Let’s say you went to an online e-commerce store or physical phone shop, bought a brand new smartphone, you began putting it to some good use, it was super fast and responsive, you were happy with your purchase, and you loved and cherished your smartphone, more than anything else.

As time went on, let’s say something like a year and a couple of months, you begin to notice some slight slowness and hiccups here and there, it wasn’t that much of a problem, so you gave it less thought.

But as more time went by, and the more you keep making use of it, you noticed that it was now getting a little bit more serious, apps now seem like they are taking a little bit longer than usual to open, and even sometimes, apps that do stay open in the background for as long as you’d wanted, could not even last up to say, 20 minutes any longer, still you thought it wasn’t an issue that needs to be addressed, so you let it skip too.

And then finally, with more time, your phone begins to procrastinate and hang, apps begin to close unexpectedly by themselves, sometimes your phone just restarts by itself, and many more worrisome problems begin to show up, and that is the time you felt like something really has to be done about it.

You try the good old “Tech first aid” method of factory resetting the smartphone after you’ve done that, the phone begins to run a lot more smoothly than before, and you think it all ends there, but after a couple of days again, it starts acting up all over.

At some point you might even take it to a repair shop, they’d collect your money and do nothing for you, most of the time, they end up damaging the phone’s both internal and external parts while trying to disassemble it, thereby making you lose your warranty, that is if you’ve not lost it before then.

And finally, you are left with nothing but a problem phone, which leaves you with two options, either to go buy a new one which will as well end up the same way as this one, or continue using it while facing new versions of problems and frustration daily.

Well, not to worry, cause the thing is, you’re not the only one who’s having these issues on their smartphones, as it happens to everyone, and not just everyone this time, but anyone who is making use of any electronic gadget, the reason is that everything is sentenced to the laws of depreciation & devaluation, meaning that they tend to wear, tear, and eventually break down with time, even humans.

Today, we’ll be discussing with you, some of the reasons why our smartphones pass through this phase during their lifetime, and some of the habits we can learn, in order to alleviate these problems.

Reasons Why Phones Running Slow and How To Make Them Faster

1. Too Many Apps Installed

Alright, this is one of the most basic factors that might lead to your phone running slow. When you have too many apps installed on your phone, it automatically leads to many apps and processes running in the background, of which you might not even be aware. As a result, your RAM gets filled up, your processor begins to overwork itself, and finally, the problem sets in, in the form of procrastinating and sometimes freezing. This is what to do.

Solution

• Try uninstalling unused and duplicate apps that you don’t make use of. Duplicate apps are when you have things like two different web browsers installed on one phone. Say something like Google Chrome, Web and UC Browser, Mozilla Firefox, Opera Mini, and the rest.
• Secondly, even if you must have these apps installed on your device may be for specific features which are in one, and not on the other one, try to freeze or disable the ones which are not being used at the moment, it will help give your RAM some breathing space to focus on the ones which are currently being used. For any Infinix user using any of the Infinix phones running on any version of XOS, whether Chameleon or Hummingbird, your phone should probably have a pre-installed app freezer in it
• And for those of us whose devices don’t come with a pre-installed app freezer, you can disable unused apps by going to your device settings >> Apps Manager, clicking on any app you wish to disable, and selecting “Disable“

2. Too Many Temporary And Junk Files Found In Your Device’s Storage

Now what are temporary files, these are simply files that were generated during runtime, they come as cache and log files from web browsers, the remains of uninstalled apps which were not completely uninstalled, gallery cache, duplicate files, and much more.

So you see, these files can be generated from anywhere, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop them from being generated. But the only thing you can do to help your device is; to clean up these files at intervals, maybe once every 3 days, or twice per week.

Solution

Nowadays, most devices come with an already pre-installed System Cleaner in them, that can be used to fish out these files (because they are hidden most of the time) and delete them.

