As a long-time Android user, I adore Samsung’s One UI. Currently, I carry four Samsung phones, both for personal and work use.
But going from my Samsung Galaxy A25 to my Samsung Galaxy S25+ is incredibly jarring.
The A-series is a great budget smartphone lineup. But the hardware specs just aren’t there, especially compared to Samsung’s S-series.
My Galaxy A25 is slow. But it doesn’t mean I have to give up on it and let it feel as slow as a turtle whenever I use it.
Luckily, I found one simple tweak that worked like a charm and works with any Galaxy device if you enable developer options — and I am here to tell you what it is and how to enable it.
Turn off or scale down animations using developer options
Shorten the visual effect durations for app and UI elements
If you’re looking to make your phone feel a bit snappier, I recommend turning off or lowering the animations.
While this isn’t necessary on my high-end Samsung phones, it did wonders with my Galaxy A25.
This is a perceived effect. It doesn’t technically improve your device’s performance much (the CPU/GPU load isn’t that high).
Still, it makes your phone feel more responsive by removing the artificial delay introduced by UI transitions.
But that’s enough of a change to make your device feel less slow and laggy overall.
It can also help battery life. So changing the scaling or turning off animations adds that secondary benefit.
Be warned that this can make your device look a little less polished. You’re removing the transitions or reducing the delay, meaning elements will just appear rather than slide in naturally.
To change the animation speed and duration scaling, or turn them off completely, you will need to access the developer settings.
Open your Samsung Galaxy device’s settings and go to About phone > Software information. Hover your finger over the Build number displayed in the Software information section.
Tap the Build number seven times. You should receive a notification that developer mode is on.
After developer mode is enabled, you can access the Developer options menu in your device’s settings.
Inside the developer settings, you will find Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale.
I suggest being careful about turning them off. If you’ve had your device for a while, your eye becomes trained to see a certain speed when you open apps and switch between windows or interact with new UI elements.
I find turning them completely off a bit too jarring. Plus, some apps can break if they are completely off, like Android Auto, which needs transition animations to work properly.
The sweet spot for me was to scale them down. I changed it from 1x to 0.5x, and I only needed a bit to get used to it. I did it for all three main options to keep it consistent.
Technically, you can also remove or reduce animations in the accessibility menu in your Samsung settings. Still, I found it gave me less control than the advanced options in the developer settings.
Be careful when touching virtual RAM
Disable it when you are absolutely sure it doesn’t help
You might come across Samsung’s RAM Plus feature if you own a lower-end device. This feature allocates a few Gigabytes of internal storage as virtual memory to improve multitasking.
For higher-end devices, the feature isn’t really necessary. Sometimes it ends up making the phone perform worse when you don’t need it.
Devices that already have 12GB of physical RAM don’t need virtual RAM to improve it. In a case like that, disabling RAM Plus could make your Galaxy phone feel faster.
Virtual RAM is slower than physical RAM, consumes unnecessary storage, and can cause latency issues.
Stick to physical RAM if you wish to optimize your device’s performance.
But my Galaxy A25 only has 6GB of physical RAM. Nowadays, 8GB is on the low end, so I need to squeeze as much performance as possible from my budget hardware. That’s why I won’t touch the virtual RAM option on my Galaxy A25.
Keep caring for your Samsung phone
No matter the age of your phone, unless it has hardware defects, you can find ways to make it feel more responsive and snappier, while not being riddled with battery drain issues as you use it.
I’ve kept old phones for years. One of my personal favorites is my Samsung Galaxy S10, which I still use for nostalgia.
I’ve learned how to deal with awkward app hang-ups and overheating issues. I found the key to fixing some old device slowdowns after a software update is diligent battery management.
My old phones perform poorly when their battery drops below 20%. The sweet spot is always between 50% and 70% for the battery charge.
So, to keep my devices working properly and in tip-top shape, I worked on my battery usage and charging practices and turned off the Always on Display and Dynamic Wallpapers. I really only need those options for my primary driver.
