Your Older Android Phone Feels Too Slow? This Hidden Setting Can Change Everything

Nothing gets in the way of using a mobile device more than lag and bogged-down performance. Unfortunately, this is bound to happen with most phones and tablets, but you can take advantage of some secret settings to improve your device's speed and performance. But what if you're stuck with a much older Android phone that struggles to deliver the basics, even after you've deleted a bunch of unused apps and offloaded all your photos and videos to cloud storage? Before you throw in the towel on your legacy Android phone, there's one more setting you should take a look at: animation speed. Believe it or not, this tucked-away customization could bring your Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel device back to its glory days, at least as far as load times and UI navigation are concerned.

When we said tucked away, we're referring to the fact that this setting is hidden in the Developer Options on your Android device. To make this change, head to the Settings app on your phone and navigate to About phone > Software information, and tap on the Build number seven times. Enter your password to enable Developer options. Next, head back to the Settings screen and tap Developer options. Scroll down until you see Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animation duration scale. Change all three options to 0.5x. Oftentimes, something as small as faster UI animations can help facilitate a sense of visual smoothness, especially when bouncing between multiple tabs and windows.

In the context of Android phones, lowering the animation scale can help relieve the load on the device's processor and GPU. Instead of focusing on generating smoother animations, your phone can allocate system resources to improve the overall app and UI performance. Ultimately, the age of your Android phone and how well the software is optimized will determine its performance. That said, you'd be surprised at how much zippier your phone feels with just some minor animation tweaks. While adjusting your phone's animation settings can help your device run faster with fewer hiccups, there are a few other measures you can take to give your Galaxy or Pixel a fighting chance.

Clearing the cache and disabling background app activity are reliable tricks that work across multiple phone brands. You should also uninstall useless apps and games, delete unnecessary photos, videos, and other files that could be occupying storage space. That said, if your device is too old and it won't receive security patches anymore, or your battery life is so pitiful that just opening the browser drops your phone's battery at a fast rate, it's probably time to start shopping for something new. In that case, you may want to check out the best Samsung phones for every type of user, or consider getting Google's latest flagship — the Pixel 10 Pro — for extended software support.