Tom’s Tech Tip: Certified Legal Nurse Consultants – Here’s 5 Ways to Speed Up Your Phone

This Tech Tip is directed at all CLNC^® consultants – iPhone^® or Android^® phone users. Last week’s Tech Tip was about why your phone is frozen harder than a tub of my favorite Blue Bell Pecan Pralines ‘n Cream Ice Cream (pronounced prah-leen – not pray-lean).  Today, I’ll give you some tips to speed it up so it runs a little faster than a can of Steen’s Pure Cane Syrup (pronounced stean – not stehn).

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who are Android and iPhone users will follow similar but slightly different steps, but the general concepts remain the same. The biggest cause of a slow phone is you’ve used up all the memory with music, videos, apps and more. Here’s 5 ways to fix a slow phone:

1. Dump the cache on your web browser and clear out your cookies.  We all surf the Web on our phones – looking up information and comparing prices when we shop.  All those cached files and cookies take up memory and space – clear’em out.
2. Delete or turn off apps you don’t use. They all take up space and memory. If you aren’t using an app turn it off or get rid of it. Be ruthless and realistic. If you haven’t used “Walk Tracker” in two years, what makes you think you’ll start today? While you’re doing that, turn off “background app refresh” or its Android equivalent – you really don’t need Facebook updating itself while you’re not looking at it.
3. Stop saving text messages. Yes they are a historical record – but they live on your phone. Every text message you keep on your phone takes up memory – especially when you have photos and/or videos attached to them. Save the photos to your phone, delete the text message thread and go straight to Step #4.
4. Clear out your photo galleries and limit your music. All those selfies and pictures of your favorite meals take up space – clear’em out too. You can live without them (really). At the same time, limit the music you keep on your phone to what you really, consistently listen to or sign up for Spotify.
5. Limit your email storage. On some phones email lives on a server farm in the Cloud. In other words somewhere else besides on your phone. On other phones email lives on the phone itself – or at least some amount of email. Try this – put your phone in airplane mode and turn it off. Then turn it back on (in airplane mode) and see how much email you have stored on your phone. You may be surprised.  My recommendation (unless you rely solely on a phone for email) – keep one month’s worth of email (sent and received).

Once you’ve completed 1-5 recheck the amount of memory you’ve used up and consider doing steps 2-5 again. Then restart your phone to put the changes in place. Your phone should be noticeably faster.

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

P.S. Comment and share what you do to keep your phone running at its best.