How to Speed Up Your Old or Sluggish Android Device Whether you're resisting the temptation to upgrade to newer, faster hardware, or a year's worth of use has made your Android phone feel slow and laggy, here are some ways to make your older phone run a bit smoother. This guide provides a number of tips you can use to speed up your phone, and while not every tip will apply to you or your phone, you should find at least a few tips in here that will. Whether you've rooted your phone, overclocked, flashed a new ROM, or none of the above, you'll be able to take advantage of a number of the tweaks below to get your phone from sluggish and glitchy to quick and smooth. Everyone's phone is different, too, so note that some of the more advanced tweaks may take a bit of trial and error on your part. I've experienced good things with these tweaks on my Motorola Droid (which, yes, had gotten pretty darn sluggish and glitchy, even for a barely year-old phone), but I'll note where a different approach to a specific tweak will help owners of older or more underpowered phones. Users with newer phones (like the Droid Incredible or Galaxy S) may not need these tips as much, but I've heard from several sources that even speedy phones like those have benefited from these tips, so they're worth playing around with no matter what phone you have. If You Haven't Rooted Your Phone There are a lot of great tweaks out there for rooted phones, but there are a ton of really simple things you can do to speed up your phone, even if you haven't done any hacking whatsoever.
49
Embed
How to Speed Up Your Old or Sluggish Android Device
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
How to Speed Up Your Old or Sluggish Android DeviceWhether you're resisting the temptation to upgrade to newer, faster hardware, or a year's worth of use has made your Android phone feel slow and laggy, here are some ways to make your older phone run a bit smoother.
This guide provides a number of tips you can use to speed up your phone, and while not every tip will apply to you or your phone, you should find at least a few tips in here that will. Whether you've rooted your phone, overclocked, flashed a new ROM, or none of the above, you'll be able to take advantage of a number of the tweaks below to get your phone from sluggish and glitchy to quick and smooth.
Everyone's phone is different, too, so note that some of the more advanced tweaks may take a bit of trial and error on your part. I've experienced good things with these tweaks on my Motorola Droid (which, yes, had gotten pretty darn sluggish and glitchy, even for a barely year-old phone), but I'll note where a different approach to a specific tweak will help owners of older or more underpowered phones. Users with newer phones (like the Droid Incredible or Galaxy S) may not need these tips as much, but I've heard from several sources that even speedy phones like those have benefited from these tips, so they're worth playing around with no matter what phone you have.
If You Haven't Rooted Your PhoneThere are a lot of great tweaks out there for rooted phones, but there are a ton of really simple things you can do to speed up your phone, even if you haven't done any hacking whatsoever.
Try a New Home Screen Launcher
We've talked about the benefits of other home screen launchers on more than one occasion, but I can't stress how great of an upgrade this can be. As always, I'm a huge proponent of LauncherPro, as it will not only bring you a noticeable speed increase upon installing it, but it also has lots of advanced features we can tweak to
boost our speed even further (more on that later). Of course,ADWLauncher is also very popular, and the Android Market is rife with other options.I'm going to write the rest of this tutorial from the perspective of a LauncherPro user, since from what I've seen, it has the most speed-boosting options, but you should be able to find many of the settings I mention below in other launchers, too—I'll note where a few of them are along the way, but you may have to do some poking around of your own depending on what Launcher you're using.
Lower the Number of Home Screens You Use And Ditch Those WidgetsIf you have an HTC phone with the exclusive Sense UI and you'd rather not ditch it for something like LauncherPro, that's fine—you can still put this tip into practice. While some phones, like the Motorola Droid, come with a mere three five home screens, many (including most HTC phones) come with up to seven. While this is pretty handy if you like lots of icons and widgets (which I'll mention again in a moment), they can really take up a lot of memory on your phone, which can cause jerky animations, lag, and force closes.
In our guide to organizing your Android home screen, we mentioned the two philosophies behind home screen usage. It's fine to have lots of home screens, icons, and widgets, but if your phone isn't performing up to your standards, you may have to compromise and try using fewer home screens (or at least find a middle ground). I went down from seven to three home screens and haven't looked back—the jump in performance was pretty incredible.If you're using LauncherPro, you can pick your number of home screens by hitting the Menu button on your phone, tapping Preferences, then tapping Homescreen Settings. If you're sticking with your stock launcher, you may not have the option to actually decrease the number of home screens, but you can still benefit by removing some icons and widgets from two to four of your home screens. It probably won't give you as big of a benefit as getting rid of the screens entirely, but those widgets can still suck up tons of memory, and deleting them from your home screen should make your phone run noticeably smoother.
