home-Internet-Spring cleaning: how to maintain the performance of your Xperia smartphone. Sony Xperia go ST27i hard reset process Setting up power saving and using developer options

Spring cleaning: how to maintain the performance of your Xperia smartphone. Sony Xperia go ST27i hard reset process Setting up power saving and using developer options

There are several benefits of rooting your Android smartphone. One of them is the ability to install applications that you would never be able to install on your device under normal conditions. The second advantage is the ability to do a lot of interesting things with your device, for example, overclock or otherwise change the processor frequency and control the process of battery discharge.

XDA forum user Inteks wrote a utility designed to work similarly with Sony Ericsson Xperia line devices - SetXperia.

In fact, SetXperia practically duplicates the capabilities of SetCPU, but it is more focused on Sony Ericsson smartphones. The utility allows you to change the processor frequency, play with the supplied voltage, and also allows you to use functions that are available in some similar applications such as SetCPU, NoFrills and IncrediControl.

When using it, it is worth remembering that the program alone is not enough to use all its power. You will also need a custom, specially modified kernel that will allow you to manage your phone in an extended way. Therefore, if you only have a rooted gadget, it is likely that some features will still not be available to you.

And, of course, when experimenting with firmware and processor, be careful, because you can accidentally render the phone inoperative. And don't forget to make backups.

Original app thread on XDA forum.

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Should I talk?

Already said:

G.A.P:
Now I have two smart phones from this line - the old X10 mini and the new mini pro. In the new one, you don’t need to overclock anything - everything flies and works like a clock, it’s clear that Android 2.3 + the practice of people from CE are doing their job;) But in the old one, it’s useless to overclock - it’s frail and during overclocking you just can’t leave the outlet :) Why is this program? Mystery...

Frozen SE:
@: for gamers, that's why. So that the toys last for a long time. Our stone, 8255, runs smoothly up to 1.9 GHz (it’s also the same in the mini pro). But I don’t see the point in overclocking for now, 2GB rips are spinning smoothly, toys are running, books are being read..

vano:
The point of this program is to save battery energy, let it be known

At Sony Mobile, we create products and software that you can use for years to come. However, we know that smartphone performance changes over time, and after a year or two, you may find that your Xperia is no longer as nimble as the day you excitedly took it out of the box.

Luckily, there are several ways to improve the performance and responsiveness of your smartphone so that it stays in good condition for longer. This article will show you how to do a “spring cleaning” of your Xperia.

Don't turn off Smart Cleaner

All Xperia X series smartphones (Xperia X, Xperia X Performance, Xperia XA, Xperia XA Ultra, Xperia XZ, Xperia X Compact, Xperia XZ and Xperia XZ Premium) come with the Smart Cleaner app, which is designed to eliminate one of the main reasons for smartphone slowness - working in the background, but unused applications that take up RAM.

By default, the app is turned on - you can check this by going to Settings > Storage & Memory. Tap Remove Apps to see a list of all apps and how often you use them. By default, the apps you use the least will be at the top of the list—uninstall them to free up your smartphone's memory.

How to free up memory on your smartphone

Go to Settings > Storage & Memory, tap the three dots button > More Settings and select Storage. Lack of internal memory can also cause your smartphone to run slowly. You can transfer photos and videos to cloud storage using the Google Drive app installed on Xperia devices. After transferring, you can delete them from your smartphone and - voila - there is space in the memory again.

Or you can connect your Xperia smartphone to your Windows or MacOS computer and copy files from your smartphone to your computer. For those who don't know how to do this, the Xperia Companion program will come to the rescue.

Finally, you can purchase an SD card, a small investment that will free up even more storage on your smartphone and speed up its performance.

If you already have an SD card, go to “Settings” > “Storage and memory” and click “Move to SD card” - the smartphone will show you exactly what can be transferred to the card, as well as the amount of memory that will be freed up after the transfer.

Download the latest updates

Be sure to download all the latest software updates when you are notified that they are available. Often, updates help improve performance or fix bugs and problems that can affect the speed of the smartphone.

