The general negativity towards Apple’s recent products has lead to many people considering switching to a new platform. The iPhone’s lack of innovation coupled with removing the headphone jack has left a bad taste in many long-term Apple users. Personally, I prefer Apple products because of the seamless integration with all of it’s products. However, I understand why people would want to switch. With the influx of many new Android users, I want to extend a well-known tip to make your phone zippier.
Android phones have always been known to have much more customizable options compared to the iPhone. You can speed up your phone by tweaking the animation settings. The default is at 1x and changing the value to .5x on the animation settings will lead to apps and menu screens opening up faster.
The three different animation settings are window animation, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale. The window animation controls how quickly app windows open and close. The transition animation controls how quickly you can switch between apps. The animator duration scale controls the finer app controls such as opening up menus and tapping buttons.
The developer options on most Android phones are not accessible by default. The developer options give you much more customizability through advanced functions. I would recommend new users against messing around with the settings unless you know for sure what you are changing.
How to turn on developer options and change animation settings
- Go to Settings
- Tap About phone
- Scroll down to Build number
- Tap Build number seven times and a bubble will pop up indicating you have turned on developer options
- Scroll down to window animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale.
- Change each setting to .5x or animation off.
Some people like the animation of opening up apps so they will keep it at .5x. Turning off animation will make apps open up less smooth, but faster. You should see a noticeable increase in the speed of opening apps in either .5x or animation off.
This is a feature that I really missed when I switched from my S6 to the iPhone 6S. It took me a while to get used to the slower animation speed of the iPhone. My roommates who switched from an iPhone to a Google Pixel were incredibly stoked at how much zippier their Android phone felt compared to the iPhone.