For those using any Infinix smartphone that is running on any version of XOS, whether Hummingbird, Chameleon, or even the new XOS 5 Cheetah, they come with a pre-installed tool called XManager (now renamed Phone Master), that helps clean up junk files from your device, and as well get many other things done to improve your device’s performance.

So for others, look into your device’s pre-installed apps, there should be something similar there, but if for some reason you can’t find one, I recommend you download the Du Speed Booster App from Google Play Store, it also gets the job done too.

3. Your Phone’s Storage Is Full

Now, because you refused to clean up temporary files from your device, they keep on accumulating, little by little, and before you know it, they automatically grow into large files that eat up a larger part of your device’s storage.

And when they do this, what happens, is the necessary apps which require more storage space to function properly don’t get the space they need, and that is when you begin getting warnings like “Unfortunately, Facebook has stopped unexpectedly“

Solution

• Now in order to avoid this, just follow the same steps listed above. Clear your temporary and junk files regularly, and delete unnecessarily large files, some people like keeping movies on their phones even after they watched them a hundred times, either delete those movies or move them to external storage, say something like a micro-SD card, or to a PC if you have one.
• Uninstall any app that you don’t have plans of using, some people have this attitude when they collect someone’s phone to transfer a few nice apps to themselves, they end up collecting both the ones they know they are not gonna make use of, thereby wasting a good chunk of space and which is a very bad practice.

Also Read: 25 Best Android Go “Lite” Apps to Save Storage, Battery Life, and Less Data Consumption

4. Installed Apps That Contains Bugs

Not every app you see in the play store or anywhere is safe, though they might appear safe, and might not really cause some serious harm to your device, but there’s always a “but”.

Some apps can wake up your camera at any time they feel like, some apps when given device administration permission, can lock and unlock your device whenever they feel like, and even restart it, while some are just pure virus apps that were built to kill your device…

So be careful of what you are downloading from the internet, and be careful of the device you are transferring apps and files from. These are the basic precautions you should take.

Solution

• Number one, be careful of what you download from Google Play Store, any app which Google says is harmful should not be downloaded, and if you have it already installed before, uninstall it now.
• Secondly, you can set up Google Play Protect to regularly check your device at intervals for potentially harmful apps, so that you can delete them. (Google Play Protect is found in Google Play Store).
• And then lastly, be careful of the kind of permissions some apps requests from you, and be mindful of how you grant them those permissions. For example, a third-party camera app or photo editing app shouldn’t be asking for permission to read your phone’s contact and messages. So in simple points, only grant apps the necessary permissions.

5. Your Phone Is Being Attacked By an Unknown Virus

In the case of downloading apps from unknown sources, downloading music, videos, and pictures, and browsing the web daily, it is inevitable for your phone to contact some unknown virus, especially when you don’t have a genuine anti-virus app installed.

Some of them might not pose a serious problem, while others can result in more fatal damages like corrupting your files, making them useless, or even completely erasing them.

Solution

• Make sure to have a genuine anti-virus app installed on your device, to warn you against harmful files before downloading them. There is some really good antivirus app out there on the Google Play Store, like Avast, Norton, and Kaspersky.
• Secondly, if you’re already beginning to notice some things that might seem like virus activities, please make sure to confirm if it is true, and take the necessary steps to clear it off before it results in more harmful problems.

6. Your Phone Has Too Little RAM

Now for those of us using low-end budget phones that are running on 1GB or 2GB of RAM, we can’t stop our phones from procrastinating and freezing especially when there are a lot of apps installed, and here’s what to do about this problem.

Solution

• Uninstall unused and duplicate apps.
• Clean your storage and clear your cache as often as possible.
• Download the Lite version of apps instead of heavier, more storage-requiring counterparts. Many apps such as Facebook, Gmail, YouTube, etc., have their various respective Lite versions.

That is all for now, Show me some love by sharing this article if you enjoyed reading it, and don’t forget to drop your comment.