Planned obsolescence: Fact or fiction?

A newer and snappier cellphone hits the market and suddenly your 4-year-old device starts to seem slow – oh so slow. Conspiracy theorists will tell you the cellphone manufacturers program their products to slowly self-destruct. Others will say it’s just your perception, or an excuse for getting a flashier phone.

 

But according to this article in the New York Times, if your phone is slowing down it’s almost always because of software upgrades, which are often released a few days before or after a new mobile phone comes out.

 

Here are a few excerpts from the article about things you can do to make the updates easier for your phone to handle:

 

Start fresh: Tech companies make it simple to upgrade to a new operating system by pressing an “update” button, which seamlessly migrates all your apps and data over. While that’s convenient, it isn’t the best way to ensure that things will continue running smoothly.

 

A better practice is backing up all your data and purging everything from the device before installing the new operating system. This “clean install” works more reliably because the engineers developing operating systems were able to test this condition more easily.

 

Remove the “cruft.” Sometimes you can do some light maintenance to speed up your device. Over the long term, an operating system accumulates system files, settings, logs and other data that can bog down your device.

 

For iPhones and Android devices, you can open the settings app and select reset settings. Just make sure you back up first in case there are important settings you may lose.

 

These are just a couple of examples of ways you can keep your phone zipping along even after several OS updates. For the full list, check out the article.

 

If you have any tips of your own for speeding up a slow-as-snails clunker, please share!