Established software maker Nero AG has been around for over 20 years–and over those years Nero has made a large variety of unique software. Starting with media software for PCs in the mid-to-late 90s, and eventually moving to mobile platforms, Nero knows how to build smart and stable software.
Nero’s solution to Android users is Nero TuneItUp Boost & Clean. While the name doesn’t quite roll off the tongue with ease, it does do a good job of explaining what the application offers. This Android app for smartphones and tablets is designed to quickly and effectively free memory and boost battery life. But how well does it work?
The overall look of Nero TuneItUp is clean with basic colors overlaying white tiles. This makes it easy to understand what each tile is used for while navigating about the main screen. I found it to be so simple that almost any basic user should understand the layout of each section.
The main screen has four options to choose from upon booting the application. Here you can choose to ‘SPEED UP SYSTEM’, ‘CLEAN UP STORAGE’, ‘DELETE TRACES’, or ‘SPEED UP PC’. As you can see, one of these options doesn’t quite belong here. The last option (SPEED UP PC) is essentially an ad, or more appropriately, a link to Nero’s website that allows you to purchase Nero TuneItUp for your PC.
SPEED UP SYSTEM
Upon opening the first selection titled ‘SPEED UP SYSTEM’ you will see the current “processes” that are running on your device. At the top of the screen, Nero TuneItUp will indicate how “limited” your system currently is. What Nero is looking for here is how many applications (or processes) are currently running and how much resources are being used by these applications. At the bottom of the screen, you will see a button that will show ‘SPEED UP SYSTEM (CLOSE ALL PROCESSES)’ followed by the number of processes that will be closed.
Here’s where things get tricky. If you ask Google (the creators of the Android operating system) if you should consistently close processes, they will tell you are only hurting your device in the long run. Closing processes can actually slow down your system and drain your battery. Android, and iOS for that matter, both use algorithms to determine which applications and processes should lie dormant and which ones should remain in memory. If you are stopping processes that may be used in the future, you may just use more time and battery to reload them back into memory. This is counterintuitive and not recommended. So, what else does Nero TuneItUp offer?
CLEAN UP STORAGE
The next tile available on the main screen of TuneItUp is ‘CLEAN UP STORAGE’. Like the previous option, this section of TuneItUp will indicate how “healthy” your device is. Once you open the ‘CLEAN UP STORAGE’ submenu, you will see different options to clean up storage space on your device. Options can include ‘App Data’, ‘Downloads’, and ‘Large Files’, and each option will show approximately how much storage is being used in each category.
A lot of this data that is being used is cache data. If your phone or tablet is low on storage, you can delete cache data off of your device to give you more space for music, apps or videos, etc., but again, it is not recommended to delete cached data. Removing cache data may slow down applications in the future as it is intended to reduce internet fetching of basic information. Regardless, always use caution when deleting data off of your Android device, as recovering lost data can be a little tricky.
DELETE TRACES
So, the final feature of Nero TuneItUp is ‘DELETE TRACES’. Upon opening this menu you will be given a handful of options to clear out history, location and call data. This will not necessarily offer any speed or performance gains, but is more geared towards users that are paranoid about another person or agency accessing identifiable personal data. I can see where some might find these features handy, but I don’t believe most general users will find many benefits in clearing their call histories.
Nero TuneItUp is an interesting piece of software. No part of it can be highly recommended in use on a regular basis. However, where TuneItUp may come in handy is in a specific use. For example, if you were looking for a large file that you downloaded, Nero TuneItUp could possibly find it in your downloads folder faster than digging through your download history or file system. Or maybe you have a process that is causing stability issues on your device and you want to try to isolate it. The possibilities are there.
Overall, all things work as intended within TuneItUp. The app is fairly bland in design, which is fine but does nothing for the loading speed of each function. I was surprised at how slow some functions took to gather initial data. Once loaded, it was quick to switch between functions but left me unimpressed. Nero’s TuneItUp | Boost & Clean looks to be somewhat of a trojan application designed to push users to use the PC version of TuneItUp. Nero identifies TuneItUp as ad free, which is not entirely true. Save your time and storage space and skip this application, unless you really need it for a quick solution to a small problem.
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