We could spend all day counting all of the things that make Android a great platform, but for real smartphone enthusiasts, the operating system’s tweakability is surely somewhere near the top of the list. If there’s functionality you’re looking for that your Android smartphone doesn’t have out of the box, the odds are pretty good that an app or a tweak is waiting to solve your problem.
Among the thousands and thousands of great tweaks out there though, there’s one in particular that is likely the easiest, simplest and most impactful, giving your Android phone a huge speed boost in a matter of seconds with no third-party software required.
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Late last month, we showed you how to access a number of secret hidden menus on your iPhone or Android phone. Now, it’s time to put that new knowledge to good use.
Whether you have an old clunker of an Android phone or a brand new flagship handset like the Galaxy S6 or HTC One M9, there is one thing that holds true across the board: your phone can be faster. That’s right… as fast as Samsung and HTC’s new premium smartphones feel out of the box, they can still move even quicker.
And you’ll be shocked at how easy it is to speed them up without any third-party software, complicated “rooting” or other complex hacks.
Here’s what you need to do:
First, you’ll need to enable access to the hidden “Developer options” menu on your Android phone. To do that, simply tap the “About phone” option in Settings. Then tap “Build number” seven times and you’re done. Now you can just back out to the main Settings menu and you’ll find Developer options somewhere near the bottom of the list.
Now that you’re done with that part, the real fun begins. Tap the new Developer options menu you just enabled and scroll until you see the following three settings (note that they may be located within an “Advanced” subsection):
Window animation scale
Transition animation scale
Animator animation scale
See them? By default, each of those three options is set to “1x” but tapping them and changing them to “.5x” will dramatically speed up your phone. This harmless tweak forces the device to speed up all transition animations, and the entire user experience is faster and smoother as a result.
We covered this simple tweak about a year ago on the site, and people were blown away by the difference it makes. As such, it clearly bears repeating — once you perform this quick tweak, you won’t know how you ever lived without it.
