Tips to Speed up Your Old iPhone

Anyone with a phone that is a couple years old has felt the pain of waiting for their phone to load every time they tried to handle a simple task. It can be extremely frustrating, especially if you are planning on using it for a long period of time.

After with dealing with an older generation iPhone, I know how irritating it is to dread changing apps because you know it will take much longer then it should. That is why I decided to gather the top 4 tips I have found on how to speed up your device.

Soft Power Cycle Your Phone

Some people may see this and wonder what this even means. To put it simply, to power cycle your phone simply turn it off, wait about 30 seconds, and then restart it.

While this may sound silly, it is surprising how many technological issues can be fixed by simply restarting the device. It allows the device to ensure everything is running how they should be. This is a trick that you should not have to do very often, but for times when you notice your phone being extremely slow, this can help significantly.  

Update to iOS 12

This may sound counter productive to some users since many times updating to newer and more demanding features can actually slow old iPhones down. However, Apple stated iOS 12 is different than previous iOS updates and should actually help speed up old phones. When I originally updated my iPhone 6 to iOS 12 I did notice that it sped up a noticeable amount.

If your not sure how to update your phone, simply open up your phone’s settings, and select General > Software, it will then show if you are running the most up to date version.

Remove Unused Apps

One of the most common causes of devices significantly slowing down is due to storage issues. If you are starting to run out of room on your phone, it can slow down your whole device. To check what apps are taking up the most room you can open your settings, click on General, then scroll down and select iPhone Storage. From here you can see what apps take up the most room and when you last used them, and delete the ones you no longer need.

Hard Power Cycle

This is only recommended if your phone is unbearably slow, as it is a fairly drastic option. A hard power cycle is also known as a hard reset or a factory default reset. If you hard reset your phone you will lose ALL your information on it. It will reset to its original settings and remove any of your information. This is why I only recommended this as a last resort.