Apps You Should Consider Removing From Your Android Smartphone

After you’ve had your Android smartphone for six months or a year, it will inevitably become cluttered with unneeded apps. Many of these apps may be running in the background, consuming battery life, processing power and data. Others may simply be using up your storage space. The worst of them could be gathering your data to resell to advertisers. Clearing those apps you never use can give you a performance boost and improve your user experience.

Alcatel offers some tips about how to clean up your apps on your Android phone.

·         Get rid of apps you never use

A good place to start is with all those games, quizzes and novelty apps you once downloaded and haven’t opened since. It’s easy to identify and get rid of unused apps on your Android phone. Open Files by Google (or the similar app from your phone’s manufacturer) and look for Clean. From here, you should be able to search and delete apps via Delete unused apps or Free up more space.

·         Utility apps that make performance worse

Many Android users install utilities for clearing cached data, saving RAM or improving battery life onto their phones. Yet these apps often make the problem they claim to solve even worse. Many of them run away happily eating battery life and RAM, which defeats the entire purpose of their existence. Consider removing them.

·         Antivirus software

There’s a lot of hype about viruses and malware on Android devices, but they’re less of a problem for the average user than you’d think from the headlines. As long as you always use an official store (Google Play or your manufacturer’s app store) to get your apps and don’t ‘root’ your device, your chances of encountering one are minimal. If you don’t mess around with your Android device’s security settings or install third-party APK files, you probably don’t need antivirus. If you decide you do need antivirus, do some careful research to find an app that doesn’t drag down your phone’s performance.  

·         Full versions of social media and other apps    

Many apps including your favourite media, social and navigation apps are heavy on data usage and demanding in terms of performance. The developers may offer lightweight versions of their Android apps that use less data, RAM and battery life than the mainstream version, which might better suit your needs if you’re performance conscious or have an older, slower device. For instance, the Google Go versions of Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Chrome and other popular Google apps are faster to download, use less space on your phone and eat less data. Facebook Lite, Facebook Messenger Lite, LinkedIn Lite, Spotify Lite and Opera Mini are also worth a look.