Android phones contain many features and tools that give them a
distinctive character and contribute to making the user experience better.
These features and tools seem like an iceberg only its tip is visible to some
users who are accustomed to dealing with a limited set of tools and settings on
their phones and overlook that the iceberg has a hidden part at the bottom that
extends to the bottom of the ocean. Android hides within it a set of wonderful
and useful tools and settings, such as those that fall under a hidden menu
called "Developer Options", which allows the user to adjust a number
of additional settings, through which, for example, he can change the
appearance of his phone or use a fake geographical location, and other
features.
In the following lines, we review the most important features available
on Android phones using the set of developer options, which make it an
excellent option for users who want to renew or take advantage of Android
options as much as possible and enjoy more tools on their phones.
What is the developer options menu and how to show it?
As the name suggests, it is a set of tools included in the Android
system to serve the goals of developers and programmers in particular to help
them code applications, correct the problems of various applications, and
address the system's response to them to make them runnable on Android, or make
some changes that may affect the performance of the phone, so they are not
intended For ordinary users, it is not recommended to use one of these options
without knowing the exact action it does and without a specific goal, as this
may affect the performance of the phone, and it may add to your phone a list of
new, useless options.
In any case, you may have to activate the developer options for several
reasons that interest you as a normal user of an Android phone, such as
deleting system applications, which require the activation of USB debugger
mode, in addition to the reasons mentioned in the following lines. So if you
want to enable developer options, just go to “Settings” and then head to the
“About phone” section. From there, go to Software information and tap 5 times
on the Build number until you see the [Developer mode is enabled] message. You
can then go back to the settings menu to notice that a new section called
“Developer options” has appeared, so enter it and make sure that it is
activated by activating the button located in the upper left.
Advantages of using developer options
The main purpose of
adding developer options to the settings of Android phones was to correct
application errors and process system responses to them, and then many
subsequent modifications were made to this feature in order to allow the
allocation of additional settings through which networks, applications, input, accelerated
display of devices can be controlled, media, monitoring, etc. Here are some of
the features and actions available through the developer options menu:
Install modified ROMs and activate root privileges
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The ability to
activate root privileges or install modified ROMs is one of the main advantages
of activating the developer options menu on Android. If you feel bored with the
phone interface, you can install a modified ROM such as LineageOS, which adds a
new look to the phone as well as new great features. You can search for any
other modified ROM, but in general, the steps to install a modified ROM require
a set of steps, most of which are done through the developer options. It is
true that it is not easy, but if you search on the Internet, you will find many
topics that guide you on how to install a modified ROM and the options to be
activated from the developer options menu.
On the other hand,
you can get root privileges, which serve as a key to access all system settings
that are hidden by default, allowing the installation of more advanced
applications, customizing the graphical interface in a professional way, and
even modifying the system data itself. But, again, the matter is not done
through simple, direct options that can be selected from the developer options
menu, but rather requires more complex procedures and you may need to connect
the phone to a computer to complete the process, but in general, this requires
activating the developer options in order to activate the option to unlock the
original factory of the device OEM or "OEM unlocking" to allow the
required orders to be executed.
Also, keep in mind
that rooting the phone or installing a modified ROM is a risky process and will
significantly affect the performance of the phone (sometimes) and also void the
warranty, so please be careful before taking this step
Acceleration of animation rendering
The developer
options menu also allows the ability to control the speed of displaying
animations on the device by changing the specified values on three scales: the
"Window animation scale" and controls the speed of opening and
closing applications. The transition animation scale also controls the speed of
switching between different applications. Then there's the Animator duration scale,
which controls the display of small animations within apps such as buttons and
menu graphics.
Acceleration of the
animation speeds up the performance of the device, which contributes to
speeding up the daily tasks that can be accomplished using the phone, but if
the animation speed is set at the lowest level, this will lead to a complete
stop running, which causes errors in the operation of some applications. This
problem can be remedied by resetting the animation speed to 0.5x.
Improve phone performance with advanced games
The Developer
Options menu also provides a set of additional tools that are specially
included for advanced graphics processing, allowing you to control the speed of
game animations to give them more dynamic movement. This set of tools can be activated
through the “4x MSAA chances” option in the developer options menu. This set of
tools contributes to speeding up advanced games on Android and gives the user a
smoother visual experience in which advanced games and applications appear
better. However, they usually require that the phone or tablet used for gaming
has a suitable GPU, otherwise, game acceleration may cause performance issues
and may even cause it to shut down completely.
The disadvantages
of accelerating games also lead to faster draining of the phone's battery, and
the phone's battery consumption rates may vary in this case from one device to
another.
Fake location
Mobile applications
use GPS to access your current location, and some users may sometimes want to
hide their actual location information and replace it with information for
geographical locations that they are not actually in so that it appears to
applications instead. Fortunately, through developer options, the phone's
geographical location data can be changed and controlled. This will require you
to first install an application dedicated to spoofing a GPS location, and there
are many such applications available for installation on phones for free, such
as "GPS Emulator", "Fake GPS location", and others.
Check the application's RAM consumption
The main purpose of
the developer options menu is to serve the goals of developers as we mentioned
before, so the developer options menu includes many tools and features that can
help the developer in detecting and correcting errors, and among the most
important of these features is the ability to display the consumption of RAM by
all installed applications Currently, there is an option called “Memory Usage”
that shows an overview of how apps are consuming RAM, but you can tap “Memory
used by apps” to view detailed information.
This feature in the
phone plays a role similar to what the “Task Manager” does in Windows devices,
and thus helps the user to know which applications consume the largest amount
of the device’s memory and then cause slow performance, especially in the case
of low-spec types of Android phones. The developer options menu allows the user
to view the RAM consumption of all applications during the last 3 hours, 6
hours, 12 hours, or 24 hours.
Force move applications to external memory
If your phone
supports inserting an external storage “SD Card”, you may notice that there is
an option “Move to external memory” in the settings of some applications, which
allows application data to be transferred to the memory card to reduce the
burden on the internal memory. However, if you want to forcefully make this
option available in all apps, you can do so by activating the Force allow apps
on the external option under the developer options menu.
Abstract | The
Android phone settings menu includes a hidden set of tools and features known
as the “Developer Options” menu, which is a group of tools, customizations, and
additional settings that are included specifically to serve the goals of
developers, not other than ordinary users, and help them discover and correct
faults and process the system response to various applications.
The developer
options menu provides a useful set of actions that allow the user with great
features such as spoofing GPS, rooting, the ability to accelerate graphics
performance and speed up games on the device, and the ability to check
applications for RAM consumption to find out those that affect its performance.
In any case, you should be careful in using the developer options group, and
not use one of these options without knowing the exact function of this option,
given that the developer options provide a set of actions that may make changes
and affect the performance of the phone.