Installing lots of apps seems to be slowing down phone

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ZodaEX

Supreme [H]ardness
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About a month ago I was getting really fed up with the sluggishness of my phone (Samsung J3 2016). I performed a factory reset on the phone, and wow - this thing is screaming fast. It feels like a brand new model of phone performance-wise. I'm trying to determine why it got so crazy slow over time.
My main theory is that I did have probably about 35 apps installed onto it from the play store. Is this an issue that Android phones suffer from sometimes? Slowing down from having a bunch of apps installed? The strange thing, is that I could never isolate a specific program hogging resources by looking at the "running services". The slowdown did seem to possibly correlate with installing a bunch of apps, but i'm really not sure.

My last theory is that it's the Samsung's nefarious Touch Wiz launcher that I hear people say all the time will eventually lag out your phone. The thing is, I don't remember my past samsung phones that i've used longer ever get this slow, even after using them for 3 years+ with no factory resets.

What do you think is the most likely culprit that slowed my phone down? Now that's it's running so fast I find myself scared to install apps, but I want to.
 
Comeon you guys! :) I'm not much of a cell phone person go easy on me! I know Windows can slow down when installing lots of apps, but there is a settings panel in Windows where you can disable apps that run at boot time. Does Android have a similar app configuration setting like Windows does? You know, to keep programs from auto-starting.


For my very first downloaded app tonight I downloaded an app called "Alexia". When I go to "running processes" in Settings, it shows that Alexia automatically started it's self as a service upon boot. Can I disable Alexia from starting it's service every time without having to uninstall it?
 
Android isn't like a desktop OS or old iOS versions, where a closed app is a closed app. Tons of them run in the background all the time for notifications, tracking, or whatever, even if they're "closed" in the task switcher.

And thanks to the way Android is set up, there's no easy way to control it or even track it on unrooted phones.


There are ways to manage it on rooted phones, and there's one app on the Play Store that claims it can "freeze" processes via an accessibility workaround. As a simpler solution, I suggest disabling apps you don't use at least once a day via the settings. When you need to use one, enable it and then disable it again after your finished.
 
AlphaAtlas said:
Android isn't like a desktop OS or old iOS versions, where a closed app is a closed app. Tons of them run in the background all the time for notifications, tracking, or whatever, even if they're "closed" in the task switcher.

And thanks to the way Android is set up, there's no easy way to control it or even track it on unrooted phones.


There are ways to manage it on rooted phones, and there's one app on the Play Store that claims it can "freeze" processes via an accessibility workaround. As a simpler solution, I suggest disabling apps you don't use at least once a day via the settings. When you need to use one, enable it and then disable it again after your finished.
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Disabling apps I don't use daily sounds like a good idea, however I can't actually find the option to do that on any apps that aren't preloaded on the phone. When I go to Settings>Applications>Alexa i'm only given the options to "Uninstall" or "Force Stop". Is there another place on the phone where I might be able to disable Alexa so it doesn't auto-run it's service?
 
ZodaEX said:
Disabling apps I don't use daily sounds like a good idea, however I can't actually find the option to do that on any apps that aren't preloaded on the phone. When I go to Settings>Applications>Alexa i'm only given the options to "Uninstall" or "Force Stop". Is there another place on the phone where I might be able to disable Alexa so it doesn't auto-run it's service?
Click to expand...

There are some apps baked into the system image of the phone that you can't uninstall or disable.

Otherwise, maybe it's an HTC specific feature? If so, my apologies, this is what I get in most apps:

http://u.cubeupload.com/brucethemoose/Screenshot2018100201.png
 
AlphaAtlas said:
There are some apps baked into the system image of the phone that you can't uninstall or disable.

Otherwise, maybe it's an HTC specific feature? If so, my apologies, this is what I get in most apps:

http://u.cubeupload.com/brucethemoose/Screenshot2018100201.png
Click to expand...


My guess is that that Samsung Probably locked that feature out like they did with adoptable storage, but yeah that button is not there for me at all. However i'm not seeing the Alexa service anymore in "running processes" anymore and i've rebooted a couple of times to try and trigger it, so for now it seems to be running pretty clean. I'd want to root my phone in order to have more flexibility with this but unfortunately my particular model of phone is apparently very hard, if not impossible to root since it's the Verizon variant. I really appreciate the advice, I learned a lot from this.
 
