A few questions about factory resetting my phone

[bobbyl97]

I got my Samsung Stratosphere in June 2012. It worked great for the first 3 months I had it. In August, the LCD screen cracked and I had to use my old Blackberry for a while. As a Christmas gift, my parents paid to have the phone fixed. I gave the phone to a phone repairman in the mall. Nothing official, but he knew what he was doing, enough so that it was fixed and it worked. I've had my Stratosphere now for the last 5 months or so, and I have noticed it is much slower than the first 3 months I had it. When I open an app, it takes several seconds for the app to load. Even if it is a simple app like Messaging, I will click on the icon and it will take a few seconds to load. One time I counted and it took 10 whole seconds. When I pushed the home button, it would take several seconds to load the home screen. I thought it was the app's fault, so I downloaded third party apps to replace the stock apps. I downloaded Go SMS Pro and Go Launcher Ex, thinking that they would be faster. They are a tiny bit faster, but the phone is still extremely sluggish and laggy. My first thought was that when the repairman in the mall fixed my screen, he somehow messed up the internal processor and caused internal damage to make the phone slower. But after reading about other people with similar issues, including my friend who has the same phone as I do, I am thinking its time for a factory reset. If I reset the phone, will it go back to being fast again?

Furthermore, if I do go through with the reset, what are some things I can do to make recovering my data easier? I am not concerned about losing music, video, or photos. All of that is stored on my SD card. I also backed up all my contacts to my SD card. What I am concerned about, however, is losing all my apps, settings, and defaults. Some of my apps are saved to the SD card, while most are saved onto the phone. Is there some fast way I can move all my apps to the SD card? Or is there some way I can backup everything onto the cloud in order to quickly restore it after I reset the phone? Or will I have to manually re-download all the apps?

Thanks.

 

[Scott Kenyon]

A reset will more than likely help you. Phones get slow for several reasons. One is the apps you run. The more apps you have running, the slower it gets. Android does a pretty good job at managing your memory for you, but the Stratosphere is an older phone now. Another reason is updates of both the phone OS and apps. More current apps and OS versions require more power and RAM to run. These points hold true for most platforms and devices.
A factory reset will bring your phone back to where it was when you bought it. When you load your apps on it, however, it's likely to slow back down. The only permanent solution is to upgrade your device which you may or may not be willing/capable of doing.
If you decide to reset your device, first download Helium from the play store. I recommend paying for it and using the Google Drive backup feature. It makes life a lot easier. Start up Helium and select the apps and data you want to back up, then let it run. After your reset, simply reinstall Helium and import all your apps and data. It's really really really simple to do, and I think this is exactly what you're wanting.

Good luck, and if you need anything else let me know.