Widgets and wallpapers

Practical and convenient desktop widgets can take up RAM. Open your home screen and see if there are widgets you don't use - long-press and drag them to the "Remove from Home Screen" button. Live wallpapers also create a load - if your smartphone is already several years old, it may be worth replacing them with static ones.

How often should you restart your smartphone?

When was the last time you turned off your smartphone? It stores a lot of information in memory, which sometimes needs to be deleted from there; to do this, simply reboot the device - for example, once a week. To find out how long your smartphone works without interruption, go to Settings > Smartphone Information > Status > Operating Time. The results may surprise you!

If you've gone through all these steps and your smartphone is still slow, head over to our support forums and ask our team of experts.

If you are going to raise performance his Sony Xperia Z, then there are several ways to do this. Along with installation custom ROM You can also increase the maximum processor clock speed. This procedure is called overclocking or acceleration. In this post you will find all the necessary information that will allow you to carry out the above procedure for Sony Xperia Z.

Sony Xperia Z is an excellent smartphone that has quite good technical characteristics and has become one of the flagships of this year. Although the device belongs to the same class as Galaxy S4 With HTC One, but you've probably encountered situations where factory restrictions prevent you from taking full advantage of all the capabilities available with hardware. This is where a few little tricks come in handy. To acceleration processor turned out to be more efficient, we also recommend that you remove all useless pre-installed software and install custom firmware, which will optimize the operation of the system, thereby reducing energy costs and increasing operating speed, and since many custom ROMs allow you to make overclocking, then this procedure can be carried out in advance.

As for directly overclocking, then you will at least have to install custom kernel, having previously received root access. If your smartphone already has custom firmware, that is, chances are that the processor can already be overclocked.

Please note that with overclocking There are two problems: firstly, by overclocking the processor too quickly, you can greatly increase the power consumption of the device in case of high load. Secondly, you can simply burn the processor. To avoid this, overclock your device by 10-20 percent. This will significantly change performance, and your smartphone will be safe. You can read in more detail about some other nuances.

Now that you can imagine what it is overclocking and why it is needed, you can proceed to the description of the preparatory stage, after completing all the points of which, you can begin to overclock the processor.

  • Get root access and install custom recovery image. This way you will remove factory restrictions. In this case, the warranty for the smartphone will be lost. It can be restored by returning the stock firmware. Note to yourself that this will have to be done manually, since OTA updates will not work in this situation.
  • Create backups all important data and settings. During installation custom kernel required wipe, so your personal information will be lost.
  • To save the current ROM, use Nandroid backup.
  • Make sure that at the time of the operation you have a working computer, smartphone and USB cable at hand.
  • Remove all security tools from your PC and Sony Xperia Z.
  • Enable the USB debugging option (Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB debugging).
  • Charge your smartphone.

That's all. Please remember that you are solely responsible for the operation and this manual is only suitable for Sony Xperia Z. For other smartphones it may be harmful.

Install a custom kernel on

1. Download the installation file.

2. Save it on your computer desktop.

3. Do not unpack!

4. Connect your smartphone to your computer.

5. Copy the above file to Sony Xperia Z.

6. Turn off the device.

7. Wait a few seconds and reboot it into recovery mode.

8. Do wipe: "wipe data factory reset", "wipe cache partition" and "wipe dalvick cache".

9. Return to main menu recovery and select the following options: "install zip from SD card" and "choose zip from SD card".

10. Find and install the file copied to your smartphone.

11. Return to main menu recovery and reboot your smartphone "reboot system now".

1. Take your smartphone and go to .

2. This requires an Internet connection.

3. Find the application "No-frills CPU Control" or similar.

4. Download and install it on Xperia Z.

5. Launch the application.

6. Go to the menu and overclock the device by 10-20 percent.

7. In the same way, you can lower the maximum processor clock speed, thereby reducing power consumption and increasing operating time Xperia Z.

