If you've had your iPhone for a while, it may seem to work more slowly than it once did, and not just because you've seen the blazing fast performance of your friend's iPhone 5. Decreased performance is common as iPhones become bloated with more files and data, and a few quick touch-ups can speed up responsiveness considerably. These three areas are good places to start:
1. Clear out unused apps: There's an app for everything, but chances are you're not doing everything all the time. Those apps you've installed but never use – think of apps you downloaded for a specific event or games that you long ago beat – are taking up space you could use for something else and are slowing down your phone's performance. If you go to the Settings>General>Usage menu, you can spot the apps that are taking up the most space and eliminate the ones you don't need, CNET's Donald Bell noted.
“You'll see them listed in order of the size of the app, which makes it easy to spot the serious offenders,” he wrote. “I'll bet you'll be surprised.”
2. Tidy up your user settings: Chances are good that you've picked up some extra baggage in the course of browsing the internet on your iPhone, Bell added. Clearing out the cookies and data stored in the browser app can immediately boost performance. Simply go to Settings>Safari and choose the option to clear cookies and data. You may be able to streamline performance on your entire phone by restoring the system settings to their original configuration as well. Under the Settings>General>Reset menu, select the first option, Reset All Settings. Be careful not to choose Erase all Content and Settings unless you want to clear out your phone's data entirely, though.
3. Change your iTunes syncing settings: Maybe you had a podcast that you used to listen to that you had set to automatically sync. Perhaps you never use your iPhone's calendar app but it's syncing anyway. These settings may be loading your phone down with unnecessary data and slowing down your iPhone syncing, Lifehacker noted. In iTunes, you can uncheck any of the features you don't want synchronized.
While these quick fixes can help make your iPhone run more smoothly, sometimes the issue may be a more deep-seated hardware issue. If you continue to experience poor performance, you can send it in to iResQ for a free diagnostic screening and, if necessary, an iPhone repair.