Gadgetory

hey guys it's Joe Levi with pocketnow.com the Nexus 4 has been out for a very short amount of time and already we're asking are there any ways to make it faster with a quad-core 1.5 processor in it there are a couple things we can do let's go take a look first up is unlocking the device most people I know have their androids pre locked so you have to put in a pattern or type in a pin well face unlock is out it's been out since Ice Cream Sandwich it's just been kind of slow check this out just like that my device is unlocked and opened up because this processor is just so fast so you can have a fairly secure login and still be able to get into your device really really quickly using face unlock that's tip number one tip number two don't unlock if you don't need to what do I mean by that well over here your power button can instantly lock your device so that the next time you turn it on even if it's 2 seconds later you have to push that button again so uncheck that now you don't have that it will default backup to this it's going to automatically lock how long after it goes to sleep 5 seconds 15 I've found 30 works really well for me so whenever I turn off my device or if my device goes to sleep when I wake it back up I don't have to unlock it because that threshold wasn't hit only lock when you need it to that's tip number 2 a lot of times when we're turning on our devices to check on some information like the time your calendar the weather whatever it may be well you can do that now with lockscreen widget simply turn on your device and before it unlocks you can now go in and look at date and time you can swipe to the side this is a plug-in called beautiful widgets yes the same beautiful widgets that we've shown you in the past now has a lockscreen widget you can even add more stuff to do that you've got to unlock your device so I'll do that with face unlock now down here we can through in our calendar digital clock Gmail messaging even sound search for what that to find out what that song is let's go ahead and put Gmail on there and we'll put my Priority Inbox so now my priority inbox is right up at the top one other thing that you can do that's really nice is from here swipe to the side and you can get to your camera very fast very easy it's just right there you can take a picture of the floor or something more interesting that's our next tip next up take advantage of Google now although it did come with Ice Cream Sandwich jelly bean and newer versions have added some cool features that are really helpful that's a whole different topic but just to show you how quick and powerful it is send text to Alfred test the game has been cancelled and just like that I have a text message for Alfred test at his mobile number saying that the game has been cancelled very quick very easy really really convenient you can send emails calendar appointments all kinds of stuff just using Google now so up until now these have been usability speed enhancements ways that you can use your Nexus 4 to save time to make it go faster in your everyday use how can we make it actually go faster for that we're going to need root and we're gonna need a custom ROM the one that I've chosen here is CyanogenMod let's go into settings and our first option is called Z RAM and it's in the memory settings of performance going to that except the disclaimer and memory management zrm compresses memory for increased virtual capacity and yes it does require a reboot I've got it set at 18% which is the default you can bump it up a little bit more though I haven't seen any speed improvement by going up to 26 and I'd seen that much by going down to 10 now this is leveraging the fast processor that we have in here to compress stuff as it goes into and decompress stuff as it comes out of RAM the processor is fast enough to handle that this makes it look like we have even more it helps a little bit but your mileage may vary try it out just remember you've got to reboot between settings for the settings to take effect our last tweak for you is to allow purging of assets which lets bitmap memory assets be purged to free up more RAM whenever it's needed toggling this on or off does require that you reboot for the changes to take effect but once you do that especially in combination with Z Ram you're going to notice a significant improvement in benchmark scores when running with these two things setup so there you go we've got a couple tweaks for you to use to help actually speed up the performance of your nexus 4 along with a couple things you can do to speed up your experience with the nexus 4 that's just a handful of things we know so now it's your turn head over to pocketnow.com and leave your favorite way to improve performance on your nexus 4 over in the comments on the article follow us over on twitter we are at pocket now if you want to follow me I'm at Joe Levi make sure you head over to pocket now and of course give the video a big thumbs up if you liked the tweaks and the optimizations that you saw here today for pocket now showing off how you can get more speed out of your Nexus 4 experience I'm Joe Levi