low.

If your smartphone is having performance issues, apps are taking longer to load and the battery is draining faster than usual, there can be a number of factors behind these issues. Here some of those factors and few tips to tackle them.

Following the release of iOS 11 for iPhones, many users reportedly experienced a drop in performance and reduced battery backup in older iPhones such as iPhone 6 and 5s after updating to the new software. Though benchmark tests by testing software developer Futuremark on iPhone 5s showed that CPU and GPU performance remained consistent from iOS 9 to iOS 11,

On Android phones though, poor optimisation of custom apps and updates can slow down older smartphones running on inferior hardware. It is one of the reasons why Google has come up with an optimised variant of Android Oreo, called Go Edition, for entry-level smartphones with or less than 1GB RAM.

Every update cycle adds a litany of new features, which make the OS or custom UI heavier. They take up more space and if your smartphone’s storage is already running low, it’s likely to affect its performance too. This is true for iPhones too, especially the one with 16GB storage.

Users can resolve the issue by identifying apps and files that are taking up more space and getting rid of them. On Android devices, apps such as Google Files Go can help. Moving files to micro SD card, if available, is the other way. Cleaning caches regularly can also help. Users can free it up from Settings-> storage or they can entrust it to apps such as CC Cleaner.

Apple iPhones users can manage storage in Settings > General > iPhone Storage-> Manage storage. Here users can see which apps are taking up more space and which messages have large attachments. iOS 11 can automatically uninstall apps which are rarely used (but will retain the saved files), if the iPhone’s storage is running low. However, it is an optional feature and has to activated in Settings->iTunes & App Store->Offload Unused Apps.

Similarly, photos take up a significant amount of space. You can back them on Google Photos or other cloud storage solutions and remove the existing copy from the smartphone.

The other element that affects a smartphone’s performance is the apps and processes running in the background. Closing an app doesn’t switch it off completely. It remains active in the background, running continuous updates and syncs. This can slow down the smartphone with low RAM. Clearing all apps in the background manually can help.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhijit Ahaskar
Abhijit writes on tech policy, gaming, security, AI, robotics, electronics and startups. He has been in the media industry for over 12 years.
Catch all the Technology News and Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.
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Published: 12 Dec 2017, 12:17 PM IST
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