Uncle! OK? I’ve said it. I give in. My cell phone’s gotta be wiped clean.
These things develop over time. My HTC One M7 has slowed to a crawl. Sometimes the screen reads one finger as multiple fingers in the wrong places. Often you wait while the phone decides it’s too busy with other stuff.
21st Century problem? Absolutely. Not enough for a new phone.
It’s 26 months old, ancient in electronics. Yet its specs are so good it still keeps up.
Computers (a cellphone is very much a system of connected computers) don’t wear out like a gear or rope. They slow down because poorly written software leaves garbage where it doesn’t belong. Sooner or later one program ‘poisons’ another. The consequences are pretty random.
It’s usually an accident, often triggered by rare and random events. Given enough time there will always be one or more accidents. Unavoidable. Inevitable.
Tonight I will attempt to factory reset my cell phone. It shouldn’t be a pain. Of course it will be.
It only took a moment for Android to erase everything I ever added. Everything is backed up in the cloud. I’m not worried about losing pictures or email. The phone is really a thin client.
Restoring worked perfectly, except my contacts. That’s what I most feared.
It took a few hours, but everything seems under control. I couldn’t retrace my steps or tell you how I fixed it. Nothing logical worked. It looks like everything’s there.
By the way–I have lots of numbers of people I’ll never speak with again. Also, lots of dead people.
Part of my problem is sharing phone and Gmail contacts. I save every address I’ve written or responded to. That’s nearly 9,000! Android lets you hide those without phone numbers, most in my case.
I’m reinstalling apps on an as needed basis. Lots of seldom used, resource hungry, apps have been banished.
I forgot about all the crapware which came installed on this AT&T M7. It will take a while to move them all out of sight. You can’t remove them entirely without jailbreaking the phone.
The phone is back to its original peppiness. No lag. No waiting. Smooth animations.
What a royal pain in the ass getting here.
My wife had the same issues a few months back. You are quite lucky, she had to turn it in to her employer (Yale University) had ask for another one it was so bad.
On the weather front…saw you guys out West are getting the cold air the northern states should be getting; I saw John Wayne -Orange County Airport plunged to 38 F this morning (freeze warning tonight). Back here in the Tri-State areas it only fell to 50 F last night, every night since the start of December has struggled to get below 45 F. Today we are sunny and heading for low 60’s F. I hope it lasts right to end of month, then I’m off to Miami for a two weeks – lol.