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Old Samsung Galaxy phone

omegaman
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I currently use a Samsung S5, and it is slow as molasses sometimes.  While I know that this is likely not a Public Mobile issue, just wondering if anyone else is experiencing similar issues with older Samsung android phones?

14 REPLIES 14

The S5 supports a microsd card, so save photos/videos to that and it won't take any internal storage space...

compu-man
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

@skrdanI'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience with google photos, personally it's worked quite fine for me and all my family members.

 

Some alternatives to GCloud/Google Photos include Dropbox, but quite honestly if you aren't comfortable backing up to the cloud then a dedicated flash drive or portable HDD/SSD stored in a safe location does quite well, and it's a good idea to use the 3-2-1 backup scheme (Keep at least 3 copies of your data, on two different formats/storage types, with one backup offsite) Your three copies could be one on your phone, one on a portable media, and one on a cloud platform or on a computer. Two different storage types could be again a flash drive, and a computer, or a flash drive and a cloud platform. The offsite backup could be the flash drive being safely stored in a friend's safe or etc.

skrdan
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@compu-man 


Ha-Ha,

THAT'S NOT TRUE EITHER!     My cousin who has been working for Telus, the last 18 years trusted GOOGLE CLOUD to store all her photos of her family events -  well Google lost them in the cloud.  GOOGLE couldn't find them!!!

Us, family members, had to send her copies of what we had for her to store and place in a CD.

compu-man
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

If you really need to free up storage, use Google Photos 'free up space' feature. All of your pictures are stored safely in the cloud.

skrdan
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@gpixel 

THAT'S NOT TRUE. 

 

I've been cleaning out my DCIM folder for the last 16 months.  I have all my originals in their respective folders.Music, photos, gallery, personal files I.e. texts like my résumé, letters I've written, stuff still on my clipboard and videos.

@skrdan ummm, that's also where all of your pictures you took are stored. I would back that folder up before deleting it, unless you wanna lose all those fond memories

skrdan
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@omegaman,

I, too, have a Samsung, Galaxy S5 and the trick to freeing up space on this (or any Android) phone is to go into your Files and do a search for, "DCIM" folder.  Once there, select everything in it and DELETE.

 

DCIM folder is a copy of every file ;JPEG,.GIF, any image, video, music, text etc, that is copied from the original placement on your phone for quicker access. It plugs up your phone with useless data when, you have the original file,  because if you look into THAT folder, you'll find duplicates, triplicates of the original i.e.: photo - I had 7 copies of one image - what a waste of space!

 

I clean out the DCIM folder monthly. Frees up a lot of data space. Your phone will run faster.

 

Also, try to install a lite browser such as Opera Mini - works really well.

Triguy
Mayor / Maire

You are probably running Android 6.  I had a Samsung phone and it had alot of pre-installed apps (bloatware) which slowed the phone.

 

https://www.guidingtech.com/29921/remove-samsung-galaxy-s5/

 

compu-man
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Old android phones do tend to slow down over time, because their older, slower processors, older versions of android that are less optimized for modern applications, and lack of ram in comparison to newer phones. Android also for some reason likes to slow down after about a year or two of consistent use, something that isn't as common on say an iPhone, as iOS is designed to 'just work'. Public Mobile doesn't influence app startup/loading times, but they might affect very certain apps that need a fast data connection, as you are limited to 3mbps, which may seem slow in comparison to some wifi networks. In other words, it is almost a guarantee that it's not PM.

 

There are some things you can do to fix this sluggishness, and as mentioned before a factory reset will definitely help. There's also a few other things that you could try:

1. Close apps that are open in the background

This might help a bit or completely resolve the problem if you tend to leave apps open, but it won't help too much if the problem lays deeper.

    a) Press the button to the left of your home button

    b) Swipe all the open apps away, or find a clear all/trash can button

 

1a).Turn off any power saving modes or applications

This will allow the processor to stretch it's legs and bring you faster performance, at the expense of battery of course.

 

2. Increase animation speed through developer options

This sounds a wee bit scary, but in practice it's quite simple. Every time you open a app or menu, the phone adds an animation in to make a smooth transition. However, this can slow things down, especially on older hardware. You can turn off, or speed up the animations in developer options, a menu in settings with more advanced features and settings that the normal user typically wouldn't need to access.

Be warned, developer options can break things but it's very unlikely unless you change a wrong option. Try at your own risk, I am not responsible if you turn your phone into a brick.

 

To disable/increase animation speed:

    a) Open your settings app

    b) Scroll down to the section labelled 'system', and tap 'about device'

    c) Find the section called 'build number', and start repeatedly tapping on it until a message says 'you are now a developer!'

    d) Exit the 'about phone' menu, and under 'system' you should find a new menu called 'developer options' open it, and toggle the switch at the top if it is not already on.

    e) Scroll until you find three options called 'Window animation scale', 'Transition animation scale' and 'Animator duration scale' By default these are all set to 1x, meaning normal animation speed.

If you still want some animation, select '0.5x' for all three. If you want none, select 'animation off'

    f) If at any time you would like to revert, or if something decides to break, toggle the switch at the top of developer options.

 

You should notice it takes a shorter amount of time to transition into apps or open menus. This won't influence actual loading times, but it can make things a lot snappier.

 

3. Update your phone

Manufacturers can release updates that can fix sluggishness or little bugs here and there. Turn developer options off before you update to be safe.

 

4. All else fails, try a factory reset

This will wipe all your data (pics, messages, contacts, etc) from the phone, be sure to make a backup, I am not responsible if you lose your data, again do this at your own risk

 

5. If you find your phone can't keep up, it might be time for a new phone

The Motorola G7 lineup is a great budget option if you want a no frills phone that does it's job.

@omegaman do what @computergeek541 said and your phone will feel brand new.

omegaman
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Amount of time needed to navigate the menus and launch applications

@omegaman Try your SIM in a more current phone to confirm phone versus service.


>>> ALERT: I am not a CSA. Je ne suis pas un Agent du soutien à la clientèle.


@omegaman wrote:

I currently use a Samsung S5, and it is slow as molasses sometimes.  While I know that this is likely not a Public Mobile issue, just wondering if anyone else is experiencing similar issues with older Samsung android phones?


Slow in what way? Do you mean when comparing data speeds or the amount of time needed to navigate the menus and launch applications?  If the latter, your only choice would be to try custom software or get a new phone with a faster processor and more RAM.  Some of the time, a factory reset can make the phone run a little better, but this will erase any user content on your phone, so make sure that you back everthing up first.

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