How to Make an Old Android Smartphone or Tablet Fast Again

You can breathe new life into an slow Android device by changing a couple of Developer Mode options.

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Video Description
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One of the most common reasons why people buy a brand new smartphone is because their current device is not performing as well as it used to. This is generally a slow and gradual process that many people don't notice at first, but after a few years we begin to see that even the most basic tasks are taking longer than expected to complete.

As we install new OTA updates, the operating system itself becomes more demanding in terms of the hardware required to complete said tasks. This also happens slowly, and over time, when we install the latest update to our applications and games. After a couple of years, your favorite app needs to compete to stay relevant and in doing so ends up adding in features and changes which reduce the performance on aging hardware.

In today's video, I want to show you two Developer Options settings that you can change that will help improve the overall user experience of Android on very old smartphones and tablets.

Whether you just can't afford a newer device. . .or you like the one you have so much that you don't want to upgrade. Over time, Android can slow to a crawl and make it miserable to use due to all of the lag and stuttering that you see.

Thankfully, Android comes with some customization options that we can find in a hidden menu within the Settings app that can help alleviate some of these issues that we've begun to notice.

But before we can begin, we need to have Developer Mode enabled on our device.
If this is something you haven't done before, be sure to check the video description below as I'll be linking to some previous guides that are able to help you get caught up to speed so you can find this hidden Developer Options menu.


Now, scroll down to the bottom and you should find an Apps section.
Here, we want to look for the "Background process limit" option and configure this setting to "At most 4 processes".

This will prevent more than 4 apps from being stored cached in memory. This will not prevent your phone from running important services in the background (like gmail and messages). Instead, it just helps to prevent your phone from being overloaded with cached data so that your phone doesn't have to do so much rearranging when it comes to opening and closing apps after you've hit your hardware limit.

The next thing that I would recommend for those who have an old Android smartphone or tablet is to reduce or completely disable the animations. This can be done in the Developer Options menu as well, and you'll find the section just above where we were looking before. So just scroll up a bit and look for the three options related to animations on Android.

I know how it can be to want to use an Android smartphone longer than it's recommended. I loved my Galaxy Note 10 smartphone and wanted to keep using it longer than was viable due to performance related issues. But changes like these can help increase the longevity of your smartphone by bringing up the performance to what it was when you first opened the box.

Mentioned Links
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Google Pixel Developer Mode -    • How to Enable Developer Mode on ALL G...  
Samsung Galaxy Developer Mode -    • How to Turn On Galaxy S20 Developer M...  
Xiaomi Developer Options -    • How to Turn On the Xiaomi POCO M3 Dev...  


Step by Step Tutorial
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1. Intro [00:00]
2. Enable Developer Mode [01:54]
3. Find the Apps section of the Developer Options menu [02:45]
4. Set the "Background Process Limit" option [02:54]
5. Set the three Animation options too [04:25]


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