Let's be honest: most of the interesting customization options for Droid devices are hidden and require rooting the device. However, not everyone prefers to get root - some out of fear of losing the warranty, others out of sheer laziness. We decided to look at alternative ways to speed up devices on the Google platform that do not require superuser rights.

Introduction

Google is constantly improving the performance of its system. But “pure” Android is now quite rare - manufacturers, as a rule, modify the firmware, which does not always have a positive effect on performance. In addition, in addition to this, it would be good to take care of energy saving, and these are often mutually exclusive things. Nevertheless, even non-rooted Android has such capabilities, although there are not very many of them.

Removing/disabling built-in and unnecessary applications

Before the release of the fourth version of Android, it was impossible to disable built-in applications without root rights. This brought inconvenience to buyers of branded gadgets, because each manufacturer strives to cram into the firmware as many programs as possible that the end user simply does not need and in total eat up a decent amount of resources. In the fourth version of Google, such an opportunity appeared. To disable any built-in application, you need to go to “Settings -> General -> Applications -> All”, select the desired software and in “Application Information” click the “Disable” button (or “Uninstall updates”, and then “Disable” "). To enable it, you need to go to the “Disabled” tab and follow a similar procedure.

However, not everything is as rosy as it seems at first glance. Firstly, disabling it does not affect persistent memory - the application remains installed as it was. Secondly, not everything can be turned off. Only some applications allow you to do this trick with yourself. I won't give a lot of specific advice on disabling applications, since the list of applications is different on each device. Here is a short list of what most users do not need, but constantly hangs in the system and takes up memory:

  • “Browser” - why, if there are more convenient and easier alternatives?
  • “Calendar” and “Calendar Memory” - I didn’t notice anyone actively using them.
  • “Email” and “Exchange Services” - it seems like everyone is already on Gmail.
  • “Google Search” is a rather useless function if you have a browser (beware, it also disables Google Now).
  • “Google Keep”, “Google+” and other not always necessary applications from Google.

In addition, I recommend turning off (delete) widgets and live wallpapers. In addition to the fact that this functionality requires memory and CPU time, it also eats up the battery. So to increase speed it is better to turn off such things. You can also turn off effects on the lock screen. In my case (Samsung with stock firmware) they are located in “Settings -> Device -> Lock screen -> Unlock effect”.

Callouts: INFO

How disabling applications works. After clicking on the “Disable” button, the setApplicationEnabledSetting() method of the PackageManager class is called, which changes the application state to COMPONENT_ENABLED_STATE_DISABLED_USER (by the way, it appeared in the first Android).

Setting up power saving and using developer options

To speed up the operation of the gadget, you can also adjust the energy saving settings. Of course, this will reduce battery life, but it can speed it up quite significantly. To do this (in my case) you need to go to “Settings -> General -> Energy Saving” and either slide the switch located in the upper right corner or uncheck the necessary checkboxes.

This works differently on different platforms, and there is no public API - there is, of course, the PowerManager API, but this has only a very indirect relation to energy saving. However, on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (as well as for other Droid devices of the South Korean giant), energy saving is controlled through DVFS - Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling, the same one with which Samsung “falsified” the benchmark results (I note in parentheses that this was not a real falsification - just for some benchmarks and applications the device worked at the limit of its capabilities).

To disable system animation (animation in applications will remain), you need to go to the developer options menu, which is hidden by default. To access it, tap seven times on the “Build number” item, which is located in the “About device / About phone” menu. Then go to the menu that appears and turn off all animation: set the parameters “Window animation scale”, “Transition animation scale” and “Transition duration scale” to “Animation disabled” (in firmware from other manufacturers, these options may have a slightly different name).

In the same menu you can limit the number of background processes. The latter, however, should be done with caution - instead of speeding up, it may slow down due to the fact that frequently used processes will be killed and started again. That’s why, by the way, all sorts of task killers are not recommended.

Application acceleration

To speed up individual applications, you can clear their cache. This is done in the same place where you can disable/delete them, that is, “Settings -> General -> Application Manager -> All”, select the application you need and click the “Clear cache” button.

