Optimizing Your Android Phone For Gaming

It's been years since the only reason people bought a mobile phone was to call people or send text messages. If that's all you want to do with your handset, you can now pick up a basic model for $20 or less from various outlets, and you can send and receive messages and calls to your heart's content. For the majority of us, though, we rely on our phones to do a lot more for us than that.

 

Smartphones are now also multimedia devices. We watch television shows and movies on them. We use them to store important files, documents, and photographs. We also use them to play games - and those games are slowly becoming more demanding on both hardware and software.

 

According to the latest official figures, the total amount spent on mobile gaming globally will exceed $100bn by the end of 2021. When it reaches that figure, it will account for over half of all the money spent on video gaming in the world. That means that for all the hype that comes with the latest big release for traditional video gaming consoles, the majority of the money to be made by software publishers actually comes from the mobile gaming market. A lot of that money comes from online casinos and their sister site, which have worked long and hard to ensure that their products are available for mobile-based players. The latest estimates suggest that online casinos globally take in around fifty billion dollars per year through mobile gaming, but even that massive amount still leaves another fifty billion to be taken by more 'traditional' video games.

 

Those figures lead to several questions - one of which being whether Sony will be disappointed by the performance of its new PlayStation console by the time it launches, because everyone's moved on to mobile gaming - but the one that's of more interest to our users is 'How do I optimize my mobile so I can play the best games?', and that's the question we're here to answer. Here are a few basic strategies you can employ.

 

 

1.                Use A Game Booster App

 

There are a few of these on the market, all of which should be easy to find through Play Store, or your equivalent. Android Cleaner is a good all-round tool to use because it does a lot for your device with a simple click, including freeing up RAM and clearing cache space, but it also has a 'game booster module,' which promises to improve the performance of games if they're launched through the feature. Dr. Booster and Game Booster Perform are also tried-and-trusted products, which work to eliminate lag issues and optimize the use of RAM when the apps are open.

 

2.                Force 4x MSAA Mode

 

You need to have developer mode active on an Android phone to do this. To open it, find the 'About Phone' section within your settings menu, open it up, and repeatedly tap the 'Build number' until you get offered the chance to switch on developer mode. When this is done, you'll find Developer Options further down the same list. Within Developer Options is 'Enable Force 4x MSAA.' This is effectively a turbocharger for your phone, which will become active as soon as you restart your device. Gaming performance should be noticeably improved - just beware of the effect on your battery life!

 

3.                Get Rid Of Unwanted Applications

 

All of us are guilty of installing applications, using them once or twice, and then forgetting they're there. This is doubly true If we're very organized with our applications because the apps can be placed with folders, where they become out of sight and out of mind. Every app you install will take up valuable memory space, and may also be using background processing power and bandwidth. The cumulative effect is that your phone gets slowed down in the process, and so games which place a high demand on your phone struggle to run. Go on a deep cleanse, and purge your phone of anything you don't use. This won't just improve the performance of your phone when it comes to playing games - you might find that your device becomes quicker and more responsive in general.

 

4.                Make Sure Your Version Of Android Is Up To Date

 

This might seem like an obvious suggestion, but a surprising number of us have automatic updates turned off, and we don't even realize it. Those updates often contain little performance tweaks which make the performance of your phone - and therefore the ability of your phone to deal with new games - better. This is another setting you'll find under the 'About phone' menu, which contains a 'System update' button. It's worth checking this periodically even if you do have automatic updates turned on, just to make sure you're definitely running the latest version. This isn't just about gaming - it's also about security.

 

5.                Keep Background Services Turned Off

 

Unless you really want them, keep your background services turned off. Social media apps are the worst offenders for this. Do you really need real-time notifications for Facebook and Twitter, or would you prefer to see them when you choose to log in to the app? Not getting constant updates means you have fewer distractions in your day to day life, and also means there's less demand being placed on your phone. Email clients and messaging services like WhatsApp are also large-scale offenders when it comes to background services, so decide what you do and don't need running all the time, and switch the rest off. You should find the option to do so under the settings menu in each individual app.

That's all there is to it; five little tips which can make all the difference when it comes to your enjoyment of playing games on your mobile. You shouldn't want or need to see much difference if online casinos are the extent of your mobile gaming habits - such websites are generally optimized to make them as easy to play as possible - but if you're a hardcore gamer, you're now a few minor alterations away from a happier gaming time, with fewer frustrations based on lagging and loading issues.