 "Clean Master Review")
Smartphones and tablets feel most responsive when they’re just out of the box or after a factory reset. The slowdown begins after installing apps and using all the features in full zeal. After a few weeks of extensive use, you find that your phone has become laggy and the battery doesn’t long as long. In extreme cases, hiccups such as random reboots and frequent app crashes become a regular feature. Clean Master can tackle these issues and breathe new life into your Android device. Here’s what it does.
Get rid of junk files and manage your apps
User interface
The main screen of the app looks and feels pretty much like that of a typical system tuning utility for the PC, just that this app is tailored for mobile devices. The top half of the UI highlighted in light blue displays the amount of used space and available storage space on the SD card and the device’s internal storage. Just to throw in some style, the radial percentage bar is animated at startup and when you return to the main screen from any of the subsections. The white bottom half has four tiles—Junk Files, Privacy, Tasks and App Manager. This gives a basic idea about what this app does. Each tile is a module that opens in a fresh interface with a back button in the title bar, which takes you to the main screen. The UI is extremely fluid and we must say every module is designed keeping the ease of use in mind—using this app is an absolute no-brainer. Should you need help, there’s FAQ a few taps away, in the 3-dot menu that’s present in the top right corner of the main screen.
Features and performance
The Junk File module helps you salvage storage space eaten up by cached data, temporary files and residual files left over by apps no longer on your device. To make things easy, this section is divided into two sections—Cache and Residual Files. By default, the recommended items are checked. But we suggest you go through the list and uncheck the ones you feel could be important. For example, a folder structure created by an app. Optionally, you can long-tap on the items and add them to the ignore list. The total amount of space you’ll gain is indicated on the Clean button at the bottom.
The Privacy module lets you clean the search history of Google Play Store and Google Search and clear call logs and unwanted messages. You have the option to delete individual entries from your inbox and call logs. The Task module kills apps and services running in the background, thereby freeing up some RAM. It does work, but some of the critical services that need to run start again. A handy feature here is the option to create a “1 Tap Boost” shortcut in the home screen, which does the work of a task killer with a tap on the icon.
Task manager and settings with useful options
The App Manager is similar to Android’s built-in app manager present in Settings. It lets you uninstall apps and move apps from the phone memory to the SD card. However, the interface is graphical and much more intuitive. You can select multiple apps to move or delete, plus you have the option to delete apps that come pre-installed—a useful feature to de-bloat your device, provided you know what to remove. For this, your device has to be rooted and Superuser access has to be granted to Clean Master at the time of launching it. Note that removing certain pre-installed apps could cause your device to malfunction.
We like the inclusion of Cache Reminder and Task Reminder in the app settings (via 3-dot menu). Depending on the frequency you’ve set, the app reminds you to clear the cache. The Task Reminder signals when any app uses more than the specified amount of memory (over 80, 90 and 95 percent). There’s also an Auto Kill switch, which when enabled kills background tasks when you turn off the screen.
Verdict
Clean Master packs everything that you need to clear up disk space, gain free memory, protect your privacy and manage your apps. It does a thorough job and does make a perceptible difference when run from time to time, especially with slower devices with a single-core processor and less RAM.
For everything that this app offers for free, we rate it 8.5 out of 10–a must have for all Android users.
Click here to download Clean Master for Android
