When you buy your Android smartphone, the perceived wisdom is that you have a choice to make. You can either accept the operating system as it is, with all of the bells and whistles that have been added by your mobile phone manufacturer and network, or you can reject this and root your device in order to customise the phone and have things just how you want them. We know which sounds more enticing.
This might be in order to tweak the user interface or add apps that wouldn’t be possible under normal circumstances. The idea of course is to get your Android smartphone running just the way you want it, maximising your productivity by having a phone that does exactly what you need. Of course, the problem here is rooting.
You, like many other users, may not be comfortable with the process, which is easier on some devices than others. Bearing this in mind, how do you feel about hacking and tweaking Android without rooting? Yes, you read that right – over the next few lines i am going to show you how to speed up your phone, remove bloatware, add a new launcher and install a firewall – no root required!
Replace slow apps
Rather than browse the Google Play store for applications to speed up your phone, first you should take a close look at those that might be slowing down your progress. Forget about phone performance and think more about your own. If there is an app that you are using that takes a long time to load up or use, then you need to find a replacement straight away. Begin by looking on Google Play for good apps that can do exactly the same job. When you have found a good replacement, install and use it instead!
Cut down on widgets
If you use widgets extensively (perhaps for displaying email, bookmarks or social network data) then you’re potentially slowing your phone’s performance. Whether your phone is low-end or top of the range, it is probably optimised more for performing tasks than smooth scrolling and speed. You can help by reducing the number of widgets in use; perhaps limiting yourself to one per screen. Spend time finding how Android’s performance is affected, and look for ways of replacing or avoiding the widget concerned.
Adjust graphics settings
Arguably the best way of fixing performance issues (particularly slowness and hanging) in Android is to take a look at the Display settings. In Android 4.1 these can be found in Settings>Device. Here, you can tweak things such as Brightness, Automatic backlight and Rotation. Of these, the latter can have an impact on your phone’s performance, while disabling the backlight settings can also have a marked improvement on performance and battery life. It’s also best to avoid ‘live’ themes.
Restore factory settings
Although a seemingly desperate act, if you take the necessary precautions with your data you can resolve a lot of problems simply by restoring your Android back to the factory settings. The steps differ slightly across different versions of Android. In Android 4.1, go to Settings and find Personal; listed last is Backup & reset, and in this screen you will find the Factory data reset option. Note that you will also have the option of erasing the SD card – make sure you have backed up your data first!
