Why Is My Phone Soo Slow?
Few things are as frustrating as a slow smartphone. From freezing and glitches in apps to delays when you’re just trying to make a call, you could be dealing with several issues. Whether you’re all about your iPhone or prefer to stick with Android, all types of smartphones are basically a computer you hold in the palm of your hand. That being said, operating systems can get slow, even with your phone. Take a look at five common reasons your phone is slower than it should be and how to tackle the issues.
1. Lacking Space
Hands-down, the biggest reason for a turtle-slow phone is lack of space or memory. In simple speak, everything your phone does is a computing process. These processes require a certain amount of space to happen. If you’ve used up all of your GBs of memory with dozens of apps and a million photos of your cat, the phone will struggle to complete basic processes.
Solution? Free up space by giving unused apps the boot, moving photos and videos to the cloud, and investing in a bigger memory card.
2. Poor Battery Health
The typical smartphone battery is built to give you about 300 to 500 charges. From here, the battery capacity drops by about 20 percent. The thing is, when your battery is low, it changes how quickly the phone can handle certain tasks. Some systems are automatically designed to change certain functions based on battery life in an effort to conserve what juice is remaining.
Solution? Grab a charger for a top-off for the battery or invest in a new battery or phone if necessary.
3. Older Operating System
Just like computers, operating systems (OSs) in phones are constantly getting upgraded to the next-best system. The latest apps are designed to function optimally with the latest OSs. If your phone has an older operating system, this changes how apps function, which can definitely mean certain tasks are slow-going. Even though most companies will update their OS automatically for a while, you don’t really get major OS overhauls.
Solution? If your phone is more than two years old, there is a chance your OS is outdated. Time for a new phone maybe?
4. Multiple Apps Open
You jumped from Insta back to Facebook, played a game of Candy Crush, then checked your cash flow in your mobile banking app, and proceeded to Amazon to grab that new book. Sound familiar? In the span of a few minutes, you could have five apps still running on your phone, and this can definitely slow things down. Also, some apps run in the background all the time, even if you clear them out.
Solution? Close what you’re not using. Open app permissions and determine what is running all the time that could be slowing you down.
5. Weak Wi-Fi
Sounds like common sense, but sometimes, weak Wi-Fi is not so easy to recognize as the culprit behind a slow phone. If you’re connected to a network that has a low download speed, it can take forever for things to load. If you’re on a low upload speed, you’ll have trouble posting vids on social media and sending those cute cat pics to your friends. Remember, you can find a ton of free speed-checker apps to use to test your signal strength.
Solution? Switch over to data if you can to test the theory that slow Wi-Fi is to blame. If so, find yourself a better connection.
Phone still acting like a sloth?
If you’ve checked all the above and your phone still acts like a three-toed sloth, you may have bigger problems to contend with. Malware, a dying OS, and even internal damage could be to blame. Get with your local tech geek to get a proper diagnosis.
