How to fix Galaxy J7 lag, freezing, or slow performance issue [troubleshooting guide]

Hello Android community! Today we give you a brief guide on what you need to do if you think your #GalaxyJ7 device is slowing down or showing signs of slow performance issue.

If you’ve been a long time smartphone or computer user, you’ll know that lag or freezing can sometimes happen. Slow performance issue is really part and parcel of today’s digital computing so we hope that the solutions we outline here can shed some light on it.

If you are looking for solutions to your own #Android issue, you can contact us by using the link provided at the bottom of this page.

When describing your issue, please be as detailed as possible so we can easily pinpoint a relevant solution. If you can, kindly include the exact error messages you are getting to give us an idea where to start. If you have already tried some troubleshooting steps before emailing us, make sure to mention them so we can skip them in our answers.

Steps on how to fix Galaxy J7 slow performance issue

My Samsung Galaxy J7 (from Verizon) came with very little memory and slowed way down after one week of use. It has so much lag/delay, it’s practically unusable and is now freezing the screen more and more. I purchased a 32GB memory card, installed the card, pulled the battery to drain the system, reinstalled the battery and powered on the device. (A soft reset) While it did help the issue some, the screen is still freezing and the lags/delays are beyond-annoying. I’d actually rather render this thing useless and go without a phone than to have to deal with the complete frustration that IS my Samsung Galaxy J7. I’d love it if you could help me fix this issue so that I can love my phone again!!! Sincerely. — Annette Jackson        

Solution: Hi Annette. It’s interesting to note that you encounter slow performance problem a week after getting the phone. Most users can have a year of usage without encountering the same problem. This makes us think that perhaps your problem is being caused by something that you did, or may be a product of a hardware malfunction. There are a lot of things that can lead to an issue such as yours so you need to invest some time and effort in identifying the main cause. In general, these causes can be grouped into two categories, software and hardware.

If your phone is slowing down due to some software bug, corrupted content, or glitchy operating system, there’s a chance that you can fix it relatively easily. However, if the reason for the slow down is hardware in nature, you’ll most likely end up with repair, motherboard replacement, or phone replacement. The usual reasons why a phone can encounter hardware problems include exposure to elements (heat, cold, water), and physical impact from accidental drops. If your phone got wet or accidentally dropped prior to experiencing the lag and/or delays, doing some software solutions is most probably pointless. Instead of wasting your time asking around for software solutions, we would recommend that you let a professional check the hardware instead.

Now, if your phone was never exposed to water, heat, or cold, and was not dropped or physically impacted at all, software troubleshooting may help. Below are some of the things that you can try.

Restart the phone

You’ve probably done this several times but for the sake of other users who may be experiencing the same trouble (though probably from different cause), rebooting the device may help. This simple step can check unnecessary services and apps from running and may even fix lag problems for good.

To do it, just press and hold the Power button, tap Restart option, and tap OK to proceed.

Refresh RAM

Before you do some drastic solutions, you should try doing some simpler possible solutions. One of them is closing apps and clearing your phone’s RAM. If you have installed a lot of apps in this phone, it’s possible that majority of them are hogging precious resources like RAM. Although Android has improved a lot since the first Android version was first released, RAM management in some devices can still be a messy affair. To do your part, you want to make sure that you device has more than enough RAM to switch between tasks seamlessly. To do that, be sure to manually close apps that you don’t use actively by tapping the Recent button (the one on the left of middle Home in the bottom). Once you’ve pulled up the app switcher menu, simply tap the CLOSE ALL button.

Alternatively, if you’re running Android Marshmallow or Nougat, you can tap Memory under Settings>Device maintenance in order to improve performance. Hitting the CLEAN NOW option should force close apps that uses the RAM up to that time.

