Because the photo is cached, I don’t need to use extra data to download it again. Say my sister sends me a photo of my niece, and a few hours after I first view it, I show the photo to a friend. WhatsApp will keep the pictures in its cache memory so you don’t need to download them again to view them. For those that haven’t used it, WhatsApp is the dominant instant messaging application in a good portion of the world, so the old files in its case will likely be pictures you have received. On Cheetah Mobile’s website, they list WhatsApp as one of the biggest offender. It deletes cache files to boost speed and gain back space on the phone. The next feature is the big claim to fame for these type of “cleaning” applications: Junk File Cleaning. iSwipe is in the harmful category because it adds an additional background process, which could freeze your phone.Īndroid’s storage settings, where you can clear your phone’s cache if you truly need to.
Further, Samsung and HTC (and others) prioritize the available memory in their software so that even if your current app freezes, you can press the home button and still get back to the home screen just fine. The reason the phone would freeze would be because of lots of background processes, and the iSwipe feature just adds another background process.
Cheetah Mobile’s advertisement relies on the phone potentially freezing when you press the home button to get you to use the feature. Next up is iSwipe, which will let you swipe from any app to return to the home screen. Battery Saver crosses into the harmful territory because it may break the functionality of other applications by shutting them down improperly and uses more battery power than it could save. By turning off other apps, Clean Master also messes with the notification services of those apps, so you may miss a crucial email or message due to using these features. The next part, hibernating apps is also taken care of by the system: don’t use an app for a while, and it will stop running.
And again, the Android system already does this and displays which apps are using the most battery. Any application that tries to analyze your phone’s battery status is going to keep the Central Processing Unit (CPU) awake and use extra battery, so this is already a self defeating feature. It claims to analyze your phone’s battery status and hibernate running apps to save power. The next feature in the description is Battery Saver. AppLock seems less harmful and more on the unnecessary side, where it’s just duplicating features the Android system already does.Īndroid’s battery settings, where you can see exactly what is using the most battery Without the correct PIN code, the phone won’t boot and none of my data is accessible.
For example when I boot up my Nexus 6P, I need to enter a PIN code to get the phone to complete booting.
Every phone will let you use a password, and even encrypt the storage if need be.
Nothing wrong with that, but a strong password for your phone itself is the best option to keep everything safe. The first feature is called AppLock, which promises to lock Facebook, messaging, the gallery and any other apps to keep things safe. There will be a lot of technical terms in this article, and if I don’t explain things in a way that make sense, reach out to me and I’ll try explaining it a different way.Īll the features I’ll analyzing come straight from Clean Master’s description on the Google Play Store. This article will be entirely Android focused, since iOS and Windows Mobile don’t allow applications to access background data to clean out old files like Android does. The most well known app seems to be Clean Master by Cheetah Mobile, so it will be the app I break down.
Unfortunately, these applic ations are unnecessary at best and harmful at worst. Some of the companies making these apps have even managed to get the apps pre-installed on numerous Android phones. It seems too good to be true: just click a few buttons and your phone will be like new. Spend anytime online, and you’ll no doubt see an advertisement for an application that promises to speed up your phone, free up extra space and find you true love (or some combination of those three).