Samsung Galaxy S4 Tips and Tricks
Factory OS: Android 4.2 (Jellybean)
Have you updated your Operating System?
Then view tips for the most recent OS version(s): Android 9 (Pie) & Android 8 (Oreo)
Or view tips for all Android versions
Here are the top 5 tips to make your phone run faster:
1) Use only essential widgets on your homescreen – each widget consumes memory and processing power which can slow your down your phone.
2) Uninstall apps that you don’t use – after awhile your phone can get cluttered as some Apps are designed to always run in the background. If you rarely use an App, then uninstall it to free up memory and CPU resource.
3) Install Apps to your phone memory – if you have an SDCard, always install Apps to the phone memory, which can be accessed faster. If you have Apps on the SDCard, then move them back to the phone memory with an App called Move2SD available from the Play Market.
4) Use Static rather than Live wallpapers – Live wallpapers consume processing power and memory. Unless you really must have them, uninstall them.
5) Kill tasks occasionally – Some Apps will run in the background indefinitely unless you kill them. Most of them won’t cause a problem, but it pays to check your running tasks from time to time. Hold down your Home key and check the Task Manager.
One last thing: Don’t use Task Killers. Android manages tasks very well and Task Killers just make your phone unstable and can slow it down further.
To speed up your phone, you can turn off screen animations. Go to Settings – Developer options.
Then scroll down to Window animation scale and select that. From here you can choose to turn Animations Off. This will make screen transitions faster.
Note: Developer Options is not enabled by default. To enable, go to Settings – About Device. Then tap on Build number 7 times.
Rather than having to locate the hang up icon on the screen after each call, you can quickly end a call by pressing the Power button.
To enable this, go to Settings – Accessibility – Answering/ending calls. Then tick The power button ends calls.
If you want to conserve battery life, you can turn off the WiFi while the phone is asleep.
Go to Settings – WiFi. Then press the Menu key and press Settings – Advanced.
Then untick Keep WiFi on during sleep.
If you find yourself being stalked or receiving unwanted calls nuisance calls from people or companies then you should use the Call rejection mode.
Simply go to Settings – Call – Call rejection. From here you can manage your rejection list of numbers.
If you don’t want to have to unlock your screen every time you take your device out of standby then go to Settings – Lock screen – Screen lock and change the settings there.
If you’re worried about your sensitive data falling into the wrong hands then Jelly Bean has a great new encryption feature that scrambles every pieces of content on your device.
Go to Settings – Security settings – Encrypt device or Encrypt external SD card.
WARNING: Making your volume or music louder can damage your hearing.
Most phones have their volumes limited by local laws to protect our hearing. There is a way to boost your volume however. Go to the Android Market and download an App called Volume+ (Sound Boost). There is also a free version called Volume+ Free.
You will need to root your phone for this App to work.
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It is best to avoid task killers such as Advanced Task Killer. Android is designed to automatically pre-load certain applications, even if you don’t load them yourself. If it starts to run low on memory, it will smartly unload the oldest running apps automatically.
Manually killing tasks will only mean they get loaded in memory again. Task killers can make the phone slow, laggy, or drain battery life more quickly.