There are many Android cleaner apps to remove junk files on phones and boost phone speed, but which one should you choose? Do they work? Here I try three popular ones on my Android phone.

Why are there so many Android speed up apps and clean-up apps? Is it really that bad at managing apps, storage and memory? Why does iOS not need them?

One reason why these apps are so common for Android is because Google’s operating system is more open and accessible to app programmers. Apps are able to access features, functions and parts of the system that Apple prohibits. In other words, Android makes it possible to create these apps.

There are aren't so many iOS apps simply because Apple doesn’t allow apps to control the system, which is why it is hard to find similar tools in the iOS App Store. The Android apps here would not be allowed on iOS. There are some iOS cleaner apps, but they don't go anywhere near as far as Android apps.

There is also a wider range of Android phones and budget models may have limited memory, storage and processing power. Apple on the other hand, only produces top of the range high specification devices. This means that Android users need these apps more than Apple users.

Do speed up apps work?

It is often debated whether clean-up tools boost the speed and performance of a phone. You can't run one of these tools and suddenly the device is 100% faster. However, there are benefits to cleaning and tuning for some people.

If you have a new top end phone with 6 or even 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB or more of storage, and a super-fast CPU, you don't need these apps. Move along, there is nothing to see here.

However, there are many people with budget phones or old phones that were great when new, but now struggle to run. An old or budget phone could have as little as 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage. Both are probably nearly full and this causes performance to suffer. It may run out of space to take new photos or videos, or download or update apps. Cleaning can free up more than a gigabyte of storage space, mostly from caches, and that can keep your phone running smoothly. Caches soon fill, so it is only a temporary solution, but it is better than nothing.

It should not be necessary to close apps in the background when you switch from one to another, and that is true on a top end phone, but budget phones and older devices with limited memory are a different matter. Shutting down unnecessary apps and services can help. A lot automatically restart when shut down, but closing them does free up a little extra memory, which could be useful before starting a big app like a game.

The bottom line is that Android speed up and clean up apps do work for some people.

GO Speed (Clean Boost Free)

Price: Free | By: Best Free Video Editor... | Size: 10MB | Android: 4.1 and up

GO Speed was originally called Z Speed+ years ago when I first looked at it. It has 10 million installs and a 4.7 rating from 795k users. Those are pretty good statistics.

The home screen contains useful information, although you may have to wait a few seconds for it to update. At the top is RAM. The total memory, free memory and the percentage used is shown. The bottom part of the screen has the storage and again there is the percentage used, and the used and free storage figures in gigabytes. Below that, among the buttons, is Junk Files and it shows the total amount of storage space that can be cleared.

The two large RAM and storage percentages are buttons and tapping them goes to the details page. The RAM screen shows see the apps and services (many hidden) that are running and the amount of memory they are using. The list is ordered by size so you can easily see those using the most memory. Apps can be ticked/unticked and the boost button tapped to clear the memory.

There is a CPU temperature display and the idea is that apps running in the background make the processor work hard and the option to freeze them lets the phone cool down.

Tapping the storage percentage button on the home screen goes to the details. A graphic bar at the top shows the storage usage and you can see where the storage is being used. It lists photos storage, music, videos, apps and even some individual apps like WhatsApp.

The Junk Files button on the home screen lists apps along with their storage usage, such as caches. Apps can be ticked/unticked and there are some you might want to keep, such as offline maps in the Google Maps app. An Ignore List enables apps to be skipped and a clean button enables all selected apps' caches to be erased to free up the space.

The junk files scan showed files left behind from apps that had been uninstalled a long time ago, big files (not necessarily junk, probably videos you want to keep), ad junk, and more.

This is a nice clean-up and memory boost app. It has plenty of options for configuring notifications, it can freeze apps to cool down a hot phone, and it can perform a Smart Boost when you switch off the screen. The app shows some ads, but I can live with them. Overall, it is a good app and one worth adding to your old or budget Android phone.

Fast Booster: Max Booster Cleaner, CPU Cooler, Cool

Price: Free | By: SmartApps Production | Size: 5MB | Android: 4.0 and up

Fast Booster will not cost you anything, but even for free, I was not that happy with it and it could be better. Not everyone agrees with me and it has a score of 4.4 and over 1m installs in the Google Play Store.

The home screen shows a spinning wheel and in the center it says CLEAN, Tab to Clean. I think it means Tap. It says that 730 MB of junk was found, but it does not tell you what it found and I am not about to erase anything without knowing what it will delete off my phone. What it thinks is junk and what I think is junk could be very different. It is too much of a gamble to clean.

It has a Wifi Booster and you just have to tap the button to boost your network connection. It does not say what it does and so I have no idea whether it is doing something or nothing. There was no obvious difference afterwards.

The Power Saver is ok and it offers two settings, Power Saver and Maximum Power Saver. An Advance Boost button shows apps and services running in the background and you can select and stop them. This is useful

The CPU cooler shows the temperature inside the phone and there is a list of apps and services that can be selected and stopped. The idea is that the CPU will run cooler with less work to do. Another benefit is that some memory will be cleared. In fact, the Smart Max Booster presents a very similar list of apps to close to free up memory.

After performing an action, a full screen advert appears, which is common for free apps. That didn't bother me, but the lack of information on the junk it wanted to clear and the Wifi booster irritated me.

Speed Booster - Phone Boost & Junk, Cache Cleaner

Price: Free | By: WaiWao Studio | Size: 8MB | Android: 4.1 and up

Speed Booster is a free ad-supported app that aims to speed up Android phones by cleaning up, an idea that is very popular in the Google Play Store.

The home screen shows the RAM and the storage as percentages used and also the used and total figures in gigabytes. A speedometer style image shows the RAM usage too. Both RAM and storage figures can be tapped and the first shows the apps and services running in the background. The list isn't as long as some other apps show, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing and it is probably being conservative and avoiding anything you might need.

Tapping the storage percentage or the Junk Files tile below, scans for files that can be removed. They are organized into categories like cache junk, obsolete APKs, ad cache and residual files. Each category can be expanded so you can see a list of what will be removed. Checkboxes enable you to select or deselect items.

The battery saver and CPU cooler are similar and they show a list of apps and services running in the background. They can be selected and stopped or put into hibernation. This frees up memory and with less work to do, the CPU runs cooler.

Speed Booster has a duplicate photo finder, which not all apps of this type have. It can take some time to analyze all your photos and it depends on the speed of the phone and the number of images to process. It shows thumbnails of duplicates and with one automatically selected for deletion. You can check them and then remove them and reclaim the space.

A notification cleaner is an alternative way to enable or disable notifications from apps. A list of apps with off/on switches is provided so you can filter out unnecessary notifications.

Swipe up the home screen and there is a network monitor that shows uploads and downloads, device information like model, screen size, RAM, storage and so on. There is CPU information, battery details like health, current and total capacity, GPU details and so on.

Speed Booster is a useful app to have on your phone. It has 1m+ installs and a 4.6 rating on the Google Play Store. It didn't find as much to clean up as GO Speed, but it is still a good app if you need an Android speed up app or cleaner.

The best of the bunch

So which of these three is the best? In third place is Fast Booster, simply because it lacks information about what it is doing. Second place goes to Go Speed, which looks great, but will still find things to clean 10 seconds after cleaning. The best one and the one I will keep on my phone is Speed Booster, which seems to do the job best.