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Keep Your Battery Healthy All of the wonderful things you can do on a smartphone take a toll on battery life, and a nearly drained battery significantly slows down phone performance. The Phonesuit MiLi Power Pack for the iPhone (find.pcworld.com/64046) is slim enough to double as a protective case for your phone, and it provides an additional 6.5 hours of talk time.

Every day, smartphone users enjoy downloading, browsing, and multitasking in various apps. But all ofthat activity can drag down phone performance. Smartphone slowness is mainly related to limited memory and a drained battery, although other factors are involved. With some routine maintenance and the help of some apps and accessories, you'll have your phone running as fast as it did on the day you bought it.

Clear the Call Log and Texts

When was the last time you deleted your call log? It doesn't eat up a ton of memory, but it does consume space. Old text messages, too, take space, so unless you're keeping them for sentimental reasons, delete as many as possible. Clear your call log and older texts about every ten days; set a calendar reminder if you're forgetful.

Clean Your Apps and Photos

If you're like most smartphone users, you've downloaded apps and games, and then eventually ignored most of them. iPhone owners are especially prone to this issue. You don't want the phone's nonexpandable memory hogged by lame apps. Look through your downloads occasionally, and delete any that you don't use. You could see an immediate speed boost.

Keep Your Battery Healthy

All of the wonderful things you can do on a smartphone take a toll on battery life, and a nearly drained battery significantly slows down phone performance. Consider investing in a battery pack to keep your phone running faster and longer. The Phonesuit MiLi Power Pack for the iPhone (find.pcworld.com/64046) is slim enough to double as a protective case for your phone, and it provides an additional 6.5 hours of talk time. Also think about downloading a battery utility app. APNdroid (available for free at the Android Marketplace) selectively turns off your handset's draining data connection while still allowing you to receive calls.

Download Opera Mini 4.2

Tired of your smartphone's clunky Web browser? If you have an Android, BlackBerry (recent), Symbian, or Windows Mobile handset, give the Opera Mini browser a try. Available in most app stores for free, Opera Mini renders pages on a server and then compresses them by 90 percent. It uses relatively little of your phone's resources, resulting in a quicker Web surfing experience. It also helps you save some time: When you first open a page, Opera Mini shows you an overview of the content and suggests where you should start reading. And if you're entering an address, Opera Mini will recognize it and suggest completions based on your history and Bookmarks. Best of all, you can also search for text within a page to find exactly what you want, faster.

Use Wi-Fi Whenever Possible

A no-brainer, but a sometimes forgotten tip: IfWi-Fi is available and your phone supports it, use it. Web browsing will be faster over Wi-Fi than over a 3G network. You can find some great apps for judging Wi-Fi signal strength. For the iPhone, we like WiFiFoFum (find.pcworld.com/64D48), which scans an area for 802.11 wireless networks and displays their location in relation to you. A slightly different app, Free WiFi Café Spots (find.pcwortd.com/64047), does exactly what its name implies and is useful if you're searching for Wi-Fi on the go. This app is available for the iPhone and for the BlackBerry operating system, but you can find similar apps for other phone platforms.

Delete Your Web Browser's Cookiesand Cache

If you use your mobile browser frequently, this housecleaning can help keep your phone running smoothly. The browser stores the content of pages so that they open faster the next time you visit, but these temporary files take up memory. Clear your cache every 5 to 7 hours that you spend surfing the Web - or perhaps once a week.

Use the Newest Firmware

Firmware updates not only add new features to your OS, but they also fix bugs and other issues that might be slowing down your phone. Most firmware updates come over the air from your carrier or your phone's manufacturer. Some handsets, such as the iPhone, require you to connect the phone to your PC to get the update.