Check available storage space

Storage “junk” usually accumulate after using a device for some time. This is the usual culprit for slow performance issues in most electronics but we don’t think this is so in your case. Having used your device for a week won’t usually result to a lot of significant storage issues but we’ll still recommend that you try to minimize clutter by deleting unused photos, music, or videos you may be keeping. If you can’t let go of them, we recommend that you move them to an external memory or to the SD card so the system has a lot of available internal storage space to use. Android and other core system files are kept in the internal storage device so you must leave them ample available space to operate. Make sure that internal storage has at least 500MB of available space.

Uninstall apps

 With hundreds of thousands of apps that anyone can download from the Play Store, it’s easy to end up installing a handful of them. Well, if you tend to install apps on a whim, now is the right time to stop it. Keep in mind that not all apps are created equal. Some may work smoothly while others may be problematic. Developers have varying levels of expertise so apps, just like any real-world product, can vary in quality. If you don’t screen apps, you’ll most likely end up with problems more serious than the one you’re experiencing right now. Some apps are designed to continue working even after you’ve closed it. The more such apps are added into the system, the fewer resources other actively running apps may have. Apps that can continue working in the background can take precious CPU resources and adds to storage space clutter in the long run. This is why we only recommend that you install apps that you only “need.” For example,  if you can’t live without checking on the life progress of some people, try to install social networking apps that you can use most of the time ONLY. Avoid other similar apps that can give you similar results. Check your list of apps for any redundancy. Decide which apps that can remain and uninstall the ones that offer similar functionalities or features. If you have multiple email apps, consider using one or the default one and remove the rest. The same with games and with productivity apps. Keep your digital life simple!

The more apps you delete, the fewer the chances of bugs or glitches developing in the future. That doesn’t mean you’ll have a perfect system afterwards. What you want to achieve here is to lessen the possible causes of the slow performance problem. Since you can’t pinpoint the exact reason for the problem, lessening the possible culprits is the best thing to do.

Check the SD card

In some slow performance issues, the main reason is a bad SD card. If you haven’t yet, try to observe how the phone works when the SD card is removed. Even if the SD card itself is not problematic, it’s possible that one of the apps stored in it may be causing the slow down so removing it entirely is a good troubleshooting step.

Also, it’s important that before you use an SD card in your phone, you want to ensure that it’s formatted by your phone. Though an SD card formatted by another device may work in your phone, we still recommend that you reformat it with the device it’s supposed to work in to minimize bugs.

Turn off animations

Android and apps are constantly evolving and part of such evolution is conflict. Sometimes, modifications from all sorts of spheres in your phone’s Android environment can lead to new bugs that developers can’t anticipate. If you are adventurous when it comes to using special effects, animations, and other extras, there’s a chance that you may be pushing the performance envelop of your device. Keep in mind that not all apps are tested for all devices. One app may work in one Galaxy phone while it may be problematic with another.

While it’s nice to allow our device to surprise us from time to time by installing new apps that offers fresh animations or special effects, they also tend to cause most performance problems. Consider turning off extra animations and special effects in your phone to provide more processing power to the apps that needed resources the most. If you are using a third party launcher, consider switching to the old Samsung one and see if that will make any difference. If you can’t let go of your current launcher, check under its settings to see if there are extra animations that you can turn off.

Optimize your device

With Android Marshmallow and Nougat comes an easy way to streamline critical functions of your phone by simply tapping a button. This button can be found under Settings>Device maintenance. Simply hit the OPTIMIZE NOW button and your phone will check itself and clear clutter in its storage device and free up some RAM. If you want to fine tune the optimization yourself, you can also tap on each of the available options like Battery, Performance mode, Storage, Memory, and Device security.

Wipe the phone via Factory reset

If all the suggestions above won’t seem to improve the situation or fix the problem, there may be an operating system glitch causing the phone to slow down. To check, you need to factory reset the device to revert everything back to their defaults. Once you have reset the device, you can then establish a performance benchmark to help you tell if the problem is software-related or hardware in nature.

If your phone continues to suffer slow downs despite having factory reset it and without apps installed, that’s a telltale sign of a hardware issue. If you think that’s the case, you should contact Samsung so the phone can be repaired or replaced.

 

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