69 replies to this topic 2 votes

[Belazor]

My story is; I had an Xperia arc (not the arc s) and on both GB and ICS I could use it for about a month or three before it would gradually degrade into becoming utterly useless due to the massive amounts of lag. It got so bad that it was impossible to answer a call because the slider to answer was unresponsive. I wish I was kidding.
A similar situation occurred with my first Xperia, the Xperia X10i.

I ended up getting a 2nd hand iPhone off eBay and have been using it for about 6 months now with no lag issues of any description.

I don't remember exactly what apps I was using, but I don't believe that it should be my responsibility to go through extra steps to close an app when the iOS memory management (or whatever the balls is controlling that) seems to be able to handle me opening a bunch of apps without bogging down the phone.


I saw the new Xperia Z and it is pretty damn sexy, but I'm extremely gun-shy about going back to Android due to my above experiences. I'm tired of my phone looking like a featurephone in terms of the UI, the poor performance of Chrome Mobile and the inability to set Chrome Mobile as default browser, but I can live with that if it means I have a working phone when I need it to be a phone.


I'd like to hear from people whether JB has improved UI responsiveness even during heavy use, whether low signal areas still drain 30% battery in the same amount of minutes, and whether the general battery life has improved (I realise this is very subjective based on usage).

Thanks in advance

[tsupersonic]

I've never had this experience since I've started using Android, which was back in the 2.1 days. Now with Android 4.1, Google introduced many enhancements including Project Butter, which makes the UI run buttery smooth. UI responsiveness is great during heavy usage, I don't close out of any of my recently used apps (Android has good memory management, despite what people think). I'm not in low battery areas, but it doesn't drain very fast - this is something not specific to Android. If this is the case for you, I'd consider moving to a different provider. General battery life for me has improved - but that's because the Droid Incredible was known for its poor battery life.

[spacer]

I had an EVO for 3 years that never slowed to a crawl, even running stock Sense. I rooted it and put Cyanogenmod on it as well without issue. Now I have a Nexus 4, and it has been great.

I think the issues you have had are probably due to Sony's proprietary rom, or faulty hardware.

[Orange Battery]

Ive been using Android for a few years now. I noticed on my HTC Desire that sometimes it would slow down however my HTC One X does not have that problem at all. I think the latest Android devices have got past that now.

[yowanvista]

Those phones you use had less than 400MB of usable RAM, that is obviously not enough for the Android system itself considering that the average user would also have installed Apps which take up additional resources, causing the Android memory manager to constantly clear up background processes making the device slower with time. Modern devices with Jelly Bean don't suffer from such problem. As far you an Android smartphone has 1GB of RAM or more it should perform smoothly.

[Detection]

TF101 - Started on Honeycomb, always running out of RAM and getting laggy

ICS - Endless rebooting problems, still ran out of RAM and became laggy

Finally dropped the stock ROMs from ASUS and flashed JellyBean from XDA, runs perfectly, very fast, never lags out even after playing heavy games and RAM is generally always fine

[Belazor]

tsupersonic, on 08 January 2013 - 18:21, said:

I've never had this experience since I've started using Android, which was back in the 2.1 days. Now with Android 4.1, Google introduced many enhancements including Project Butter, which makes the UI run buttery smooth. UI responsiveness is great during heavy usage, I don't close out of any of my recently used apps (Android has good memory management, despite what people think). I'm not in low battery areas, but it doesn't drain very fast - this is something not specific to Android. If this is the case for you, I'd consider moving to a different provider. General battery life for me has improved - but that's because the Droid Incredible was known for its poor battery life.

The low signal area was inside a Tesco Extra (huge Walmart like supermart for you Americans out there) and my iPhone doesn't appear to experience low signal or excessive battery drain there - perhaps I should have mentioned signal strength instead xP

spacer, on 08 January 2013 - 18:23, said:

I had an EVO for 3 years that never slowed to a crawl, even running stock Sense. I rooted it and put Cyanogenmod on it as well without issue. Now I have a Nexus 4, and it has been great.

I think the issues you have had are probably due to Sony's proprietary rom, or faulty hardware.

Could very well be, at the time I assumed it was normal. I hope it's not due to the ROM, I think Sony's Xperia line is the best looking of them all, and the fact that they have always been behind the curve on hardware and software has been a deciding factor in jumping ship to iOS.

Orange Battery, on 08 January 2013 - 18:23, said:

Ive been using Android for a few years now. I noticed on my HTC Desire that sometimes it would slow down however my HTC One X does not have that problem at all. I think the latest Android devices have got past that now.

I hope so, 2 years is the contract term here and it would suck to buy one only to find these issues still happened for me xD

yowanvista, on 08 January 2013 - 18:24, said:

Those phones you use had less than 400MB of usable RAM, that is obviously not enough for the Android system itself considering that the average user would also have installed Apps which take up additional resources, causing the Android memory manager to constantly clear up background processes making the device slower with time. Modern devices with Jelly Bean don't suffer from such problem. As far you an Android smartphone has 1GB of RAM or more it should perform smoothly.

That's something I hadn't considered... The iPhone 4 also has 512 MB RAM however, is the memory footprint of iOS 6 that much less than the footprint of ICS with Sony's custom stuff in it?
The Xperia Z will have 2GB so hopefully that should be enough for anyone

Thanks all for your answers, I really appreciate it

[javagreen]

Guess what, I'm still using an Xperia X10i with CM10 on it

It's not fast, nope, but it sure doesn't lag like your Arc does. I'm guessing something wrong with it?

[firey]

I have never had that problem with my phone (Atrix) came with 2.2, and now running JB. Even without hardware acceleration (due to driver issues in the kernel), It is extremely smooth.

[nik louch]

Been using Android for 3 handsets now. Galaxy, Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note 2. Also looked after friends phones. Galaxy S3. Xperia Arc. HTC Desire. Orange SanFran. Never seen the issue discussed here.

[z0phi3l]

The only phone I had a bit of issues with sometimes was my first Android phone a MyTouch 3g, everything else since has run great, Nexus one, Galaxy S Vibrant, Galaxy S3

[Jason Stillion]

Only issues I've had is semi-known issue with the original launch Nexus 7 - 8gb model.

As soon as the storage free space goes below 1gb, it starts having issues (lag, unresponsiveness at times).
This is even after updating all the way to 4.2.1

[ZeroHour]

My Nexus 7 runs like a pig now tbh, I am considering a full reset in the hopes that it becomes useful again but right now I have to wait an age to get Chrome to load up.

@Jason thanks for the pointer about <1GB of space, will try clearing mine out and rebooting now.

[tsupersonic]

Jason Stillion, on 08 January 2013 - 18:52, said:

Only issues I've had is semi-known issue with the original launch Nexus 7 - 8gb model.

As soon as the storage free space goes below 1gb, it starts having issues (lag, unresponsiveness at times).
This is even after updating all the way to 4.2.1

Try disabling the Currents app. That has helped many after the 4.2.1 update

[neuroticdave]

I had a Droid DNA for about a week, and Android bogged down so badly on the "Worlds most powerful superphone" that I got rid of it. It was bad enough everything felt disconnected from everything else, but it was laggy, unresponsive at times, and once you had 1-2 apps open, it ran horrible.