[XDA-University] woodroward:
If you have an old underpowered Android that you can't root for your gaming phone, you may find your phone incapable of even a moderately acceptable performance on games where it meets or even exceeds the standards set by the developer or the play store.

I myself ended up like this when my phone broke. Unfortunately, not every phone has a robust interface for maximizing performance. The inability to root just exacerbates the problem. All that leaves is apps to maximize performance. Luckily they don't have to be modern or over the counter.

So there are 3 basic areas we need to target to get the most out of our phone:

1.CPU/RAM. This is a fairly obvious one but requires much more intensive monitoring to control on older phones. We need more stringent control over background apps and processes.

2.ROM empty storage. While task managers may be not recommended on more modern phones, a paging/swap file that isn't large enough yet takes up most, if not all, of your unused ROM storage means we need apps closed out of the backgrounds whenther they're using active processors or not

3.Graphics properties: The older phones have less comprehensive settings especially the more off the big name phone brands you go. We need apps to tweak the graphics in ways we can't to make sure they're using enough resources in the right spots to handle what we're asking our phone to do

After much testing, I have found a combination of 3 over the counter apps that for me released the largest amount of storage, RAM and CPU.

The first app on my list is all in one toolbox cleaner. It's a free app with some ads. I would say the majority of the add-ons aren't necessary as there are things that cover them better further down the list.

It's on the list for 2 reasons, firstly is how it can edit programs that boot on startup. This feature is split into 2 parts, user and system. Disabling everything in both tabs here releases lots of memory. The ability to stop system apps is hard to come by and then they'd likely just restart once you did, but if they never start...

The 2nd function this app has that is of note is the ability to work in conjunction with the option in developer mode to force apps on external to move your apps from your phone memory to SD card clearing up much needed space in your phone's memory. This is very important. With minimal ROM space keeping our apps elsewhere gives us the ability to not have to limit our ability to have the apps we want available.

Now the 2nd app on the list is avast cleanup, CCleaner is practically the same app. I know in modern phones task managers are deprecated, but in an older phone they are practically necessary for any high performance modern apps.

The 2 features worth noting are the deep cleaning and hibernate options. The deep cleaning removes the hidden caches of apps, and the hibernate option closes apps and keeps them from rebooting. Yet another small tweak in memory and storage space. Now these features are subscription only in current versions of these apps. However, you can go to an APK download site and download version 5.0 of avast cleanup and the features are not subscription specific in that version. It may be there are still later versions of CCleaner and avast cleanup that offer these features subscription free. I tested a myriad of avast versions before I started jumping back to bigger version groupings as a way to save so it may not be the latest version but it's the latest major version without subscription. And let's be honest here, any phone old enough to need this article is of an old enough model to be covered by this old app version.

It's worth mentioning at this point that

it's very important to also turn off automatic app updates and uninstall any updates to any system apps you don't use since their updates take up way too much space. Both of the above apps can help you with this.

Finally we have game booster 4x. The ultra boost mode is the ticket here. Have to watch an ad to activate it without purchase but it forces your game to meet the criteria you set up with the gfx tool config.

So there are the 3 apps that make for the best gaming on old android phones in my opinion.

A few notes:

I find the best order to use these is to:

disable all boot items,

move all apps to sd,

task manager and close all,

start game booster,

restart the phone,

start avast cleanup,

quick clean,

boost, hibernate everything but game booster and the game you want to play

Then task manager from avast cleanup to the game booster (since you can even hibernate your launcher and avast shut all the other apps left open down outside the game booster as you enter it (plus it's fun to close your launcher with your task manager)).

I wouldn't use the boost button in the game booster since it can unhibernate apps sometimes.

Set your graphics parameters with the gfx config tool, enable all the options, especially ultra boost. Add your game to the list and launch.

If you still run into problems there are ways to uninstall preloaded system bloat apps through cleaning software too.

So that's pretty much the extent of what I've found to maximize old outdated phones. If you have suggestions or alternatives go ahead and post them!

I will also add that these apps are ad promoted software with subscription or paid options. There may be more robust alternatives with more options combined into one app through paid optimization software. I can't speak for those.