Must-know smartphone performance tips

Frustrated by your smartphone always running out of battery power? Are a couple of apps taking the lion share of data traffic? Do you want to check your smartphone’s voracious data eaters? Are you frustrated by your screen being always on and unnecessarily consuming battery power when you charge your phone? In today’s article, I […]

Frustrated by your smartphone always running out of battery power? Are a couple of apps taking the lion share of data traffic? Do you want to check your smartphone’s voracious data eaters? Are you frustrated by your screen being always on and unnecessarily consuming battery power when you charge your phone? In today’s article, I will touch on these and other performance problems that may be plaguing your device.

Smartphones have become so much a part of our lives that we use them for virtually everything: making a phone call, watching movies and videos, sending emails, sending messages without and with contents (videos, movies, pictures, etc.), accessing the web for anything, running a gazillion apps, accessing social media, buying stuff online, accessing your bank accounts, and receiving those much-awaited bank alerts for credits into your account.

You’ll wonder how we managed when there were no smartphones. Unfortunately, like most things in life, your phone requires maintenance. To function well as a person, you need to have your annual medical checkups, limit your food and beverage intake, and exercise regularly; taking at least 10,000 steps per day. You also need to lose weight and get rid of excess stuff in your body. Self-maintenance, not unlike maintaining your car, is a must for top performance. You also need to invest in the maintenance of your smartphone – realizing how much it has become a part of your life. 

As a start, these are the low-hanging fruits in your effort to declutter your phone for good performance: stop vibrating, use Low Power Mode, avoid extreme temperatures (best: between 0 and 35 degrees Centigrade), turn off connections, disable auto-sync, switch off location services, disable unused apps,  lower brightness, disable the digital assistants, and, of course, replace your battery as often as necessary and carry excess backup batteries with you in addition to your power bank.

To be sure, you need to have some important diagnostics on your phone to carry out a more complete job of cleaning it up. For example, knowing the worst apps for hogging (that is, taking the lion share of) data traffic, draining battery life, eating into storage, or draining performance, may be needed in order to guide the decluttering process.

Some research carried out and published in August 2017 by The Independent Newspaper (UK), contains some of these diagnostics. The following list has been taken from this source. Obviously, the data may be biased toward the UK smartphone user, but it does provide some guide.

The 10 worst apps for sapping battery life, which automatically run when you turn your phone on, are: Samsung AllShare, Samsung Security Policy Updates, Beaming Service for Samsung, ChatON Voice & Video Chat, Google Maps, WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook, WeChat, AppLock, and DU Battery Saver. The 10 worst apps for draining battery life, which users run themselves, are: Samsung WatchON , Samsung Video Editor, Netflix,  Spotify Music, Snapchat, Clean Master, LINE: Free Calls & Messages, Microsoft Outlook, BBC News, and ES File Explorer File Manager.

The 10 worst (automatically-running) apps for hogging data traffic: Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo! Japan, Firefox Browser fast & private, The Weather Channel, WhatsApp Messenger, Google Chrome, DU Battery Saver, Facebook Lite, and Google Play Home. The 10 worst (user-enabled) apps for hogging data traffic: Netflix, Spotify Music, Snapchat, BBC News, LINE: Free Calls & Messages, Microsoft Outlook, Clean Master, Samsung WatchON, Amazon for Tablets, and PicsArt Photo Studio & Collage. 

The 10 worst (automatically-running) apps for eating into storage: Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Kindle, Facebook Messenger, CosmoSia, Google Quick Search Box, Google Maps, Google Chrome, Firefox Browser fast & private, and Tango – Free Video Call & Chat. The 10 worst (user-enabled) apps for eating into storage: Spotify Music, Snapchat, LINE: Free Calls & Messages, Samsung Video Editor, SoundCloud – Music & Audio, PicsArt Photo Studio & Collage, Amazon Shopping, BBC News, Clean Master, and Photo Grid. “Facebook, Instagram, and Kindle are particularly bad because they store local cache files, photos or books,” according to the source.

The 10 worst performance-draining (automatically-running) apps: Samsung AllShare, ChatON Voice & Video Chat, Samsung Push Service, Google TalkBack, Google Play Music, Google Maps, Google Play Newsstand, Google Plus, ChatON, and Google Hangouts. The 10 worst (user-enabled) apps for draining performance: Samsung WatchON, Google Docs, Samsung Media Hub, SHAREit, Samsung Video Editor, Flipboard, Google Text-to-Speech, Clean Master, LINE: Free Calls & Messages, and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The foregoing lists pertain to Android devices. On 6 November 2017, J. D. Biersdorfer (New York Times) provides a list of the top ten battery power consuming apps in iPhone: Facebook (28% of battery power consumption), Mail (21%), Safari (11%), Camera/Audio (5%), Messages (5%), Twitter (4%), App Store (4%), Home & Lock Screen (4%), AP News (background activity) (3%), and Instagram (3%).

 

Lastly, one minor headache I sometimes have with my Galaxy Note is the screen light always staying lit while charging. To stop this, go to Settings > General > Developer Options > turn off “Stay Awake.” If necessary, go to Settings > General > About Device > tap on Build Number, to turn developer options ON/OFF.