Personally, I just accept that a wallet has to keep up with the chain, and that, on a phone, you just have to open your wallet frequently enough to actually have it kept up most of the way with the chain, and therefore, something that uses Monero often, like Stasher News, is really fantastic, because you're opening your wallet a lot more frequently than you otherwise would to send and receive small tips. The more things you use with Monero means you will have to open your wallet more frequently, which means that you will be closer to being up to date the next time you do open your wallet.

Edit: Also, at least if I'm understanding correctly, carrot after FCMP hardfork will also help with this somewhat, because you're still able to give a viewkey to the server, but that viewkey won't be able to see your exact transactions, but it will narrow down the scope of the transactions that the server has to send you. So, it's kind of a compromise between a full synchronization and giving your private viewkey over to an LWS server. At least, that's what I understand, but I could be wrong