We have all been there. You bought a top-rated smartphone, and at first, it worked flawlessly. But, over time, that device starts to feel sluggish. Over time, cached data can accumulate, become corrupted, or simply get outdated, which may slow down your device. Restarting your phone often helps, but a targeted cache clear is a quick way to boost responsiveness without upgrading your hardware. 

In this guide, we will discuss effective ways to clear cached data on Android. If you are an Apple user, here’s how to increase the speed of iPhone and Android devices. 

Reasons Why phones become slow?  

Phones slow down for many reasons, like aging hardware, a low battery, or too many apps running at once. Let’s take a look at these common causes and effective ways to increase the speed. 

Low Storage Space  

Simple tasks like scrolling, rebooting your device, or launching apps require storage space to operate successfully. Smartphones get clogged with unnecessary applications, photos, videos, and documents, leaving little memory for the system to work efficiently. This leads to slower performance and reduced responsiveness.  

How to save space on a slow device 

Check what’s taking up your device’s storage  

To see how much free storage space you have available on your slow devices (on your Android smartphone) as well as delete apps/files that aren’t being used, go into the device settings and then select Storage or Device care or tap on the About Phone menu item. 

For an iPhone, select General then select iPhone Storage and view the same information for your iPhone that an Android device provides. Typically, you’ll see options to delete duplicate files, old messages, large documents, and other types of apps that can be deleted to create additional free space.  

Optimize your media storage  

iPhone: Turn on Optimize iPhone Storage in Settings > Photos. This way, your device keeps smaller versions locally and stores full-size files in iCloud.  

Android phone: Back up photos and videos to Google Photos or another cloud service, or move them to your SD card, then delete the local copies.  

P.S.: Try to keep at least 10–20% of your storage free. This will give you more space and keep your device running smoothly without unnecessary lag.  

Too many background apps running  

When you have many applications running at once, they continue to run independently, even if you’re not actively doing anything with them. The background applications use up resources (CPU) and memory (RAM) available on your phone or tablet. As the active applications only have access to a portion of the available memory due to the presence of background applications, performance issues will exist, and delays are common. 

Following steps help speed things up:  

Close unused apps  

To reveal which apps are open in Android, tap “Recent apps” or swipe up and hold your finger on the screen until a list of current apps appears (A list showing what your device has been using). You can now select everything you want to remove from the list by swiping left on each item or you can select “Close All.” 

To access the currently running apps on iPhone, swipe up from the bottom of the screen, or double-tap the Home Button (if available). All running apps will now be displayed and can be closed by simply swiping up from their respective cards. 

Limit background activity  

Android phone: Go to Settings > Apps/manage apps > [App] > Battery and restrict background activity for heavy apps. Some phones also let you manage this in Settings > Battery > Background usage limits.  

iPhone: Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and turn it off entirely, or disable it for individual apps that don’t need to refresh (like games or shopping apps) constantly. You can leave this turned on for essential apps like health and fitness, calendar, or mail.  

Disable location services  

Location services allow apps to track your device’s position for navigation, weather updates, ride-hailing, social media check-ins, and more. While useful, leaving location services on can slow down your phone. This is how to disable it:  

iPhone: Go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Location Services. Toggle off Location Services entirely, or scroll down to disable it for apps that don’t need your location.  

Android: Go to Settings > Location. Turn off Use location entirely, or select App-level permissions to turn off location access for non-essential apps.  

Restart your phone regularly  

Hold the power button and tap Restart or reboot (or Power Off, then turn it back on). Phone shuts and quick restarts relieve temporary memory and stop background tasks that may have hung. Do this whenever you notice sluggishness. Once every few days is a good habit for heavy users.  

Outdated software and apps  

For your phone to perform smoothly, it needs to be updated with the latest version of its operating system and applications. Updates provide essential features, capabilities, bug fixes, and app security patches that help your phone handle modern apps and tasks.  

When you skip updates, your system is forced to run new features on outdated foundations, and that mismatch creates the lag and crashes we all hate. Outdated apps have the same issue. Missing these updates can make your other apps glitchy and slow.  

Install operating system updates  

On an Android phone: Go to Settings > System/About phone> Software Update.  

On iPhone: Go to Settings > General > Software Update.  

Update your apps  

On an Android phone: Open the Google Play Store app> tap the profile icon > Manage apps and device > Update all.  

On iPhone: Open App Store > Profile icon > Update all.  

Keeping everything up to date helps your phone run smoothly with the latest fixes and features.  

Malware, bloatware, and suspicious apps  

When installed on your phone, Malware, Bloatware, and other potentially unwanted programs use system resources and can severely impact your device’s speed and performance by using a large portion of the processor’s capacity for running itself.  

Push notifications and background syncing can also add to the sluggishness caused by these malicious applications, which steal your information and carry out additional illegal actions on your smartphone. You may have downloaded one or more of these programs without your knowledge by following an email phishing link or clicking on misleading advertisements.  

These apps run multiple background processes that eat up storage and overload your phone’s CPU. Over time, this makes your device sluggish and harder to use, especially when opening legitimate apps.  

Uninstall suspicious apps: Open your phone app list and look for apps you don’t remember installing, or that have strange names/icons. On Android, go to Settings > Apps, review all apps installed, and delete any unfamiliar ones.  

On iPhone, long-press the app icon and tap Remove App.  

Avoid shady downloads: Avoid third-party apps and only install apps from official stores (Google Play or App Store or Apple Store), and be cautious of links in emails, texts, or ads popping up on your phone.  

Final Thoughts  

These steps can help your Android smartphone regain its original efficiency. After trying out the tips outlined here, we believe you will see a noticeable increase in both the speed and overall performance of your device and have an enhanced day-to-day digital experience. 

FAQs