Reduce lag on any Samsung Galaxy device by going into developer options and limiting background process

Do you have a Samsung Galaxy S4 and are you frustrated with the fact that the smartphone has a considerable amount of lag? 

The Galaxy S4 really is an amazing smartphone with some pretty amazing specifications, as powerful this phone is with 2 gigs of RAM and either a quad-core 1.9ghz Snapdragon 600 CPU or the 1.6ghz Exynos 5 Octa CPU the phone still suffers from lag issues. This is because of Touchwiz mainly, Samsung's skin comes with tons of features that we could spend all day discussing but we wont and it is very resource heavy on the phone. With all of the enhancements and software features, the phone's internal storage is limited and many of these features run simultaneously whether or not if your using them. The phone has 2 gigs of RAM which should help its performance but in this case its not enough as often the user is left with less than 500mb of free RAM due to all of the various features and preloaded programs that run in the background. 

A good way to reduce the lag and increase the performance of your device is to go into the developer  options and limit the number of background processes the CPU can handle at any time. This works on not only the Galaxy S4 but most other Samsung Galaxy devices with the exception of some older models like the Galaxy S. 

To change the background processes count you need to access the developer options menu in the settings which may vary based on device. The Galaxy S4 has a pretty crazy way of accessing the developer options by taping on the device's Android build number multiple times in the about phone section. Most other devices have a section dedicated to developer options in the settings menu. 

Below is a screen cap from the Galaxy Note 10.1  showing the developer options section in the settings menu

Once in developer options, scroll down the Apps tab and select Limit Background processes and change the value from standard limit to 4 at most. 

Clicking on Limit background processes brings up a dialog box where you can change the values, select 4 processes at most as this is probably the best setting. 

After changing the background processes limit, you should notice a significant improvement in the device's performance. On the Galaxy S4, this reduces lag and even fixes the camera bug where clicking on the camera application in some cases can cause the device to malfunction and reboot itself. RAM consumption is also reduced as there are fewer programs running in the background. 

RAM consumption with no limit on background processes, no apps are running

RAM consumption after changing the limit on background processes to 4

As you can see with no applications running and the limit changed to 4, the amount of RAM being consumed by the system was reduced by more than 10 megabites. That might not seem like much but it does make a difference when you are using applications.

As helpful as this is, I should note that these settings when you change them are not permanent, when you restart the device it goes back to the default setting of  no limit. So you will have to change it again. 

 

Hands on look at Google's new Play Music application

During the Google I/O keynote, Google announced several API updates for its core services. this includes Google Maps, Google+, Play Music and Google Talk. Today I will be giving you a look at the new Play Music app that was announced at I/O. The new app comes with some UI changes but the major new feature is Google now offers a streaming music service. Just like Spotify, Pandora or the other countless music streaming apps, you can create your own music playlists as well as listen to preselected ones. The music streaming service, however, isn't free and requires a monthly subscription fee (although you do get the first 30 days for free if you register before June 30th). Also, the streaming service isn't available in every market unfortunately.

So here is a look at the streaming music service part of the app, you can create your own custom radio stations by typing in the name of a song or artist. The app then builds a station around your search criteria  using similar songs and artists as well.

The streaming service also allows you to search and listen to playlists submitted by other users based on genre  or sub genre. The playlists that are available, however, are limited.

After using the streaming music service for a couple weeks now, I have to say I am quite impressed with it, thanks to this service, you can listen to tracks of new albums that have been released without buying them first which I think is an awesome idea because then you can get a feel for whether or not you want to purchase tracks or the whole album itself. I have noticed though that the music selection is not quite on par with other services, perfect example when I tried to search for Led Zeppelin because they are one of my favorite bands, I couldn't find much content available on that particular artist. I would imagine that in due time, the service will improve as more music is added to the catalog. 

In the end, I think its awesome that Google is offering this service but I do wish there were other pricing options available such as offering maybe a free streaming service but include advertising or skip limits like other services offer. As like any application, it will get better in time as new features may be added. ~Mathew

ARE YOUR EYES SAFE?

Now a days we get smartphones with the best displays out there like apple's retina, samsung's AMOLED and so on. These displays have been challenged on visibility outdoor and for that competition they are doing really a great job. There are different types of screens like TFT, LCD & LED or AMOLED. All of these are really doing great in the recent times. With all the viewing angles and color complexion and vividness being so great depending on the technology the manufacturer uses to make it better, but there is one problem that everyone faces when it comes to night time use. I use my phone during the night times or when i hit the bed. The worst part is that when i just power up my phone's display the brightness from the screen really pokes my eyes. I know this happens to not just me but for everyone who uses their phones at night time. There where applications like the UC-Browser when i use to use my nokia X-6 and it had something called night theme and it could bring down the screen brightness of the phone even below the minimum the manufacturer has set or may be the color theme that were used would have made it appear so dim. It was so pleasant for my eyes and It was more comfortable to read. This kinda cool and awesome feature was bound only to the application itself and wasn't available for such a control all over the phone's display.The absence of such a feature that can be used in every application caused my eye sight to go poor as i continued to use the Galaxy s2 and now my s4 at night times. Its needless to say that the minimum brightness from the screen is bright enough to poke one's eyes during night reading in a complete dark condition. I realized that i can't let my eye site get worst and then is when i remembered the night theme i use to use in the UC-browser. I went to the play store and searched for NIGHT MODE and there it was!.

This application on what i saw thought i could give it a try and installed it right away on my galaxy s2 and the application wasn't even hardly a MB. Not only do you get to set your brightness level but also you get additional setting to make it more comfortable for your eyes. Frankly i never played with those additional setting as i preferred to use with the default ones. Check how bright my screen looks under normal condition.

Now i get into the application and all i had to do was to hit the start button and before that i would ask you to set the brightness to your desired level and here for me 50% is what pleases my eyes. I got into the application and this is how it looks before i start the night mode.

Now you see a start button there don't you? just adjust your brightness level and hit the start button and see the magic happen.

Its brilliant and amazing. Now not only don't i need to check in apps that if they have a night theme but i just needn't even worry about turning on my phone in the night to check all i want to without shrinking my eyes to reduce the poke. This works every where you go cos its has the capacity to reduce the brightness on your phone or table's screens no matter of what kind of screen it is. It reduces to something more minimum than that of the brightness that the respected manufacturers limit. It just works everywhere.

This is how the same home screen looks when i turn the night mode on. This is really amazing to use. You can stop this anytime by just switching back to the night mode app and just tap the stop button. This will not damage any of your hardware. I can promise you that its gonna work just fine. I have been using this for the past few months to confirm on it and it works. give it a try and share this article if you like it.

THIS APP IS ANDROID EXCLUSIVE.