69 replies to this topic 2 votes

[ZeroHour]

@Jason and others with a Nexus 7, clearing out space has made a big difference so far
I was not that much under 1GB free but I didnt think that would cause it to run so badly.

[ashpowell]

Any android I've had has never slowed down.. but then again I flash CyanogenMod often

[RATiO]

I find the more apps I install the slower it gets

[- jigz -]

if you have an adroid device, you should be on XDA

[+-T-]

Never really had a problem with this, however I do power cycle my devices on a weekly basis just to ensure they're free of issues. Even my iPhones get this done as they can be very odd otherwise

[+littleneutrino]

depends on what you are doing, which manufacturer you have and a lot of other factors i suppose. I am running a custom rom that is based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project) *stock android* rather than a Samsung rom and my phone runs much better than it did when i bought it.

[Growled]

I'm still running Android 2.3 on my old HTC and have never had a problem but a friend of mine has the exact same phone and has had nothing but problems with bogging down. Not sure exactly what it is.

[Jason Stillion]

tsupersonic, on 08 January 2013 - 18:55, said:

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

I will give that a try, appreciate the information.

[yowanvista]

Belazor, on 08 January 2013 - 18:37, said:

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

iOS6 doesn't have 'real multitasking' when compared to Android and is very minimalistic in every sense. Its way of managing RAM is different from Android's. Custom manufacturer skins make things worse when it comes to memory usage especially on devices with less than 512MB of RAM. Furthermore the 2011 Xperia series had a half baked ICS upgrade with some parts taken from the old GB kernel with old wrappers, Sony didn't even make the effort to even update the kernel from version 2.6 to 3.x. Afaik kernels newer than 2.6 provide a much better experience.

[Belazor]

yowanvista, on 08 January 2013 - 19:43, said:

iOS6 doesn't have 'real multitasking' when compared to Android and is very minimalistic in every sense. Its way of managing RAM is different from Android's. Custom manufacturer skins make things worse when it comes to memory usage especially on devices with less than 512MB of RAM. Furthermore the 2011 Xperia series had a half baked ICS upgrade with some parts taken from the old GB kernel with old wrappers, Sony didn't even make the effort to even update the kernel from version 2.6 to 3.x. Afaik kernels newer than 2.6 provide a much better experience.

Yeah, I've heard the bit about iOS multitasking - IIRC apps can request to run for up to 10 minutes after they've been "closed" (brought out of focus), and they can only register to receive / display Push notifications past that limit. I'm not entirely sure if I see the benefit of having an app actually running perpetually in the background, though. Then again, I'll freely admit that my ability to think outside the box for these things is quite limited.

I wish it was easy to use the stock UI while still having display enhancements like the BRAVIA Engine and such - from my understanding they bake it into the kernel or other system files...

I guess I'll wait for the phone to come out and get someone to tell me the kernel it's running at and such before making a decision. My contract doesn't expire until the 26th of March anyway.

[Shadrack]

It doesn't help when our expectation for performance keeps increasing over time. It seems to be a pretty common problem people have with technology. My 2 year old phone always seems bogged down and slower than my new phone. My new phone is nice and zippy and everything works wonderfully. It will work the exact same way in 2 years, but my expectations will be different.

There could be more to it than that (amount of apps installed, and I wonder if the device's flash memory slows down after so many read/write cycles).

Belazor, on 08 January 2013 - 20:00, said:

Yeah, I've heard the bit about iOS multitasking - IIRC apps can request to run for up to 10 minutes after they've been "closed" (brought out of focus), and they can only register to receive / display Push notifications past that limit. I'm not entirely sure if I see the benefit of having an app actually running perpetually in the background, though. Then again, I'll freely admit that my ability to think outside the box for these things is quite limited.

I wish it was easy to use the stock UI while still having display enhancements like the BRAVIA Engine and such - from my understanding they bake it into the kernel or other system files...

I guess I'll wait for the phone to come out and get someone to tell me the kernel it's running at and such before making a decision. My contract doesn't expire until the 26th of March anyway.

I'm no expert, but it seems like newer Android apps in 4.2 behave very similarly to iOS apps when it comes to multitasking. That is apps in the background disappear from memory when they haven't been accessed for some time and have to be reloaded. There are probably lots of different things going on under the hood.

iOS no doubt has a stricter multitasking API. I think only apps specifically designated as being used for navigation or VoIP are able to truly operate in the background.

[yowanvista]

Belazor, on 08 January 2013 - 20:00, said:

Yeah, I've heard the bit about iOS multitasking - IIRC apps can request to run for up to 10 minutes after they've been "closed" (brought out of focus), and they can only register to receive / display Push notifications past that limit. I'm not entirely sure if I see the benefit of having an app actually running perpetually in the background, though. Then again, I'll freely admit that my ability to think outside the box for these things is quite limited.

I wish it was easy to use the stock UI while still having display enhancements like the BRAVIA Engine and such - from my understanding they bake it into the kernel or other system files...

I guess I'll wait for the phone to come out and get someone to tell me the kernel it's running at and such before making a decision. My contract doesn't expire until the 26th of March anyway.

The Xperia Z is a true powerhouse, you should go for it imho. The OS/kernel won't be a problem and you'll have a Jelly Bean 4.2 upgrade soon afterwards. It uses kernel 3.4, the same version used in the Nexus 4 and Xperia T.

Quote

That is apps in the background disappear from memory when they haven't been accessed for some time and have to be reloaded. There are probably lots of different things going on under the hood.

This has always been the case, inactive background Apps which are no longer used will automatically be killed after some time though they will still appear in the recent apps window hence require reloading if switched to. Active background apps will remain in memory unless the device runs out of RAM, in that case the memory manager will start terminating them starting with the low priority background processes.

[a.mcdear]

Generally speaking, its app updates that tend to cause Android to slow down. Sometimes fixing the problem is as easy as wiping the dalvik cache and letting the apps be re-optimized on the next boot. The issue is similar to slow downs caused by Windows registry fragmentation that used to plague Windows XP.

[Ryoken]

I've had no end of problems with my Nexus 7.. lots of random reboots, crashes, sometimes it'll just sit there rebooting for hrs.. and that's with it relatively clean, as I nuked it not that long ago.

[Titoist]

My Android 4.0.3 on Sony Tablet S slows down over the course of 6 months. I have had to reinstall it once already. Luckily for me, my Google Account does the backups so when I signed in, everything came back. Just had to reinstall several programs. Reinstall took about 15min.