Droid 2 Questions from a New User

[karnovaran]

Huh? It's a lockscreen replacement app that works 100 times better than stock. Why don't you guys just try it instead of being confused? There's a 24 hour refund period.

Edit - I'm just talking about lockscreen lag, obviously.

 

[Izzu]

Yeah, that's where I was confused. Thought you were talking about all my lag problems. But, I downloaded it (knowing I could get a refund), and I saw what you meant. Much more responsive lock screen . I'm not much for putting apps or shortcuts on the lock screen, but so far it seems like it's worth the $2 to have such a snappy transition from lock to home screen. Thanks for the tip!

 

[karnovaran]

Yeah I've only put my time/weather widget on there and a slider for Dialer One and Handcent. Occasionally I'll put the music widget on there.

 

[Izzu]

After messing around with it I decided to put a favorites slider and a text slider on it. Now I can call/text right from the lock screen ...didn't think of that. Also put my weather widget on the lock screen as well.

I wanted to go back to one of my questions earlier, though. If I do decide to restore to factory settings (to see if it improves anything), how will my restore work? I have backup data enabled, I'm assuming that's the sync to the google cloud that is constantly backing up? So there's nothing I would need to do prior to restoring to backup my apps/texts/emails/everything? Or am I wrong? Then will the restore put everything back where it was, will I have to reload some widgets and apps, or will I have to redownload all my apps?

 

[karnovaran]

Yes, after a restore Froyo re-downloads all of the apps you had before. So actually, if you have any apps that are causing problems right now it will just re-download it, which may defeat the purpose of this whole thing. Have you gone into Applications -> Running Services to see what's eating up resources? It could be that just a couple are using up way too much memory and deleting them alone will solve much of your lag.

In my experience so far, the only services that seem to be necessary are:
- Contacts / Cache Service
- Backup Assistant
- Google Services Framework
- Data Manager Service
- Sync Service
- Usb
- Global Unplug
- com.motorola.android.syncml.service

Although I bet one or more of those could be removed too, I just haven't bothered to investigate. So in short, anything other than those services can be removed. Some like Skype, NewsWidget, and WeatherWidget can only be removed through root. Others like WidgetLocker and Swype obviously only run because you use them, which is fine. If there are any apps that you've downloaded that are running services and you rarely or never use those apps, get rid of them!

Other tips for reducing lag:
- Don't use taskkillers
- Try ADW or Launcher Pro
- Only use widgets that you actually use
- Remove Skype and other bloat (root)

 

[Izzu]

Well the highest one I noticed was TheWeatherChannel at 11MB. Don't know if that is high or not, normally I would assume not considering the phones total memory, but I'm also new to this phone. Nonetheless, I uninstalled it to see if I had any performance benefits, haven't noticed much yet, but I haven't really been able to mess with it this morning. That being said, TheWeatherChannel has usually been most accurate for me in Denver and I like having the ability to check the weather like that. So I'm secretly hoping it doesn't affect much and I can put it back up there =P

WidgetLocker sometimes goes up to 10MB as well.

 

[everstar80]

Sounds like you got some sage advice. Each phone has its goods and bads but something as small as a couple seconds doesn't compare to all the other benfits of the D2.

 

[bdizz07]

Im new too just got my D2 5 days ago and i have the whole first home screen full 12 max apps i know theres 7 screens but 1 main home screen.

I have no lag at all with mine so maybe its certain apps or something.