Smartphones play a vital role in people’s lives today as they improve work efficiency and daily convenience. However, smartphones often become functionally sluggish when approaching the end of their service life, which influences user experience and even reduces work efficiency. What are the major factors which lead to functional sluggishness? How to deal with these factors and keep smartphones running quickly and smoothly? To address these issues, the Microelectronics and AI Club at Shenzhen Middle School launched a research project recently. As the founder of the club, I’d to like to share with you our primary findings together with some suggestions for smart device users.

First, one major factor that leads to sluggishness is the frequent updating and optimization of operating systems (OS) by the system providers. Major OS providers such as iOS and Android usually send update notifications periodically to remind users to update their operating systems. However, updated or optimized systems normally require more advanced hardware configurations. Updating too frequently can overload the hardware, which directly leads to sluggishness.

Besides OS updating, downloading too much can affect how smoothly your device runs. Exactly like a PC or laptop, downloading on smartphones demands more storage room, which in turn results in storage shortages and overloads, hence comes sluggishness. It is noteworthy that these factors have different impacts on different operating systems. For the iOS system, the enclosure feature provides exclusive apps only, which brings less potential risks in terms of downloads. As for the Android system, which provides open-source download services and sets reluctant censorship upon apps uploaded by providers, too much downloading can be troublesome. For example, users may download and install uncensored apps under the Android open-source system, and those apps may have defaults in the background running. Even when the apps are shut down by users, these apps can still fetch user data and simultaneously push info and reminders, which undoubtedly occupies system space and leads to sluggishness.

To eliminate sluggishness and maintain the condition of your devices, we have the following suggestions. First, keep OS updates at a reasonable level, and do not update it whenever you receive reminders. Second, always download apps from the official app store. Android users should not download apps from third-party providers in order to avoid malicious programs. Following these suggestions, you will have a better user experience. Try them out now!