Why Has My Droid...

[nooter99]

...gotten so laggy lately? Haven't done anything out of the ordinary, added a couple of commonly used apps, have maybe 20-25 apps total. Phone has just been way laggier than usual, to the point of frustration! What are some things I can do to try and improve performance? Other than rooting, I aint that smart!

I've tried re-booting, including battery pull, and have cleared caches in each app, but have seen no improvement. I do use ATK, but have had it since day one, is ATK really something that could be causing the trouble?

Running on wi-fi at home also shows no improvement, so I don't think its a signal issue. It's a stock, 6 month old Droid running Launcher Pro. Was definitely running a lot better before. Any suggestions will be rewarded with free, cold beer!

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[bomber889]

You could try a hard reset

 

[jlaidlaw]

Go through your apps and clear cache.

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[nateccnn]

Think in terms of Andorid. What causes lagginess? Some apps stay in memory after you stop using them. A service runs but very little processor used. When you go back to that app it should pick up where it left off. But how? Some apps store a small bit of info so it can rebuild the screen that you had when you left it. Other apps have to fire up from scratch. and others that keep the app in memory just wake up.

Your home screen is one that has to be "woken up". We used to have an option to keep the home screen in memory so it was available when we went to it. Now it sleeps. This seems laggy as it wakes up. It has to rebuild the screen since it was dropped from memory.

Android keeps track of what apps should remain in memory and when another app tries to use memory...if memory is already full...it closes an app to make room. More laggyness.

And Cache affects lagginess perception too. If an app is using a corrupt cache file it struggles trying to recreate those screens again.

The first thing to do to improve lagginess is clear all data and cache. Since you are not rooted you can't use SPRecovery to do this. It seems like one of the settings option in android 2.1 was to reset to factory which wipes all your data and cache from the phone...requires you to sign back into Google so all you market apps will re-download. Takes about 15 minutes to do the re-sync and your phone is back to the way it was before...but new data and cache files are being built (which makes your phone appear laggy...but give it some time and that will go away). You also have to enter screen names and passwords on first visits to websites that require user names.

Hope some if this helps.

Nate

 

[tcrews]

Do not run a task manager, what is this...Windows Mobile or Blackberry OS?
Task Killers are the worst thing you can do to your phone.

Have you updated any apps yet? Some have reported LauncherPro seems more laggy after the latest couple of updates though I personally haven't noticed it.
A lot of new settings/features were added and some created noticeable lag unless disabled.

Any other new apps that might be improperly running continuously (ie...setting themselves as a foreground task)?

 

[nooter99]

Bomber, how do I do a hard reset? Does it take it back to the way it was out of the box? I'd rather not do that if it does, it's taken me this long to get everything the way I like it! I assume I would have to re-load all apps, calendars, contacts etc. right? Does it wipe sd card clean? Damn, I hope I don't have to go through all that, I'm old and no longer have a good memory, or patience LOL!

 

[nooter99]

Nate, tcrews, all great info! Thanks. Starting to make a little sense. I guess I'll try to convince myself to do a factory reset. BTW, I do updates on all the apps whenever they come out, several a week, so I doubt I could figure out which one may or may not be causing issues. Thanks again, what kind of beer you fellas like??

 

[dyrelogan]

I use Advanced Task Killer and I notice my phone runs a little faster. I wish I could stop programs from running on their own (i.e. Voice dialer (I never use that) and several other ones. Every time I open ATK I find apps are running that I didn't even start. This is truly buggin!

 

[RagtimeBenji]

Please enlighten me on your thoughts as to why Task Killer apps aren't a very good choice.

 

[kennydied23]

In my experience, the task killer isn't worth it, and LauncherPro is very buggy in the latest version of it. I bet if you tried ADW then it may go away.

 

[franked]

I too, am interested in hearing about why task manager apps aren't good for the phone. I'm so very new to the Android platform, so this would be good info since getting a task manager app was the first recommendation I received.

Thanks.

 

[tcrews]

Please enlighten me on your thoughts as to why Task Killer apps aren't a very good choice.

Task Killers aren't good because you don't know what the system is doing. First...if you see programs "running" that you didn't launch....what do you think launched them?.....the OS". The OS runs many house cleaning processes, it also runs a few programs by default as they are integrated into the systems OS. When you kill these task, you are knocking the legs out from under the OS and it gets back up and starts doing everything it was doing before (ie....seeing if tasks are not being used, memory cleaning, etc..).

Yes you can have a buggy program that accesses the GPS function or such that you need to kill (and then uninstall...it's buggy) but seeing "tasks/apps" in memory that you aren't using doesn't mean you should "kill" them.

And by default, the OS tries to hold as much in memory as possible.

You will not get better performance, you will not get better battery life, you will not get a better experience by using task killers.

Again...this isn't Blackberry OS or Windows Mobile where when you switch from a task to another they all keep running until you are out of ram........Android will detect you need more ram for an app and check it's list of last running/used apps that are in memory and unload it.

Let the OS work the way it's designed, you will definitely get better performance and better battery life. And free up the memory/cpu/battery you are ALWAYS using to have your task killer running.

 

[gszeman]

+1 on what tcrews said. You will actually get worse battery life because like t said, Android has to start redoing what it was made to do before a task killer interrupted it. Just because Android has an open process doesn't mean it's eating your resources... It took the OCD in me a while to realize this, I wanted a clean process list!

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[dyrelogan]

What is ADW?

 

[brando56894]

ADW is another launcher.

I use Advanced Task Killer and I notice my phone runs a little faster. I wish I could stop programs from running on their own (i.e. Voice dialer (I never use that) and several other ones. Every time I open ATK I find apps are running that I didn't even start. This is truly buggin!

download a program called autostarts it allows you to disable apps that you dont want started at certain times (during bootup, after bootup, when bluetooth is connected, etc..), the only catch is you need to be rooted to use it....