What regular maintenance do you do to keep your phone running the best?

[Erikbal]

Just wondering what you guys do on a daily or weekly or regular basis to keep your phones running fast and in tip top shape. Since this is my first DROID and smart phone period I just do a few things some people suggested to me. I keep my text inbox as clear as I can and try to not keep a lot of texts with pics in them, every now and then I clear my browser cache as well. I also go to manage apps and go to running apps and stop any I don't need to be running. Also I have the app called app2sd that I use to manage apps that I can move to my sd card and that has an option for clearing the app cache so I usually try to keep up on that. One thing I just noticed is when I go to my running apps and hit the menu button at the bottom an option comes up to show cached processes. Can I stop these or clear these or will that cause me to lose data or something? One is my homescreen one is my social media one is my words free app and also another is my gallery. There are a few more as well. If I cleared the gallery would I lose things? Or if I cleared the words free would I lose my games or if I did the home screen which is using the most memory would that cause problems? Thanks for any tips and advice, I'm still pretty new to this.

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[comk4ver]

Yes clearing your cache for apps like browser, homescreen, gallery, social media, and word with friends you would lose your preferences and saved passwords etc but it's not a permanent lose.

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[Bullitt6996]

Clearing cache is like clearing a game save. You'd pretty much start fresh with any app u did that with. One thing you can do is move any apps u dont use to your media area or delete them altogether. I myself try to do a reboot every couple of days for good measure and my phone seems to run pretty good.

Sent from my DROID3

 

[vzdroid13]

Im waiting for a point where android won't run out of memory so fast. I never close apps on my Ipad and still no slow downs. 2 apps running will make my Droid Charge lag and freeze like crazy.

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[Erikbal]

Yeah every app that can be moved to the sd card is on there.

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[Bullitt6996]

Maybe upgrade the sd card to a higher capacity. This gizmo outta work eith the 64gb. Aside from that i would drop any apps i dont regularly use.

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[DNSJR]

Moving Apps to SD CARD

Regarding moving apps to the sd card, since this is my first Droid, how do you move them to the sd card. I have Astro on my phone and have backedup my apps, but when I open the sd card via the files app, do not see the backup. I would appreciate any help

 

[Erikbal]

Well I've only got 8 apps on my card (every one that can be on there) and I have a 16gb sd card and it says total space 11.35gb space available 11.22gb so I don't see me needing a bigger card anytime in the near future and my phone is far from loaded with apps. I still don't understand why a 16gb sd card says the total space is only 11.35gb. The card I have it also the actual sandisk brand so it's a good card too. Anyways what are some things that you guys do to keep your phone running good?

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[Erikbal]

When I say every app that can be on there I don't mean because of card space I mean every app that the PHONE will allow me to move. Download the app called app2sd and that can manage your apps and lets you move the ones that can be moved to your card.

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[Fr33dom]

I don't do any regular maintenance and haven't suffered from any lag. My D1 did get sluggish after a year or so.

 

[NoBloatware]

I do basically zero maintenance. Killing apps isn't necessary. Android will kill the apps as needed. That being said, if an app has an exit button it might not be a bad idea to use it when done with the app but it's usually optional. An exception to this is Google Nav.

Clearing caches isn't necessary unless you see a problem--should be very rare. For example, the browser cache doesn't need to be cleared because the browser is smart enough to manage it all by itself.

My advice is to use the phone and not worry about any kind of maintenance. If a problem creeps up, deal with it but clearing caches and killing apps might just be causing you more trouble (wearing down battery, resetting preferences, losing user data).

I don't do any regular maintenance and haven't suffered from any lag. My D1 did get sluggish after a year or so.

Did that sluggishness on the D1 occur after one of the OTA updates? Motorola messed up their home launcher back then and it still lags to this very day on the Droid 3. Try a home replacement. I like Go Launcher EX.

 

[militant]

Bad misinformation on the first page. Clearing "cache" is not like "deleting a game gave" and you don't start over with the app, and you don't lose stored passwords. That is absolutely FALSE. I clean my cache routinely with History Eraser with the click of 1 button, and never re-enter my passwords. You are confusing the start over with "Clear Data" which Clears all the data you have added or entered to an app, and any updates or additional data the app has downloaded. Clearing cache, just clears temporary info within the app, that allows things in the app to load/appear faster next time you access them, such as pictures, and different bits of text and info. If you go to your Facebook app under Manage applications you'll have 1 button that says "Delete/Clear Data" and one that says "Clear Cache." The cache as I said, is the junk files, and clearing it, will not require you to re-enter your PW. If you clear data however, you will have to re-enter all your info. With facebook it is good to do a "Clear Data" once every few months because the facebook file seems to grow constantly, and its good to flush it out every once in a while.

 

[Fr33dom]

Did that sluggishness on the D1 occur after one of the OTA updates? Motorola messed up their home launcher back then and it still lags to this very day on the Droid 3. Try a home replacement. I like Go Launcher EX.

I don't really recall. I lived with it awhile and one day when I discovered I couldn't use PDAnet anymore I rooted, ROMed, and overclocked. My D3 is still way better though.

One thing to add to your earlier discussion is that the Davlik cache which AFAIK isn't accessible to clear without a factory reset (unless you're rooted...) is the only cache I would consider clearing unless a specific app is causing issues all of the sudden. And even then I wouldn't clear it unless there was an issue.

Overall I think there is a misunderstanding over how to get the most out of your phone thats based on our experiences with PC's and Windows over the years. This causes lots of folks to do things with their phone that may actually be less effective. The underlying OS is famous for taking care of itself well and using memory very efficiently. Things go awry occasionally, and a restart or perhaps even a battery pull is all thats normally required to solve it.

If clearing those caches makes you feel like you're avoiding problems, then go for it. Just know that you are also slowing your phone down by doing that (each cache needs to be rebuilt).

 

[symphonia]

How much does free RAM affect the "lagginess" of the phone? If I am averaging 75-95 MB of free RAM, could I be seeing a smoother phone by trying to increase that?

 

[jonamurphy]

One thing you can do is move any apps u dont use to your media area ...

I highly recommend against this as several users (myself included) have run into trouble with apps once they are moved to media area. Between disappearing icons and crashes, it seems like a big pain. I just wish they would allow you to change the ratio of app vs media partition.

I still don't understand why a 16gb sd card says the total space is only 11.35gb. The card I have it also the actual sandisk brand so it's a good card too.

I think you may be confused, but that's pretty common since they did a crummy job of naming the storage areas in these phones. There are 3 basic storage areas available to a non-rooted end user:

App area (~2GB) - Partition of built-in memory for app storage
Media area (11.35GB) - Partition of built in memory for file storage
External SD card (Depends on size of SD card; my 16GB is 14.83GB) - External memory card

You can check the status of these storage areas by going to Settings --> Storage