Why does my phone keep getting slower?

kuksul08

kuksul08

Suh Dude
I bought a Samsung S7 when it came out and it was the best thing you could get. Super fast, everything was instant, battery lasted 2 days, etc.

Now that a few years have passed, it barely works. Runs super slow even when trying to do basic things like instant messaging or watch a youtube video. The video will be jittery. Everything is laggy and my button presses are 3-4 seconds delayed. Meanwhile, the battery will drop 40% while it's overwhelmed trying to send a simple text.

Articles online suggest that new apps are more capable and operating systems are too advanced for my old hardware, but I don't buy it. I'm not asking it to do anything more than when I got it, and it's significantly slower.

Is this CPU throttling to preserve the battery? Is it all a scam to get you to buy a new phone? Is there any way to fix it? I've deleted all non-essential apps, removed files so the memory is not full, deleted app cache and data. It's still slow as balls.
 
KWeezyXB12

KWeezyXB12

SKRRRRRRRRRRRT!!!!!!
i dunno about all that but i noticed my phone has been pretty slow too. i have the new pixel 4xl with the verizon unlimited plan. i think since this quarantine started either theres so many people on their phones its clogging up the system or theyre throttling speeds
 
295566

295566

Numbers McGee
I'm pretty convinced that it's a combination of throttling both to preserve battery life, and to get you to buy a new phone.

Almost all phones readily available in the US are so ridiculously overbuilt that unless you're playing games in HD or streaming videos in 4K you're barely using a fraction of what the hardware can do. Quad processors and gigs and gigs of ram... blah blah blah. The fact that something that is so beefy can slow to a crawl in 1-2 years is scummy as fuck.

However, I'm not sure where this is coming from. Possibly from carrier and installed bloatware. I have noticed, since switching to Google Fi 3-4 years ago I can't remember, I used my Nexus 5x until very recently when the Pixel 3 was on sale for like $200 or something stupid cheap. My 5x still works perfectly fine and I have as a backup, but it never really slowed down noticeably, even though battery life wasn't what it was new.
 
kuksul08

kuksul08

Suh Dude
Yea I'm not talking about network speed, I'm using wifi at home. The basic phone processes are just running super slow. For example just now I was scrolling through my apps trying to disable or uninstall unnecessary items, and the phone started getting hot and won't scroll smoothly through the list.

I'm ok with battery life reducing over time. That's just a technology limitation due to lithium battery degradation.
Maybe if it still operated at max speed, my battery would overheat and explode? Maybe it would only last 10 minutes?
 
T

TylerW

Agitator
There's a good chance that your battery is at it's EOL and just can't support the power demands of the CPU. If you don't have any other reason to update it, I'd try dropping in a fresh battery and see if that solves it. If nothing else, you'll at least get your battery life back.

ifixit has a replacement guide if you prefer to do it yourself. It looks a little gnarley, so you might want to have a repair shop do it instead.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+S7+Battery+Replacement/90299
 
FXCLM5

FXCLM5

bombaclaud
your phone is more then 3-5+ generations old for the Android OS

i had a s7 and swapped to a pixel 3xl like 2 years ago, it was already at the end of its battery life.

You will never get the new updated OS version because you did not buy a google propiertary phone - that continues to get OS updated (up to a point - i think like the pixel 2 is on its last year of getting its OS updated to newest ones)

In essence your battery is like 5 years old running firmware that was prolly updated 1 time from your supplier like 5 years ago.

TLDR, yes the industry knows this and routinely updates os so you are kind of forced to buy a new phone - or deal with extreme amounts of lag because your apps are runnning on such old os software
 
KWeezyXB12

KWeezyXB12

SKRRRRRRRRRRRT!!!!!!
dont get a pixel 4. its trash, pixel 2xl was better than my 4xl. the camera is good but thats about it.
 
stangmx13

stangmx13

not Stan
the majority of your performance issues are likely caused by your dead battery. the rest are likely caused by software that is no longer supported. its common in software development to continue to support OS versions that are 2yrs old. your phone does not allow that OS. so if something slows or is broken, you are SOL.

if u want to keep a phone for 4+yrs, buy an iPhone. iPhones generally stay up to date with software longer than Android phones. the top of the line iPhone back when you bought the S7 is still getting updates (iPhone 7, iOS13). initial reports say iOS14 will install on iPhone 7 as well.

oh, and expect replace phone batteries every 2-3years.
 
Abacinator

Abacinator

Unholy Blasphemies
All of the above, plus if you're running out of storage space that can cause things to be sluggish. Clear the cache for your apps and free up whatever other space you can.
 
C

Cali

Well-known member
I have the Galaxy S7 as well. There's some junk batteries out there, but I recently changed mine. Not as good as OG Samaung battery. And my phone does seem to have slowed as well.

Recently decided to simply upgrade, Galaxy S10+, unlocked from Samsung. $450 when trading in my S7.
 
AbsolutEnduser

AbsolutEnduser

Throttle Pusher
if battery was enough everyone would know about this and change batteries old the time. My S7 is in the drawer. (well, the front glass is broken, too.)

I suspect the memory "wears out" i.e. like a USB stick at some point it just stops responding like a .. mofo.. tiny bits by tiny bits. That's only an additional reason

but yeah maybe it's a gimmick by the manufacturer. I assume you have previously reset your phone
 
T

TylerW

Agitator
two wheel tramp said:
Stop downloading so much porn to your phone. / thread
Click to expand...

6cpffM4.jpeg
 
Beanzy

Beanzy

Wind free
You probably know this but if you don't, delete cache by going into Settings / Storage / Internal shared storage / and then each application.

Google searches creates a lot of cache, as does watching videos.
 
T

TylerW

Agitator
Beanzy said:
You probably know this but if you don't, delete cache by going into Settings / Storage / Internal shared storage / and then each application.

Google searches creates a lot of cache, as does watching videos.
Click to expand...

This shouldn't have an impact on performance unless you're almost completely out of space
 
stangmx13

stangmx13

not Stan
AbsolutEnduser said:
if battery was enough everyone would know about this and change batteries old the time. My S7 is in the drawer. (well, the front glass is broken, too.)

I suspect the memory "wears out" i.e. like a USB stick at some point it just stops responding like a .. mofo.. tiny bits by tiny bits. That's only an additional reason

but yeah maybe it's a gimmick by the manufacturer. I assume you have previously reset your phone
Click to expand...

an SSD can wear out. you'll notice a loss of drive space before that will impact speed.

memory (RAM) generally does not reduce performance noticeably in the time-frame that we are talking about. most would upgrade the device before that happens. large amounts of heat could make this worse. but most tests show that mobile devices dont run hot and will throttle if they get hot. gaming on them is worst case scenario.

jt2 said:
Replace the battery, and do a factory reset after making sure your data is backed up.
Click to expand...

+1
a factory reset helps nearly all devices.
 
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