It becomes sluggish, drains the battery in the middle of the day, and there is no space left to take photos anymore. What comes to mind is the necessity of upgrading your phone, but hold your horses for a second and let's think about it. In order to choose the right solution, you should know the exact condition of your device. Luckily, there are plenty of diagnostic tools which will provide you with all these data. Using the information from these reports may completely change your vision of the problem. As a result, you will spend hundreds of dollars less. It is just like you ask your mechanic about the health of your car before buying a new one. There is no need to guess anymore. Let's check the data you have.
First of all, we have to talk about the most common problem – bad battery life. It seems pretty obvious that the battery is the main culprit but the operating system tracks the information about the energy consumption very thoroughly. On the iPhone, it is available in the Settings, then Battery where the activity graph is provided. To view the report on the Android phone, you should open Settings, then Battery, then Battery Usage. Apart from percentage, this report provides you with information about the applications consuming your battery in the background. It seems creepy how much data is collected in the process but, in this case, it is useful. So, you will realize that TikTok or Snapchat consumes 40% of your battery even if you do not use it.
The thing is that the battery report allows you to separate the hardware problem from the poor software practices. So, you can realize that you need to change the settings in case the problem is caused by the high screen brightness or by the specific game. If the Battery Health on the iPhone shows less than 80%, then it is the hardware problem. The Android users will have to install the special application, for example, AccuBattery, to monitor the battery degradation. The information is crucial as it is much cheaper to replace the battery – 50 to 80 dollars against more than a thousand for the flagship phone.
Next, we should talk about the storage space as "Storage Full" is the most annoying notification ever. Insufficient storage causes a slowdown. In this way, your phone cannot write the temporary files, and you experience crashes and lagging. In order to check the state of the storage, you have to open the Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage on the iOS. For the Android users, this information is found under Settings, then Storage. Here, you see the colorful bar chart of your data which is divided into several categories like Apps, Photos, System, and Other. It is the point where you learn the truth about the location of your disappeared gigabytes.
For instance, you may discover that "System Data" or "Other" occupy a huge part of the storage. It happens due to corrupted or excessive cached data. Sometimes, restarting your phone is enough to clean the cache. Sometimes, it is required to back up your photos to Google Photos or iCloud and then factory reset the phone. This procedure will make the performance of your phone perfect again, and you do not have to pay for that. It is a huge win for your budget and peace of mind.
Also, you have to know about the mysterious "Other" category. This category contains the cached data from Safari, Chrome, messages, and streaming applications like Spotify. If you listen to many songs offline from Spotify, then this data is stored in this category. Cleaning the cache and uninstalling the unused applications releases gigabytes of space quickly. The phone offers to perform the "Offload Unused Apps" operation which deletes applications but keeps all the documents and data. It is a perfect solution to make your device work faster and better without losing your game progress or photos.
RAM usage is also the important point affecting the speed of your phone, not the storage. The iPhones hide this information well but the Android users can view their memory usage in the Developer Options. Constant high RAM usage makes multitasking impossible. However, closing the background apps is helpful in this case. When the system constantly uses all the available memory, then the hardware is already outdated. The data gives you the reality check whether your phone is still able to support the latest apps or not. The upgrade may be needed, but you know why now.
It seems ridiculous to buy a new phone just because it became slow. The manufacturers try to persuade people to buy new phones every two years but hardware lasts longer. Updates may slow down the phone but the problem is mostly connected with the storage management. With the help of the mentioned above diagnostic tools, you will be able to take control of the situation. You become the power user who knows his/her needs instead of the passive consumer. Therefore, you can tell your parents that you do not need a new iPhone 15. It is enough to clean your cache and replace a battery in a year.
In short, the diagnostic tools are made to create the informed user. They allow you to understand the inner problems of your glass slab. Do not ignore these tools and do not assume anything about your phone instantly. Just analyze the data before buying the new device. You will be surprised how easy it is to fix the problem by yourself. Your phone is much more powerful than you think; it just requires some care. The upgrade money may be used somewhere else.
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