Recently, I had to set up a phone for my aging parent, and some of the pre-installed apps were a tad too bloated for their use, especially on their older Android phone. I mainly needed to find a lightweight browser, a basic keyboard that suited their hunt-and-peck typing style, and, of course, a messaging app that was a bit more customizable.
Android phones come with a lot of Google apps pre-installed that can slow your phone down and feel unnecessarily bloated, while others, like Google Maps, are incredibly well-made and a cut above their competitors. After a bit of trial and error, I settled on three apps that made a noticeable difference in performance when used exclusively for browsing and texting.
Firefox Focus
A stripped-down browser built for speed and privacy
The first thing I replaced was Chrome. Firefox Focus is Mozilla’s lightweight, privacy-first browser for Android, and it’s a very different experience from the regular Firefox app. Where standard Firefox gives you tabs, extensions, and a full browsing toolkit, Focus strips all of that away. You get one screen, one page at a time, and a trash can icon that wipes everything in a single tap.
I combined Safari with Firefox Focus, and it’s the perfect browser
Safari with a touch of Firefox is what you need
That simplicity is the sole reason why it exists. Focus enables Enhanced Tracking Protection by default, blocking ad trackers, analytics trackers, and social media trackers without any setup. You can go further and block web fonts and JavaScript entirely if you want even less data usage. On an older phone with limited RAM, this makes a real difference. Pages load noticeably faster because the browser isn’t pulling in tracking scripts and heavy ad frameworks alongside the content you actually want.
The trade-off is that Focus doesn’t block YouTube ads or other embedded in-page ads the way a full browser with an extension like uBlock Origin would. It also doesn’t have tab support, bookmarks, or an extension system. But for someone who just needs to look something up, read an article, or check a website without Chrome eating into their phone’s resources, Focus does the job and does it fast.
- OS
-
iOS and Android
- Price model
-
Free
Firefox Focus gives you advanced ads and tracker blocking feature, which you can also integrate with iPhone’s default Safari browser.
Simple Keyboard
A no-frills keyboard for basic typing
Personally, I prefer SwiftKey over Gboard, which comes pre-installed on many Android devices. Both are excellent keyboards, but they’re also feature-heavy. Autocorrect, GIF search, AI suggestions, clipboard managers, voice typing — it all adds up. For my parent who types slowly with one finger at a time, most of these features just get in the way.
If you’re privacy-conscious and want a keyboard that doesn’t phone home, FUTO Keyboard offers a great balance of features and usability. Its offline voice typing engine is fast, accurate, and doesn’t send your audio to any server. But FUTO still carries a fair amount of weight for someone who just needs the basics.
Simple Keyboard takes a different approach. It’s an open-source keyboard with no internet permission, no tracking, no ads, and no autocorrect. The entire app is tiny, uses almost no RAM, and launches instantly. You get a clean layout with adjustable height, long-press symbols, an optional number row, and a space bar that doubles as a cursor control when you swipe across it. That last feature is surprisingly useful for fixing typos without precisely tapping between characters.
The obvious downside is everything it doesn’t have. No emojis, no GIFs, no swipe typing, no clipboard history. If you need any of those, you’ll have to switch to another keyboard temporarily. But for a phone that’s mainly used for texting and basic searches, Simple Keyboard keeps things fast and distraction-free.
- OS
-
Android
- Price model
-
Free
Simple Keyboard is a lightweight Android keyboard app focused on minimalism, privacy, and speed. It offers essential typing features without ads, unnecessary permissions, or advanced customization, ensuring a straightforward experience.
Samsung Messages
More customization than Google Messages offers
When it comes to messaging apps, it’s hard to recommend anything over Google Messages. It’s the default RCS client on most Android phones, and RCS support is what makes texting between Android users feel modern — read receipts, typing indicators, high-quality media, and end-to-end encryption. Replacing it means giving up features that most people expect from a messaging app in 2026.
That said, Google Messages still lacks the customization that Samsung Messages has offered for years. Samsung lets you set individual backgrounds, bubble opacity, and text contrast for each conversation separately. Google Messages only gives you a global light or dark theme. If you’re someone who likes their messaging app to feel personal, Samsung’s per-chat customization is a clear win.
Samsung Messages also includes a trash bin that holds deleted conversations for 30 days. Delete a chat by accident in Google Messages, and it’s gone immediately with no way to recover it. Samsung’s approach gives you a safety net. The search function is better, too, with Samsung showing the full message in results so you can read the complete context without opening and scrolling through multiple conversations.
The catch is that Samsung Messages doesn’t support RCS on most devices unless you’re on a Samsung phone. If RCS matters to you, and it probably should, this app works best on a Galaxy device where Samsung’s RCS implementation is baked in. On other phones, you’d be limited to SMS and MMS, which is a significant step backward.
Lighter apps, faster phone
These apps may not be perfect for everyone, as they tend to prefer usability and performance over features, but for the specific problem I was solving, which is making an older Android phone usable for someone who browses occasionally, types slowly, and mostly texts, these three apps did more than enough. The phone feels snappier, the interface is less cluttered, and there’s less happening in the background. Sometimes the best upgrade isn’t a new phone; it’s getting rid of the apps that were slowing the old one down.
