[Droid RAZR M General] dreamersipaq:
HI!

Hi!

Some may disagree with the advice I'm about to give you, but oh well. I've been with android from the OG days, and I'm new to the M, but been a long time XDA'er.

A lot of the issues that stem from slowness on Android over time comes from (until 4.3, 4.4) Android not having an OS "maintenance" system built in. You may have heard of TRIM which was introduced in 4.3 (i believe) which tries to alleviate the issue.

There are really (majorly) 2-3 issues which you're probably seeing.

1) Your SD card if you have one installed. The larger, and the more occupied, the more your phone works to cache/read/etc.. Copy stuff off of your SD card, format it, and put back only what you need.

-> I know you said you're not comfortable with ROM's, etc... so read up on it, and do some research for the next options. RSD is dangerous!, but pretty simple. Once you start it, don't touch your phone, laptop/pc, cables, etc... lock you pets out of the room, do it on a stable surface, make sure all involved batteries are fully charged, don't use crappy cables... blah blah blah.... THE DATA TRANSFER / WRITE MUST NOT BE INTERRUPTED.

2) Regarding the OS itself.... I PERSONALLY don't think that a factory wipe helps the slowness which occurs in Android over time (some will disagree). If I were to try to get your phone faster, I would RSD flash the same version of what you have right now back onto your phone... It will re-write everything in the OS onto your phone from a fresh state instead of just wiping personal information parts of it.

3) Root your phone, keep the stock ROM. As of now, it's a pretty simple process. Once rooted, install the Xposed framework. Install Greenify and App Quarantine. Buy the Greenify paid version and install the Greenify Xposed module. This allows you to Greenify *SYSTEM* apps. From there, Quarantine whatever you don't ever use, Greenify everything else that you don't care about running in the background (obviously, don't greenify something like an alarm). As a perk, you can download other Xposed modules and play with other things that custom roms give you.

The above will give you a stock rom, with some "custom rom" perks, with everything you don't need not running, and everything else being hibernated (like on iphone) when not in use (again, greenify stuff like wallet, chrome, etc... don't greenify music apps, alarms, etc.. you get the idea). As a side note, if you do all this, reboot after xposed changes, don't "soft reboot". that causes slowness too.

EDIT: Oh, other option is wait for 4.4 Kit Kat to come to our phones from VZW... it's supposed to, but no ETA

Anyone else feel free to chime in...

EDIT2: As a side note, unless you're on the LATEST build, as long as you're on .78 or earlier you can use MATT's utility to root, install VooDoo RootKeeper and even keep root AND update to the latest (as long as the root process doesn't replace the hboot)... By doing this and the above steps, you'll be able to undo everything and THEORETICALLY be able to take the 4.4 when it comes by undoing everything. You shouldn't need to RSD again since you're just freezing/hibernating... not romming or REMOVING bloat....