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How to make your phone faster

Unbeknown to most smartphone users, there are a few ways to speed up your device. Unfortunately the hard limit is the speed of the particular model, but within that boundary you may be able to increase responsiveness. The first thing to do is to remove apps you don't use. While some use up a significant amount of space on the phone (this can be a concern for phones with smaller storage capacities), the main reason to do so is that by default, apps are allowed to display notifications. This also means that the phone has to 'check in' on the application to make sure they don't have notifications to display, which in essence means the app, or a part of it, has to be running in the background at all times. Disabling the notifications usually means that it doesn't run in the background.

The 2nd thing is, for those apps which're left after the initial culling, go into the notification settings on your phone and disable notifications for everything except the apps which you actually want to receive notifications from. As above, this means they're not required to run in the background, and you'll also receive less information 'noise' from your phone during use. 3rd thing to do is disable features you're not using, while you're not using them. Wifi, data, bluetooth, NFC and synchronisation all consume the largest amounts of power on your phone and also sap some performance. Turn them on when you need them, for sure, but disable when you don't. Your battery life will also increase considerably when you do so.

The remaining options are highly model-specific. On some Android phones, power-saving modes can actually speed things up by disabling background processes and reducing the screen resolution (depending on your phone, you may be able to adjust the screen resolution without changing the power mode). Generally speaking, I can't tell the difference between 720p and 4k resolution on a phone, and I don't know anybody who can. Again on Android, there are some hidden (developer) options which can be unlocked with a little know-how, which allow you to disable screen transitions and similarly needless visual fluff.

Asides from all of the above, the only thing you can do to speed up your phone is: buy a newer phone. The 2nd-hand market is very active on places like trademe, and so long as the seller is honest and not shipping you a phone with known-but-undisclosed defects, you can get a nice speed increase without adding yet more e-waste to the environment. Look for a phone made within the last 3-5 years in order to meet the more recent cellphone network requirements; 3G doesn't exist in most areas of New Zealand now (2G does), so you need a phone with 4G-LTE capability, at minimum, for data connectivity. Preferably, play around with the same or a similar model in a shop before buying, so that you know what you're getting in for.

- Matt Bentley, computer expert at Bentley Home PC Support.
Email info@homepcsupport.co.nz or phone 0211348576.

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