There are multiple reasons why your game might be lagging and we’re going to look at them all step-by-step and aim to reduce lag in your gaming sessions. While we don’t claim to completely remove lag from all of your games, it will at least arm you with the knowledge of why it might be happening and how you can reduce lag in Android games yourself.
What is Considered as Lag?
I have personally seen people label different things as lag and they are true to some extent. But the basic premise is that if a game is stuttering or being unresponsive, this is considered lag. However, in the gaming world lag means you’re not getting necessary information in online games to maintain a smooth connection to the server. Sure, frame rate drops, optimization, and general hardware slowdowns are also the reason why your game might feel slower or not smooth. Whatever your definition of lag might be, in the end, we all want a smoother gaming experience on our Android devices. Let’s start with the best ways to reduce lag in Android games.
7 Ways to Remove Lag
1. Drop The Resolution
You’re playing a graphically impressive game for Android, it is running fairly well but suddenly you see a weird stuttering. You cannot pinpoint why it is happening but you see a general choppiness on the screen. This is probably because of the frame rate fluctuating wildly, and frame pacing being off. Dropping the resolution of your device. Most of the latest devices come with 1440p or 4K resolutions. The higher the resolution, the more resources your device will require to run the latest games. Dropping the resolution of your device will ensure that your smartphone doesn’t have to push as many pixels and will result in smoother frame rate. I even recommend dropping the resolution to 720p, if your device is really struggling to run the latest games. This is one of the easiest ways to ensure you’ll get a smooth experience.
2. Go Offline
If there is an option of playing the game offline, I highly recommend that you turn off Wi-Fi and mobile data while playing the game. Many background apps are constantly using Internet and consuming system resources. Apps like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Twitter are consistently accessing Internet to update notifications and whatnot. If there is an option to play the game off-line, you should definitely choose that route and it won’t lag. If you want to go to the extreme end, turn on the airplane mode to further optimize your experience.
3. Use an Anti-Lag App
You can use an anti-lag app before starting up your game. The best anti-lag apps for Android basically shut down unnecessary processes, clear up the memory, and a lot more resources to the running game. This means your smartphone will throw whatever it has towards running the game the best it can. Game Booster apps are also really great at allocating system resources where they are needed the most. Check out our best anti-lag apps for Android to download one of the best game boosters and give your gameplay a boost.
4. Use a Task-Killer App
There are numerous task running in the background and some of them are highly resource hungry. If you’re still facing lag during gameplay, it might be due to all the apps that are eating up all your resources. To identify the issue, you may need a task killer app for Android that will not only help you find the issue but also kill it with ease. This way you’ll keep the resources and allow the game to breathe little bit freely.
5. Update the Game
Modern games are very sophisticated and keeping them optimized and bug free for a large number of different devices is hard work. Generally, developers release patches that fix the optimization issues and remove bugs that may result in lag. Updating the game is the best way to ensure you have the latest build from the developer and you won’t face any optimization issues. Sure, not all games are going to run well on your specific device, so there is not much you can do about optimization but updating the game may at least resolve some issues.
6. Turn off Power Saving Mode
Power saving modes in most smartphones limit the CPU work and generally reduce processing power to provide a longer-lasting battery. However, this may become a hurdle when it comes to playing video games that require a lot of processing power. Turning off the power saving mode will ensure your device is running at optimal frequencies and allocating all the resources to its gaming rather than aiming to save battery life. We also recommend that you play heavy hitting titles when you at least have 60% of the battery left, most smartphones automatically switch to power saving mode below 15%.
7. Upgrade Hardware
If you’re running the latest multiplayer shooting game on your old hardware, there is a chance that the hardware is not going to keep up with it. For example, I’ve seen PUBG drop frames on my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and it’s not even that old. So perhaps it is time to look for an upgrade, especially if you’re going to play graphically expensive games regularly. Modern games are getting a lot resource hungry these days and they are graphical powerhouses. A device that is even 3 years old will struggle to run games at full resolution and with all the bells and whistles these days. While it is great that the Android gaming industry is moving forward with amazing visuals, it is also a little cumbersome to upgrade every 2 years. Thankfully, there are other games that don’t require a lot of GPU power to run, so you have a lot of options when it comes to Android gaming.
Smooth Sailing
Android gaming is booming these days with heavy hitting titles like PUBG and Fortnite (coming soon) to the platform. We can only imagine what other huge developers are thinking about porting on Android, we can’t wait to see where Android gaming goes in the next couple of years. Lag has always been a big issue in gaming, whether you’re playing on a $2000 PC or the $500 console; so it makes sense that there are some lag problems on our beloved platform as well. But this doesn’t mean that we have to face them all the time, these methods on how you can reduce lag on Android games will surely help you maintain a stable frame rate and get the most out of your Android gaming experience. If you have any more suggestions that would reduce lag in Android games or recommendations, kindly share them with all of us, so we can all game in peace.
