How to speed up your smartphone

If your smartphone is staggering under the load and getting slower and slower, here's how to speed it up again.
Have you noticed your smartphone has become sluggish lately? Perhaps it's slow to open apps, or struggles when loading your camera album. Fear not, the GHI has some tips on how to speed up your smartphone.


Delete unused apps. On an iPhone press and hold the app you want to delete until the icons begin to shake and small crosses appear in the top left-hand corner of the icons, then tap the app you want to delete, followed by any others. They will now be removed from you device. Android users should head to the Settings app and then select Apps. Tap the app you want to remove and then select Uninstall from the top right-hand corner.

Clear cached app data

Just like we pages leave traces of data on your smartphone, apps do the same, so regularly clear out their data too.

On an iPhone, open the Settings menu and then select General followed by Usage. Scroll down to the section marked Documents & Data and tap the individual apps that you want to delete data from. Now tap Edit from the top right-hand corner and select Delete All. Follow the steps labelled above to clear cached app data on Android devices.

Clear browser data

When surfing the web on your smartphone, you will leave a trail in the form of your browsing history, this includes a list of sites you’ve visited as well as images and site data. Help speed up your phone by clearing this on a regular basis.

If you’ve got an iPhone, open the Settings app and then press Safari. Scroll down and tap Clear History and Website Data.

On Android smartphones that use Chrome as the web browser (a red, yellow, green a blue circular icon), press the Menu icon in the top right-hand corner and tap History, then select Clear Browsing Data from the bottom of the screen and make sure all items are ticked apart from Save Password. Press Clear and the data will be removed.

Empty out downloads folder

Both iPhones and Android smartphones have folders where you can download files from the internet, whether photos sent to you or even PDFs attached to emails. On your iPhone open the Files app and then choose Browse for the bottom right-hand corner. Now press 'on my iPhone' and tap Select from the top right-hand corner. Choose the files you want to remove and press the trash can icon from the bottom of the screen. If you’ve got an Android phone, you’ll have a downloads folder that will store PDFs, word documents and any photos you’ve chosen to download. Open the Downloads/My Files folder and delete anything you no longer need.

Remove old text messages. On an iPhone open the messaging app and swiping to the left on the conversation, then press delete. Those with smartphone running Google Android should open the Messaging app and the tap the conversation they want to delete messages from. Now press the Menu button in the top right hand corner and select Delete.