To an extent the dream of a mobile web-browsing device has become something of a nightmare. Despite the proliferation of mobile-, adaptive- and responsive websites, browsing on an Android phone or tablet can be a slow, laggy and buggy affair. It doesn’t have to be. In this article we look at one useful tweak that allows you to add greater memory allocation to the Chrome browser, making it a faster web-surfing experience. And we also offer a couple of tips for getting the Android Browser to play more nicely. Here is speed up Android browsing. (See also: How to remove a virus from Android phone or tablet and How to block pop-up ads on Android.)
How to speed up Android browsing: Allocate more memory to Chrome browser
This works only on the Chrome browser, which you may have to access from within the ‘Google’ section of your home page. Open a new Chrome tab and type into the URL bar: chrome://flags/#max-tiles-for-interest-area You should see a warning about experimental features in Chrome, and beneath it a list of such features. Scroll down until you find ‘Maximum tiles for interest area’, which should be highlighted. Click the drop-down and you will see several options on a menu dialog. We could see ‘Default’, ’64’, ‘128’, ‘256’ and ‘512’. As you might expect the numbers refer to the amount of memory set aside for the web browser. Switching up to 512MB from the default 128MB should speed up the web browser.
Once you have selected the required amount of RAM, you will be invited to ‘Relaunch now’. Do so and Chrome will relaunch with the new memory allocation. You should find that pages load much more quickly. And you can, of course, reverse the process if for any reason the new memory allocation causes problems. (See also: How to get more storage in Android: Not enough storage? Here’s a fix.)
How to speed up Android browsing: disable Javascript (and Flash) on the Android browser
Unlike the Chrome tweak outlined above, these changes require you to lose some functionality. But given that this functionality is Flash and Javascript, you may not be too upset. You are in essence using an ad blocker on your mobile browser. Turning off JavaScript will significantly speed up web browsing on all Android devices, but it will also make some web pages look plain and lifeless. You could care less. To disable Javascript on your Android, open up the Browser, and hit the three dot ‘Menu’ icon in the top righthand corner. Choose Advanced, and then scroll down to ‘Enable JavaScript’. Untick this option and you should see speed improvements, in particular on desktop websites that haven’t been optimised for mobile devices. Flash is an option only on older Androids, so it probably isn’t important for you. But if it is on your handset you probably do want to disable it – and you have nothing to lose from looking to see what is going on. To do so, go into the Android browser, select the menu icon and choose Advanced. If you can see an ‘Enable plugins’, it is likely your browser is utilising a Flash plugin. So untick that option. You should see immediate speed dividends. (See also: How to make your phone’s battery last longer.)
Matt Egan is Global Editorial Director of IDG, publisher of Tech Advisor, and a passionate technology fan who writes on subjects as diverse as smartphones, internet security, social media and Windows.
