A new mobile always gives a different feeling: everything seems to go more smoothly, you find exclusive functions that were not there before and it is generally more exciting than after having used it for years. If you want to breathe new life into your phone, here are nine things you can do to make your Android phone look like new.
We will give you several ideas that will range from making the mobile go a little faster to aesthetic or hardware changes. The idea will be to recover in a certain way that feeling of having a new mobile in your hands, even if it is the same mobile as always.
Speed up animations
If the problem is that the mobile feels a bit slow, an old trick that you can easily carry out is to speed up the animations. The mobile will go the same speed, but you will have the feeling that it works a little faster because the animations will be faster.The speed of the animations is an option for Android developers and you can adjust three of them: the window animations, the transition animations and the animation duration scale. You can choose to make them faster (2x, 5x or 10x) or directly disable them altogether.
Note that animations help disguise load times, so without animations it still becomes more apparent how long it takes to open an app, when opening menus or similar tasks.
Change the launcher
After using the same mobile for a while, it is possible that you are already extremely bored with its launcher. After all, it is the application that you turn to most often, to launch other apps. A simple way to give a totally different look to a mobile is to change its launcher.There are plenty of quality launchers of all types. Some of them, like Nova Launcher, are highly configurable, so you can change the look of your home screen and app drawer. Other more minimalist ones may be the radical change you were looking for. It may also be time to give the stock launcher a try: the case is to change.
Change the theme, wallpaper, or colors
Another way to rejuvenate a android phone is by changing its appearance with whatever tools you have at your disposal. On some mobiles you will be able to install themes or modify the color settings, in addition to modifying the shape of the icons or the icons completely, with an icon pack.
This will help combat the fatigue of seeing the same thing on your mobile every day, but if you have the time, desire and some expertise, you can try to make a more radical change with applications such as KWLP or KWGT. With them you can create fully customized interactive widgets and wallpapers, with results that can be amazing.
Uninstall apps you don’t use
It is undeniable that mobiles become slower with the passage of time. There are several reasons for this, including that we tend to install a bunch of apps over time. Many of them we use frequently, but others we may have installed once and then haven’t used them much. If you want your mobile to gain some speed, uninstall all the applications that you no longer use. You can use the Marie Kondo method if you wish, to eliminate all those that do not make you happy. In addition to not occupying resources, it will free the application drawer or your home screen of icons and in a certain way.
Switch to light apps
In addition to uninstalling apps, another strategy you can adopt to make your old phone speed up and therefore look newer is to switch to lightweight alternatives. Many applications have a light alter-ego, as is the case with Google Maps Go, Facebook Lite and many others. Not only will you free up space on your phone, but usually these lightweight alternatives work faster than the official versions, at the cost of losing some features. In some cases you can choose to use web apps instead of apps.
Freeup Space in mobile
There are few things that make a android look look old than that it has little space. Everything starts to go wrong, the system runs slower, Google Play has problems downloading and installing apps and from time to time apps give errors or complain that you are running out of space. One reason a new phone runs faster out of the box is that it has few apps and lots of free space available. You can replicate this by freeing up space on the mobile with different techniques with the help of applications such as Google Files. An effective but radical option is to factory reset the mobile, although you will lose all your data.
Change the case (or don’t use any)
Have you spent years with the same mobile phone case? Then it is most likely that you are already more than bored with it, that it is dirty or full of scratches and, of course, it does not give you the feeling of having something new in your hands. An easy way to refresh the look of your mobile is with a new cover, if possible with a totally different design from the previous one.The same applies to the protective film on the screen, if you have any. If it’s scratched up beyond measure, change it or remove it completely, if you dare.
The same applies to the case, if you have used the mobile for years with its case and have never been able to appreciate the beauty of its design, perhaps it is a good time to start doing it (being careful, of course).
Change the battery
Over time the battery of our mobile phones loses capacity, that is a fact. Instead of lasting almost two days, it will last a day and later not even that. If you want to recover that feeling of having a battery for a while on your mobile, a very effective way to do it is to replace the battery. Of course, that is easier said than done.
Today almost no mobile has a removable battery, so the task requires either specific tools and skills or that a specialist or the official technical service is in charge. This makes the process more expensive than before, although you should check how much it costs exactly in your case.
Install ROM
Probably the most radical way to make a phone feel like new is by installing a custom ROM on it. We have seen how this method has served to bring Android 12 to a Samsung Galaxy S3 from nine years ago, although these are extreme cases. A ROM, in addition to providing you with a more modern version of the system, can radically change the mobile interface and add new functions.
It is a very effective way to give new life to a mobile, although it is a complicated process with many moving parts ( bootloader, custom recovery, root …), it is not without risk, it requires patience, trial and error and it is not without risk. It will always be possible in your specific model.
