I take it you are here because your electronic best friend – that you carry with you everywhere you go has just bummed you out with a barrage of odd delays between swipes and button typings or even power on wake ups or intermittent reboots.
Here’s a list of tried and trued steps to help you revive your Android device.
Firstly lets start with cleaning up any and all clutter!
1. Clean up any un-needed icons and widgets
2. Uninstall unused apps
Before doing so
Purge cache
Delete data
Then uninstall the unused app.
3. Move all music, photos, videos and any other downloaded items to drop box or other storage area.
4.(Updated! AFTER MORE THAN 20 I NO LONGER RECOMMEND THIS APP! ) Use an app called “cccleaner” by “Piriform” to clean cache and unused apps. Updated 2017.09.20: Do not use cccleaner as it was recently purchased by a new vendor and now contains vulnerable exploits!!
5. Use “ES Explorer” by “ES Global” to analyze space allocation and purge unneeded items
If still running slow or crashing or hanging
5. Disable notifications for all unneeded apps not needed notification’s
6. Review which apps are chatting the most by reviewing the bandwidth used by the apps within
Settings -> Data Usage – then review “By Application”
Depending on the application, you may want to use it less frequently or uninstall and replace with another like app.
7. Change the update notification frequency of social media and email apps to reduce the amount of times the app attempts to connect to its server. It is possible that the signal is weak and causing the app to repeatedly retry communications to it’s server.
8. Clear cache partion – Warning! the steps to do this may be different on each device. Please google for how to do this with your specific device.
9. Boot into safe mode and test if the issue still occurs when apps are not running while in safe mode. This helps to identify if the issue is due to a rogue app. Warning! like in step 8 – the steps to may be different for your device. Please google for how to start in “safe mode” on your specific device.
10. Use “app detective” by “zmarties” to review install date to correlate with when the delays started. This will help identify the list of apps to test uninstall incase you can not remember what app was last installed. It will also list and sort by last updated!
11. Use “osmonitor” by “eolwral” to review where resources are being used most as may need to uninstall
12. If you get this far and it still isn’t speeding up or stops hanging up or quits the unexpected reboot then you may need to do a very disheartening “Factory reset”. Please google for the steps on how to do this with your specific device as the steps are different on many devices.
13. If that does not do the trick.. then you may need to install an app named, “Wake lock – PowerManager” by “darken”. Once installed, try enabling the option “Partial_Wake_Lock” – then retest. This helped me on my Samsung Note 4!
14. If your smart phone consistently reboots when your battery life is under 60% – it may be time to get a replacement battery.
If all else fails…
15. Pull an “Office Space” on it and purchase a replacement. 🙁 Sometimes electronics become like broken lightbulbs. Don’t you wish there was a lightbulb repair kit.
This is what I have so far..
If you have any that I missed, please do let me know as I hope this helps anyone who had to suffer the loss of their electronic best friend.
-Alan Danque
