Common Reasons Behind Smartphone's 'Snail-like' Behavior

'Why Do Phones Slow Down Over Time?' It's one of the most frequently asked questions concerning aging devices. It seems like our phones are destined...

1. Common Reasons Behind Smartphone's 'Snail-like' Behavior

'Why Do Phones Slow Down Over Time?' It's one of the most frequently asked questions concerning aging devices. It seems like our phones are destined to go from fast and smooth to cluttered and painfully slow.

There are numerous reasons why smartphones become sluggish over the years. Fortunately, most of these reasons can be addressed and prevented with the right knowledge. Let's take a look at some feasible methods, compiled from AndroidAuthority.

Background Apps
You've probably heard about this before, but having too many background apps is the primary reason for a sluggish phone. We often have a habit of installing numerous apps during usage, only to forget to uninstall the ones we never touch. Many of these apps likely require background resources, such as refreshing data, connecting to the internet, or monitoring certain system aspects to serve specific purposes.
Phones have limited resources (including RAM, CPU...), which need to be divided to accommodate all background tasks and have high priority. Thus, if there are too many apps running in the background, the phone will slow down, especially in cases where apps demand significant resources like games, for example. While Android currently manages resources quite well, if the system has depleted resources, don't expect it to run smoothly. Android P, set to be released soon, is expected to change this with features like Background Execution Limits and restrictions on access for background apps.

However, while awaiting Android P, there are things we can do:
Removing old and unused apps is a crucial and super-simple system maintenance method. Fortunately, recent Android versions make this easier by providing cleanup tools with the ability to automatically uninstall apps you haven't touched in a long time.
To check which services are currently running in the background, you'll need to enable 'Developer Options' by tapping on the build number section repeatedly located in Settings > About phone. Then, go to Developer Options and find the 'Running services' tab to view the list of background processes.
Alternatively, you can use apps like Greenify or Servicely to investigate how these mentioned services impact system resources and battery life over time, if your device is rooted. This will help us identify the worst-performing apps to uninstall for performance improvement.

Full and Fragmented Storage
The writing speed of NAND flash storage (internal memory) will slow down if you cram too much into it – this may be why your phone feels sluggish when storage starts to fill up. There are numerous things that fill up storage: countless app log files, a plethora of photos and videos accumulated over the years, and app cache files.
Android will display a small notification when you're running out of storage, along with providing options to clean up unused media files and apps. It's best to proactively handle the situation before it occurs, perhaps by manually deleting files or utilizing the integrated memory cleanup feature in the device.
Even if you don't notice one of the aforementioned 'clean up memory' notifications, storage cluttered by long-gone and deleted apps can still slow down the system. This is what we commonly refer to as 'fragmentation'. Fragmentation also occurs due to faulty memory regions, affecting the read and write cycle limits of the drive, where corrupted sectors become inaccessible.

Flash Memory and SSDs do not have moving parts like old hard drives, so the decline in random read performance is not a problem, but increased latency when accessing data from unorganized blocks may occur. Tracking fragmented files on a large drive can increase scan time, and writing data to a fragmented flash drive can significantly slow down due to finding free space on such a drive being a nightmare.
Android OS and drive controllers do a fairly good job of keeping flash memory from becoming too fragmented through a method called 'trimming'. However, when memory becomes full, it's challenging to move and store new files and apps due to lack of free space. If your memory is full or sluggish, you can simply perform a factory reset to clean it up (of course, after backing up your data elsewhere) – unless that flash drive is too old.
Additionally, it's best to store frequently changing photos, music, videos, and files on a microSD card instead of on flash drives, as microSD cards can be replaced as they age. Cloud storage is also a good option if you have large music and video files.

Battery Lifespan
Battery life is also one of the biggest concerns for mobile electronic devices. After two to three years of operation, the battery capacity decreases, and your device won't hold up a full day after each charge anymore. Another part of this aging process is the increasing internal resistance of the electrodes inside the battery.
This has two impacts on performance. Higher resistance will cause the output voltage to drop when the device requires a large current (V=I2R if you remember your high school physics lesson). This is called 'voltage sag'. This wasted energy will be converted into heat, causing the battery and components inside the device to heat up – a highly detrimental situation for device performance.
CPUs are quite sensitive to temperature, so the phone's energy management chip may reduce CPU processing speed if it detects the phone getting too hot due to an old battery. High CPU and memory running at high clock speeds also demand stronger currents and thus cause 'voltage sag'. An excessively old battery will not provide enough current and stable voltage – meaning either the maximum speed will be reduced, or if not, the task execution process will encounter issues.
Last but not least, a swollen battery can cause the entire system to reboot. The solution at this point is only one: replace the battery. Unfortunately, most of the latest flagship smartphones have soldered batteries, making it more difficult for users to repair themselves, or they have to accept sending the device for expensive official warranty repairs.

Memory Faults
Just like swollen batteries, flash memory and RAM also encounter issues over time. Flash memory is rated based on maximum write cycles. The reason is that the write/erase process causes the oxide layer holding electrons in NAND flash memory cells to degrade, ultimately making them unstable. Like batteries, memory capacity decreases over time. This is even more serious when accompanied by the fragmentation issue mentioned above, and it increases the number of write errors over time – which from the user's perspective means slower memory.
Some redundancy is built into memory chips so that when old sectors fail, new sectors will jump in to replace them. Ultimately, the lifespan of memory depends on the amount of new data you save on it. Generally, most memory chips work well for 2-3 years, while many others can withstand 5-10 years.

System and App Updates?
Another common theory associated with device slowdown as they age is the operating systems like Android and iOS, as well as the apps running on them, increasingly demanding more resources after updates to leverage the advantages of newer and better hardware. Hence, older smartphones with outdated hardware cannot guarantee the speed of the software.
Actually, this theory still has many doubts, at least for Android. Most Android devices on the market have expired from updates since 2 years ago, so they don't run the latest Android version. Moreover, the minimum configuration requirements for Android have not changed significantly between updates. A phone with 1GB of RAM may not suddenly be unable to run Oreo or Android. iOS is a different story.
It's possible that some apps become heavier over time as more features are added. Facebook is an example: the app now contains more than it did many years ago. However, most apps consume only tens to under 100 MB of RAM, not several GB. They are also designed to focus on battery life rather than peak performance because consumers will uninstall battery-draining apps like drinking water, especially now that Android has a feature to alert battery-draining apps (except games).
Although software increasingly demanding system resources may be a potential factor in slowing down devices, according to many, they are just secondary factors.

Nocebo Effect
If none of the factors listed above are causing your phone's performance to decline, there is only one possible cause: your own expectations. We often hear advertisements about the speed and superiority of new products, indirectly leading to the belief that older products must be very slow. In fact, the improvement in performance through hardware generations is negligible when considering everyday tasks. Properly 'cared for,' older devices can perform well for many years.
The more time we spend with our phones, the more we discover the nuances and issues that, when they were new and beautiful, we couldn't see. However, slightly longer app loading times or slightly laggy apps don't mean the phone is broken.
Every smartphone slows down over time, it's an unavoidable truth related to the lifecycle of the components inside them. But if you know how to maintain and take care of your smartphone, perhaps they will still serve you well, at least until you're ready for an 'upgrade.'