The biggest mistake you are doing right now
old unrelated photo, XD sorry but I like it
We are all doing this crucial mistake that if you avoid can change your life forever. It took me more than 2 years to realize the solution to this, and now that I have been successful.
I remember my first android phone was an LG P970, which for all you newbs, is a 512MB RAM and a 1GHz flat-cored processor, and the android version around that time was 2.3, and it certainly was seeing an exponential decrease in quality from the very beginning. Clearly, android at the stage it got popular was still not a good phone to entirely replace your Nokia phone and laptop social media lifestyle, was it?
this was my first, after 1 month I dual-wielded this and an S2
Well, yes and no. Back then, nobody really used a phone correctly, not even the companies packaged the proper equipment to care for your smartphone properly. But what is correctly? Simply put, we need a way to keep the phone in a good condition as good as it came, i.e. no lag, no “viruses” and more battery life. But it is as if Android is an alkaline metal that comes out of the oil as soon as you open it, and the air just rusts it away so quickly. Even having a SIM card in the phone was an issue!
here's a picture of a car battery because I desperately want you to laugh at my joke even though it isn't funny.
To counter this, some people started using it as a Nokia phone: aka only stock apps, not even linking a google account to the play store. However these people overcharged their phones and eventually reached the 6-month syndrome only 1 month late. Personally, I’d never do that to any phone I get. YOLO all the way; why would you waste buying a smartphone if it would become a light brick? And even then, it was always prone to overcharge, and the transformers that came with the phone had the output current as low as 0.7A even at the Galaxy Note (Android 2.3.5 era) which made charging slow and discharging fast because the current was bad. Since the battery always gives the phone a different voltage depending on percentage, performance of applications and particularly widgets was affected on a permanent level, and third party replacements for everything stock android should do from home to lock screens to SMS and dialers (root of course for the full replacement). Custom ROMs, that were dangerous at that stage, began to surface and even I used one for cooler widgets and lock screens.
only 2009 kids remember this. or wait..
The life of the phone was short, then it turned into the laggy pop up-infested phone that takes forever to load WhatsApp and open the stock keyboard, and then you’d leave the WhatsApp session to once or twice a day, giving out a little sigh and mentally reminding oneself to google an android emulator to use WhatsApp from before using. Luckily, people caught on that Android phones need to have more durability and that is not by not being able to personalize them like iPhones, which feel like I am borrowing a friend’s phone and cannot use to their fullest.
danmaku death was running smoothly though, even during heat
Phone Manufacturers and eventually Google realized this, and began to change their policies. The manufacturers started first by adding “slow charging” notifications, then increasing battery life, adding battery saving modes, more settings to disable background apps more effectively, adding “fast charging” ability to their hardware, increasing POWER OUTPUT FROM THEIR CHARGERS FINALLY (sorry for caps) which allowed their more useful lock screen widgets to take effect and not eat battery unlike the custom ROMs sometimes. For stock Android to surpass mods is a great achievement, it is just like Minecraft vs Tekkit (oh… we still didn’t reach the industrial age in Minecraft yet, have we?) Nevertheless, it is a terrific feeling to an extent.
I'd hire you creepers :3
Google’s response to the growth of Android was actually a bad one, but I have already talked about that in a previous Choose Your Death article (if android dies, I die). With the increasing Google Play services that apps depend on, in the future, apps will have less permissions unless they utilize Google’s services, which give G more control over your device. I’ll leave that for you to check the article yourself, else I geek out here.
from the forums of Androidcentral
So, what does this have to do with your present day phone? Should you be safe and not use it at all?
Actually, split the expected 3-year life of your phone into a few stages: new, 6-month syndrome, a year and above. It is not actually 6 months or a year, depending on your usage.
New is when no matter what damaging pop ups, hundreds of spam apps you install, and malicious widgets you load along with the live wallpapers you use, your phone will always be new. At least at the first 3 months and then you will get the 6-month syndrome. At this stage, it is always best to restrict background data of the game apps only, and just explore the Play Store to your heart’s content, do not overcharge it, and your phone may make it before the 6 month mark.
yay a new picture!
6-month syndrome is when your phone apparently feels worn out, but the process is actually reversible. If you had been misusing the charger, replace the battery. At this stage it would be advisable to only start replacing home screen and keyboard from now (not when it was new) because it can tolerate it still. You should continue to explore the Play Store, but do not hoard items in your storage (I had over 300 apps at this stage, reduced them to 254). You can still use the apps to their fullest while running, but the fitness or GPS apps will be a hindrance unless absolutely necessary.
After 1-1.5 years, you will slowly start to open less apps, so feel free to uninstall. Because at this stage, the stock keyboard takes time, the malicious software is a bit too much. A factory reset at this point will get it close to a 6-month syndrome so whether or not you should reset is still unknown to my experiments, though I’d stick around for longer. This stage is a bit mixed into different stages, such as the 2 year mark where Samsung devices must replace their batteries or some models can completely electrically disconnect batteries like Lenovos, and there is too much to write here, and if I write it all in one sentence Word gives me a blue line which is annoying. Just Google an old device before you buy it (if you are into buying old/mid-ranged devices) because the forums everywhere can be accurate.
It is important to note that software updates are bad at late stages because they do not get understood properly unlike when the phone was new. You might say that phones do not get software support for so long, but remember that if you misuse the phone you can quicken its life cycle.
Did you know all these before? It took me a long time to investigate, and I haven’t been writing for the blog for so long that my sentences are too tall. So if you are still sticking around, thank you so much. I bought a mid-end phone recently just to test my theory (namely the S duos 2) and I just bought a high-end phone which I will compare and review quite soon.
