Android Phone Quick Tips

Android smartphones are quickly
coming up to their zenith in sales
and yet there are so many people
who don't know how to use them
to their fullest extent.

Virtually every day, I meet or talk to people who are frustrated with their Android OS phones.  Whether or not they realize it, there are some very simple things that they could do to make their lives a lot easier.  I'm going to share some things that could possibly make you device run a whole lot smoother and save you a good chunk of battery life as well.  Here are some common complaints I hear on a regular basis:

My phone is slow...

There are several things you can do to speed your phone up.  Do not attempt anything with the star (*) symbol next to it without reading up on it further.  Here is a very helpful site that will help you with those things.  If you don't know how to do something, let me know or you can find plenty of help on Google.  :)

One more note...

DISCLAIMER:  I am not responsible for anything you do to your device which may render it to operate in a way which is not desirable.  I am simply posting this to help those who are willing to help themselves.  

IMPORTANT:  PLEASE READ ALL COMMENTS OF ALL APPS BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD, IT MAY SAVE YOUR PHONE AND MAY SAVE YOU A LOT OF HEADACHE!

1.)  Download a third party home launcher (e.g. GO Launcher Ex, Lightning Launcher)  These launchers usually do not feed off of the Random Access Memory of the phone and keep the memory usage at a minimum using built-in task killers/managers.  There should be no reason to have to actually spend money on a third party launcher, as most are free.

2.)  If need be, download a task killer that has an auto kill feature (e.g. Advanced Task Killer).  Set the kill frequency to something that will save battery in the long run (e.g. 2-4 hours).  GO Power Master is an excellent way to kill standing apps and save battery.

3.)  *Uninstall apps you never use.  If you want to uninstall the preinstalled apps that came with your phone, you must root your phone.  Be careful!  As with every person who tells you how to do this, you can easily brick (make your phone so useless that it's only good to be a brick) your phone.  Please follow every step in any guidelines given to you when trying to do this.  To root your phone simply means that you force access to have complete control over every aspect of your device, (e.g. Owner/Admin account on a computer).  Most, if not all, cellular phone service providers say this will void your warranty.

4.)  *Overclock your phone.  This requires root access on your device.  Overclock simply means to make your phone's processing speed go faster.  It will cause your phone to go faster, but it will also drain your battery if you do not use a reasonable frequency and voltage level.  (e.g. for my Droid 1, I used Chevy no1's Ultralow Voltage 1.0 Ghz kernel).  Usually a phone cannot be overclocked more than a few hundred Mhz above the highest normal/stock frequency.

WARNING: Overclocking your phone without being careful might result in hardware failure and/or permanent damage to your phone.  Also be careful as your phone may get hot.

5.)  *Install a custom ROM that is not based off of the system that ships with the phone (e.g. blur, sense, etc).  Custom ROMs are simply a customized system that your phone runs on.  Cyanogenmod is a good place to start looking for custom ROMs because the developer always bases them off of the source that Google themselves releases to the wireless companies.  On top of that, they include many features that may not come with the phone initially (e.g. free wireless hotspot, built in overclock/underclock feature, theme engine, script tweaks that streamline processes on your device, etc).  Please make sure to say thank you to a custom ROM developer if you enjoy his/her creation/modification.

My battery life is terrible...

Your phone's battery is a keen reflection of how heavily the apps installed use it.  There are some very simple ways to get the best out of your battery!

1.)  Install a third party home launcher app (e.g. GO Launcher Ex, Lightning Launcher, Nemus Launcher).

2.)  Turn off anything you aren't using.  This includes GPS, auto-brightness, sound, vibrate function, haptic feedback, wifi, bluetooth, and most importantly mobile data (3G, 4G, etc).  There are several "one-stop" widgets that are available on Google Play (Android Market).  My personal favorite widget to use is GO Power Master.  It includes all of these functions to toggle as well as a way to make profiles and have them automatically change based on different situations.  If you are willing to spend a little coin, my all-time favorite automated app is called Tasker.  It can do pretty much anything your phone is capable of doing based on many possible circumstances.  It has a bit of a learning curve, but it is a wonderful replacement for several apps on the market.  Tasker is $6-$7.

3.)  *Installing a custom ROM may improve your battery life significantly based on which ROM you choose.

4.)  Use the built in data saver on your phone if it has one.  This not only saves data usage, but also battery.

My phone says Low Memory...

Unfortunately, this is a problem that some phones cannot be recovered from.  Low memory may mean one of two things.  RAM usage is high, or Internal/External Memory Card is close to full.

1.)  Uninstall apps you don't use.  I cannot express this enough.  If you do not use the app but think you might, uninstall it until you need it.  This is an almost foolproof way to keep RAM usage at a minimum.

2.)  Try to minimize used apps.  Like I said before, Tasker is a wonderful replacement for several apps. Try to find an app that can do the things that two apps you have can do and uninstall the replaced apps.

3.)  Use apps that use cloud (internet) storage instead of phone memory to store things like music, videos, etc.  I use Google Play Music because I can store up to 20,000 songs on one account that aren't bought from the Google Play store.  Any music bought from the store will not use up the 20,000 song limit.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to message/email me or leave a comment.

Thank you and have a great day!