It also makes sense to install less resource-intensive applications - for example, in my case, Smart Launcher takes up less memory than Samsung’s native TouchWiz does. The sidebar will provide specific tips, but I don’t recommend following them specifically, since it all depends on your needs. The main thing in this case is to choose the right size/functionality ratio.

To determine memory consumption, you can use the following method: install some terminal with Busybox, determine the PID of the desired process (using 'ps w') and look at the /proc//status file. In this case, however, you need to take into account the Android architecture - the application can be distributed across several processes.

If this method is too difficult for you and you don’t want to bother with each application, there are several graphical analogues of the top utility in the market. I liked one of them, called Process Explorer, the implementation of which, however, seemed incomprehensible - why use a browser to view the list of processes?

By the way, the Google Play service has a habit of suddenly updating a bunch of applications, which, of course, eats up resources. It is not possible to disable this service, but you can disable the update itself. To do this, go to the Play Store, call up the menu (hint: if you can’t call it using the soft keys, “pull” from the left edge), select “Settings” and set “Auto-update applications” to “Never”.

Likewise, it makes sense to disable account synchronization (which, in addition to a possible increase in performance, will satisfy your paranoia). To do this, go to “Settings” and look for where the “Accounts” item is located, then select an account and disable synchronization (alternatively, you can disable only individual and unnecessary types of synchronization, such as, for example, Google+ contacts or calendar. - Editor's note).

Disable media scanning

By default, Android scans all external storage devices (SD cards) for media files. This function, although useful, slows down the system quite a lot. You can disable it. For new drives, create an empty .nomedia file in the root. But in order to disable the display of existing files in Android 4.0 and later, you need, in addition to creating this file in the folder you need, to clear the data and cache for the “Gallery” and “Multimedia Storage” applications and force them to stop. After the next launch, all multimedia files will be indexed taking into account the created .nomedia files.

I will give some tips on the most famous brands. It is worth noting that these tips are only suitable for official firmware, so if you have a modified firmware, you can safely skip this section.

Samsung

If you are the owner of any of the devices of this brand, you probably noticed that going to the main screen by pressing the Home button is a little slow. This is due to the fact that double clicking launches S Voice, a speech recognition system. If you do not use it, you can disable this function by unchecking the “Open. "Home" key. In addition, if you accidentally enabled the wake command, it is better to disable it - using this option affects the battery charge quite significantly.

Additionally, some Samsung devices have the option to disable launcher effects. To do this, long-tap on an empty space on the home screen, select “Home screen settings” and in the “Transition effect” submenu select “None”.

HTC

In some cases, the error reporting service may be slow on HTC devices. Although it is not recommended to touch such things, you can disable this option by going to “Settings -> About phone -> Send HTC” (Tell HTC) and unchecking the corresponding checkboxes there.

Sony

On Sony Xperia SP, there is a situation when the phone suddenly starts to slow down. You can try to fix the problem by uninstalling updates for Google Chrome: “Settings -> Applications -> Chrome -> Uninstall updates.”

Greenify

The Greenify application allows you to forcefully put to sleep unnecessary processes (which you can select) while the device is sleeping, and prevent them from being called from third-party processes. This differs from task killers, which do not in any way prevent background applications from restarting due to external events (by a timer, the request of another application, or a system event). Unfortunately, some functionality is only available on rooted phones - in particular, the most important function of sleeping applications a few minutes after the device falls asleep.

The reason is that the forceStopPackage() method, which allows Greenify to put applications into an inactive state, is internal and is only available to system applications or those running as root. In non-root mode, you can only use the killBackgroundProcesses() method, which does not completely unload the process from memory, so system events continue to come to it and “wake up” it, which does not at all correspond to the Greenify ideology.

Therefore, to implement functionality in non-root mode, the Greenify developer took a completely different and very inventive path. When installed, the application registers as an Accessibility Service, thus gaining access to the system interface, and then simply calls up the application manager and clicks on the necessary buttons to kill the application through the standard Android settings menu. During sleep mode, this operation is unfortunately not possible, so on non-rooted smartphones Greenify can only sleep applications after the user presses the corresponding button.

