Does Android still bog down over time?

[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]

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

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.

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

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 :p

Thanks all for your answers, I really appreciate it :)

[javagreen]

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

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 Subscriber²]

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.

[Anibal P]

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

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

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

[1337ish]

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]

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.

[1337ish]

@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- Member]

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

[_neutrino Veteran]

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 Member]

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.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

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]

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 :p

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]

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.