ZodaEX said:
My guess is that that Samsung Probably locked that feature out like they did with adoptable storage, but yeah that button is not there for me at all. However i'm not seeing the Alexa service anymore in "running processes" anymore and i've rebooted a couple of times to try and trigger it, so for now it seems to be running pretty clean. I'd want to root my phone in order to have more flexibility with this but unfortunately my particular model of phone is apparently very hard, if not impossible to root since it's the Verizon variant. I really appreciate the advice, I learned a lot from this.
Click to expand...

There are other options too.

I've noticed that turning on "data saver" tends to stop some apps from phoning home so much, which is a huge battery drain. You could even go one step farther and run a firewall, blocking apps that have no business accessing the internet in the background.

There's a bunch of stuff you can do with adb over a USB cord, like nuking preinstalled apps.

There's also a "app freeze no root" app on the play store. I can't vouch for its long term use, but I did just downloaded it, and it appears to be a good shortcut for the "force stop" button in the settings menu.
 
Came in expecting non apple user complaining about how his phone does not handle “multi tasking”.

Not disappointed.

Of the 35 apps, do you close any?
 
yea, thats why i left Sammy phones. I had the note 8 which was amazing and still is.However it slows down after a while with all the added stuff that come with the phone. I try and disable as much as i can but it's not enough. I bought the Essential phone when on sale and the experience is night and day. The camera isn't as good but other than that, it's a beast.
 
The J3 is a budget device and yep, it's gonna perform slower as you load it up with more apps, it's just how shit goes with Android devices because of their non-bare metal operation (they run the OS in a VM basically on top of a Linux subsystem). Touchwiz, well, yeah, it's never been about performance and never will be and it does slow shit down, that's a given as well.

Also, regardless of how much fucking RAM a device has today, if you're seriously NOT using some apps, don't have them in the background, period, there's just no getting around this. I see people that never ever ever close apps and they wonder why their phones are laggy - that's not to say their phone isn't something laggy to begin with, which is why there are budget devices like the J3 and similar models - but it does matter in the long run.

If you have trouble actually remembering to manually shut shit down, enable the Developer Options and set the background process limit to something like 4-5 - this does NOT stop apps from running in the background that require to do so like email apps, other things that do regular checks for data/updates, that sort of thing. But for apps that cache a lot of data (in RAM primarily) this can be very helpful as it will free up that RAM when those apps are switched out if you have so many of them it trips the limit counter.
 
Supersnake said:


Next time that happens wipe your cache partition. Performing a factory reset should be reserved as a last resort. Here's the instructions in print for a J3 Prime.
Click to expand...

Been years since I wiped cache on my old rooted and custom OS phone, Samsung T679 2011 era.
Does this erase game saves and settings, I can't remember. I have the Metro J3 Prime?

ZodaEX said:
Disabling apps I don't use daily sounds like a good idea, however I can't actually find the option to do that on any apps that aren't preloaded on the phone. When I go to Settings>Applications>Alexa i'm only given the options to "Uninstall" or "Force Stop". Is there another place on the phone where I might be able to disable Alexa so it doesn't auto-run it's service?
Click to expand...
I have the Samsung J3 Prime J327t1 that has a lock bootloader and can't be rooted, I used method v below to freeze apps like AliExpress that stayed in memory after closing and clearing history.
https://www.xda-developers.com/freeze-app-background-processes-without-root-android-nougat/
 
2GB RAM isn't enough for a phone with a lot of apps, need moar RAMs. I have over 80 apps installed on my S9 and it's fast as brand new.

Actually I was just quick counting icons, just noticed ES file explorer says I have 126 apps installed. lol. Bought an unlocked version so don't have any carrier bloat on there which is nice.
 
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rive22 said:
2GB RAM isn't enough for a phone with a lot of apps, need moar RAMs. I have over 80 apps installed on my S9 and it's fast as brand new.

Actually I was just quick counting icons, just noticed ES file explorer says I have 126 apps installed. lol. Bought an unlocked version so don't have any carrier bloat on there which is nice.
Click to expand...

Damn I wish I had 2GB of RAM. That'd be amazing. I hope Samsung will eventually offer the 2018 2GB J3 without the carrier bloat like they did with the 2017 J3.
 
There's an app called Package Disabler Pro + for Samsung and it should work for the J3 (Samsung device, you know) - it doesn't require root and it works fairly well to handle stuff that you can't normally disable with the basic Android capabilities (Settings - Apps - find app and attempt to disable it). You can find more info here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.powermanager.batteryaddon

I've used it in the past without any issues on a few devices where root was not an option and it worked exactly as designed.
 
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