ART

In Android 4.4, a replacement for Dalvik appeared - ART, Android Runtime. It provides AOT compilation. In order to understand what it is and what the advantage of ART is, you will have to take a brief excursion into history.

At the time when the foundation for Android was being laid, Java was chosen as the programming language - largely due to the fact that the OS was supposed to be used on a wide variety of platforms. And it was good for everyone, except for one thing - the speed of Java applications was quite low. This happened because the code was actually being interpreted.

Time passed. In Android 2.2, JIT compilation was added to the Dalvik virtual machine. This allowed us to achieve a fairly significant increase in speed, but did not solve all the problems. And now in the KitKat version ART appeared, which allows you to compile applications not even at runtime - during installation. You can enable it in the same developer menu where we disabled the effects. This, on the one hand, increases installation time and size, and also, when turned on for the first time, it takes significant time to convert all already installed applications into native code. On the other hand, the increase in speed after enabling it is on average 50%, and for some applications even more (in particular, scrolling has become much smoother).

But ART also has disadvantages. Some of them are obvious - for example, incompatibility with certain obfuscators and applications. They simply don’t concentrate attention on certain individuals, although they should. Among these I will include possible security problems. Experiments conducted relatively recently (at the May HITB conference) show that if a specially generated DEX file is inserted, the translator (dex2oat) crashes. In addition, if you find vulnerabilities in ART itself, it will be possible to create user-mode rootkits. In addition, the boot.oat image generated by the translator has a fixed base address (0x700000), which allows you to bypass ASLR under certain conditions.

At the same time, from the point of view of reverse engineering, static analysis of OAT files is still difficult - for the reason that the usual method names are simply not in the code. This is understandable. However, since the OAT file format is actually ELF, you can use tools designed for the latter, such as GDB. As for the dynamic... There is no toolkit for it as such.

ART will be enabled by default in the fifth version of Google's OS (and Dalvik, accordingly, will be removed). In my opinion, given the potential security problems, it’s too early to completely abandon Dalvik, so I don’t agree with Google’s policy here. However (with this in mind), it is all the more worthwhile to enable ART on KitKat to test the applications you need.

Conclusion

Despite the flexibility of the Android platform, it is difficult to speed up your device without using custom and/or rooted firmware. But it is not impossible, as this article proves. Finally, I’ll give you universal advice: install only those applications that you will actually use, and say a firm “No” to everyone else.

Lightweight programs for Android

I will give a short list of lightweight analogues of the necessary programs for Android. This list is minimal, including only what, in my opinion, is necessary:

  • You can use RMaps instead of Google Maps. Not only is this application lighter, it is also much more functional.
  • Cumbersome Adobe Reader can be replaced by Mupdf.
  • There are quite a lot of readers. Among the lightweight ones, I can recommend AlReader and FBReader.
  • As for browsers, you can install Lighthing Browser, which is de facto a lightweight standard one.
  • It is better to replace the extremely heavy Feedly RSS reader client with the lightweight FeedMe (be careful, only for smart people).

What does root give? (editor's word)

About a year ago, I wrote an article about speeding up new versions of Android on outdated devices. In it, I talked about several techniques that require root rights, with which you can increase the performance of your smartphone by unloading all non-critical system components from RAM. In short, the article presented five main methods:

  • Tuning the Low Memory Killer mechanism in order to teach the system to unload background applications from the device’s memory faster than it does by default. The trick requires modification of kernel parameters and is therefore only available on a rooted device. Applications used: Auto Memory Manager or MinFree.
  • Removing all unnecessary system applications from the /system/app and /system/priv-app directories. Can be done using any file manager with root support.
  • Disable unnecessary system applications using Bloatware Freezer, disable their autoloading using Autostarts.
  • Installing an optimized custom kernel and activating the Zram mechanism, as well as the TCP westwood congestion control algorithm. Overclocking the processor.
  • Tuning the kernel virtual memory subsystem to ensure faster unloading of data from caches.
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