How To Make Your Old Phone Fast Again
It's a sad thing but inevitable that your onces cherished smartphone will slowly morph into a grimy, slow frustrating device unrecognisable from the cutting-edge gadget you bought home from the store. Here's how to get your phone back to its best, inside and out.
Aside from installing any Android or iOS updates as soon as they come down the pike (unless your phone is very old), the best way of keeping your phone clutter-free is to remove the apps you're not really using-not only does it free up some precious storage space, it can also improve performance, as your handset has fewer apps and processes to worry about.
It's time for a serious audit of what you do and don't need on your phone: That smash hit game you last played in 2015? That social messaging app all your friends have left? The good news is Android and iOS remember the apps you've paid for, so you can always install them again - just make sure you're not deleting any important data along with the app itself.
On iOS, press and hold an app icon until it shakes, then tap the small cross. On (stock) Android, press and hold on an icon in the app drawer and drag it up to the Uninstall link at the top (if you're not using stock Android, your phone will have something very similar). For a closer look at which apps are taking up room on your phone, head to General, Storage & iCloud Usage, then Manage Storage on an iPhone, or the Apps menu in Settings on an Android device.
Remember that with a lot of apps, including Facebook, Gmail and Twitter, there are equivalent websites you can visit in your mobile phone web browser, if you need to. As an added bonus, you might notice better battery performance the fewer apps you have weighing down your phone, just don't expect access if you don't have service.
Getting rid of unused apps is a good start in tidying up your phone, but you can go further. Photos and videos are probably the next biggest space hogs on your handset and both Google and Apple provide built-in ways of freeing up some room-and you might not even have to pay for the privilege.
Google Photos, which is available on both iOS and Android, will upload all of your pictures and video clips to the cloud for safe keeping, and then delete the originals to free up space. If you're happy with a small amount of resizing (down to 16 megapixels for photos and 1080p for videos) then you can store an unlimited number of files for free; otherwise, you can pay for space on the web if you use up the 15GB you get for free.
Apple has the iCloud Photo Library, which works in a similar way, though you only get 5GB of room for free. Once your pictures and videos are on the web, you can delete the originals to save space on your iPhone-head to Settings then Photos & Camera, and tap on the Optimize Storage button to keep only the most recent pictures on your iPhone. Other photos in iCloud are still shown as thumbnails, and can be downloaded in a tap.
For the ultimate in decluttering, you can wipe your phone back to its factory settings and start again from scratch-just make sure you've backed up everything important before you do so. You can find full instructions online from Apple and Google.
Credit: THE START MAGAZINE
Aside from installing any Android or iOS updates as soon as they come down the pike (unless your phone is very old), the best way of keeping your phone clutter-free is to remove the apps you're not really using-not only does it free up some precious storage space, it can also improve performance, as your handset has fewer apps and processes to worry about.
It's time for a serious audit of what you do and don't need on your phone: That smash hit game you last played in 2015? That social messaging app all your friends have left? The good news is Android and iOS remember the apps you've paid for, so you can always install them again - just make sure you're not deleting any important data along with the app itself.
On iOS, press and hold an app icon until it shakes, then tap the small cross. On (stock) Android, press and hold on an icon in the app drawer and drag it up to the Uninstall link at the top (if you're not using stock Android, your phone will have something very similar). For a closer look at which apps are taking up room on your phone, head to General, Storage & iCloud Usage, then Manage Storage on an iPhone, or the Apps menu in Settings on an Android device.
Remember that with a lot of apps, including Facebook, Gmail and Twitter, there are equivalent websites you can visit in your mobile phone web browser, if you need to. As an added bonus, you might notice better battery performance the fewer apps you have weighing down your phone, just don't expect access if you don't have service.
Getting rid of unused apps is a good start in tidying up your phone, but you can go further. Photos and videos are probably the next biggest space hogs on your handset and both Google and Apple provide built-in ways of freeing up some room-and you might not even have to pay for the privilege.
Google Photos, which is available on both iOS and Android, will upload all of your pictures and video clips to the cloud for safe keeping, and then delete the originals to free up space. If you're happy with a small amount of resizing (down to 16 megapixels for photos and 1080p for videos) then you can store an unlimited number of files for free; otherwise, you can pay for space on the web if you use up the 15GB you get for free.
Apple has the iCloud Photo Library, which works in a similar way, though you only get 5GB of room for free. Once your pictures and videos are on the web, you can delete the originals to save space on your iPhone-head to Settings then Photos & Camera, and tap on the Optimize Storage button to keep only the most recent pictures on your iPhone. Other photos in iCloud are still shown as thumbnails, and can be downloaded in a tap.
For the ultimate in decluttering, you can wipe your phone back to its factory settings and start again from scratch-just make sure you've backed up everything important before you do so. You can find full instructions online from Apple and Google.
Credit: THE START MAGAZINE
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