I ran a dumpstate analysis on my Android phone - 3 system diagnostics to check for free

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How much do you know about your phone? While it's easy to uninstall suspicious apps, replace the battery, or take more surface-level precautions to increase performance, it never hurts to know exactly how "healthy" the phone is and what's preventing it from being in optimal condition.

I recently broke down several ways you can make your Android phone feel and perform faster beyond clearing its cache , but before you even get to that step, it may help to know the root causes of sluggish behavior.

Also: 5 ways I speed up my Android phone beyond clearing system cache - all for free

Most modern phone makers offer native tools and features, either within the settings or through a dedicated app, to help you diagnose and resolve any issues. But if you want to go a step deeper -- and see what IT professionals, repairmen, and other service experts see when fixing phones, consider running a dumpstate analysis.

A dumpstate is a log of the thousands of scripts and actions performed by your phone, from how many times it's been charged to the duration for which an app has been open, even if it's in the background. To the untrained eye, the log may look like the Matrix, with lines and lines of text that can be hard to interpret.

With the search command and a general sense of what you're looking for, you can find plenty of useful data points to help you make informed decisions to improve your phone. Let me share with you how to access your dumpstate log and three data points that I consistently rely on.

To access the dumpstate on an Android device, follow the steps below.

Once you've downloaded the dumpstate log, you can easily parse through the information by searching for key terms, like the ones below.

A piece of advice I often share is to consider replacing your phone's battery before upgrading or buying a new one. While recent developments in lithium and silicon materials have improved battery longevity, phone batteries still degrade over time. If you're on year three or four with your current handset, there's a good chance it's lost upwards of 20% of its original battery capacity due to charging.

Also: What 'mAh' means for your phone's battery, and why I focus on another metric instead

To get the exact charge cycle count and determine if it's time for a battery swap, search for dumpsys batterystats . You can calculate your phone's battery health percentage by dividing the charge counter value by the design capacity. I generally recommend replacing your phone's battery if the capacity is below 75% and the number of charge cycles is over 500.