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 give new life to your mobile, we tell you nine things you can do to do make your Android mobile 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 recover in a certain way that feeling of having a new mobile in your hands, even if it’s 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 somewhat 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 application, when opening menus or similar tasks.
Change the launcher
If you’re using the stock launcher, install one. If you use a different one, go back to the stock one: the case is to change. Image: Niagara 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 air to a mobile is change your launcher.
There are plenty of quality launchers of all types. Some of them, like Nova Launcher, are highly configurable, so you can modify 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
With apps like KLWP you can create authentic works of art
Another way for a mobile to rejuvenate is 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 like 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 over time we tend to install a bunch of applications. 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 apps 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 way
Switch to light apps
Gallery Go is a lightweight gallery app, as an alternative to Google Photos
In addition to uninstalling applications, another strategy that you can adopt to make your old mobile speed up and therefore look newer is 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 mobile, but usually these lightweight alternatives work faster than official versions, in exchange for losing some functions. In some cases you can choose to use web apps instead of apps.
Free up space on mobile
There are few things that make a mobile 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’re running out of space.
One reason a new cell phone works faster right out of the box is that it has few apps and a lot of free space available. You can replicate this by freeing up space on your 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)
Some mobiles are too beautiful to have them hidden under a case for their entire useful life
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 casing, if possible with a totally different design from the previous one.
The same applies to screen protection film, 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
There are hardly any mobile phones with removable batteries today, but the official technical service can change your battery, for a fee
Over time the battery of our mobile phones loses capacity, that is a fact. Instead of lasting us 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 replace battery.
Of course, that is easier said than done. Nowadays 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 is more expensive than before, although you should check how much it is worth exactly in your case.
Install a ROM
Probably the most radical way to make a phone feel like new is by installing a custom ROM. 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 features.
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…), not without risk, requiring patience, trial and error, and not always possible on your specific model.