When we discussed the myth of Android task killers, we mentioned that one of the real problems with slow phones is running poorly coded apps—apps that use up too much CPU in the background. Previously mentioned Watchdog is still a great way to keep track of those apps: if something is constantly running in the background, it may be causing some of the performance hits on your device. Unless it's something you can't live without (and are thus willing to live with any slowness it might cause), uninstall it and find an alternative.Note that some of the worst offenders in this category are apps that come pre-installed on your phone. Unfortunately, you need to be rooted to uninstall these, but we'll talk about that in a bit.
Uninstall or Move Apps to Free Up SpaceIt's also worth mentioning that even if an app doesn't misbehave (heck, even if you don't run it at all), it can cause slowdowns on your device. Believe it or not, the more free space you have in your phone's internal memory, the faster your phone can write to the disk. If you aren't sure how much free space your phone has, you can check it by going to Settings > SD Card & Phone Storage to see. You can also see which ones are taking up the most space by going to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications, hitting Menu, and sorting them by size. If you find you aren't even using an app that's hogging space, you might as well uninstall it—no point in keeping it around just so it can slow down your phone.
Your other option is to use the ever-handy Apps2Sd to move some of those apps off your phone's internal storage and onto your SD card. By default, the developer of a given app usually decides whether an app will install to your SD card, but with the App 2 SD app, you can do it yourself. Just pop open the app, and you'll get a list
of apps that are on your internal storage that have the ability to move to the SD card. Just move them over to free up space.
Tweak Your Launcher's Memory UsageIf you really want to dig into your system's settings (or you compromised on that "use fewer home screens" tip), there are a few more advanced tweaks you can make to your launcher that should help it run a bit smoother.
If you're using LauncherPro, hit the Menu button and go to Preferences > Advanced Settings > Memory Usage Settings. While you can tweak the Advanced Settings to your liking, the easiest way to take advantage it to use one of LauncherPro's many Memory Usage Presets. These presets tweak different settings to fit the needs for different people and different phones. You can read more about these settings on the LauncherPro blog, but here's what you really need to know:Starting with version 0.6.1, there is a new option in the preferences called "Memory usage". Right now there are three modes; light, medium, and high.
Light mode is basically what 0.6.0 uses, and it's made for users that have 5 or more screens, a lot of widgets/icons (or many full-screen widgets), 3D drawer, etc.
Medium is the default, it should work best for most users with a moderate-to-high amount of widgets/icons.
High mode doesn't try to optimize memory usage. It's very much like the early versions of LauncherPro, so it should give the best performance. If you don't have a lot of widgets/icons on your screens, you should try this setting.
Note that there are now more than three presets, but the general premise remains the same. If you're still filling up your home screen with icons and widgets, you might want to try out a setting on the low end of the list. If you've taken my advice thus far, I can tell you High mode will give you a pretty nice performance boost.
One great thing about LauncherPro is that if you go to Preferences > Advanced Settings and check Display Memory Usages, you'll be able to see how much RAM is being used at any given time. This is a good way to tell whether you have RAM to allocate to these different things, or whether the amount of RAM is too small to let LauncherPro keep trying to use it all up.
If you're using ADWLauncher, you won't have nearly as many choices, but I would still recommend going into ADW's settings, hitting System Preferences, and playing around with a few of the features there like Scrolling cache and System persistent, which should perform similar tasks (albeit not as well as LauncherPro or CyanogenMod's similar settings, which I'll talk about in the section for rooted phones).
If You've Rooted Your PhoneIf you've taken the plunge and rooted your Android device, you have a few more options available to you that should help you eke some extra speed out of your device. Note that these are a bit more advanced (as would be expected with root-only options), and require a bit more care, so be sure to backup your phone before you make any huge changes to it in case anything goes wrong.
Install a Custom ROMStill one of the best reasons to root your phone is to install a custom ROM, not only for the neat features it brings but for the speed increases it can bring your phone. We've gone through the details of installing custom ROMs before, so I won't go too deeply into it here, but I do recommend it if you need some speed increases, especially if the ROM is based off a later version of Android than your phone currently has. Lots of phones are still stuck with 2.1 and earlier, and while some ROMs can run a bit slower than stock Android on some phones, the speed increases Android 2.2 brings likely outweigh them.
Many ROMs are built for speed and stability, and while you'll get a great performance boost from them, I've found that even with a ROM like CyanogenMod I've been able to eke some good performance out of my phone (especially by tweaking some of CyanogenMod's advanced features). So don't think that you have to choose a ROM like Bugless Beast just because you have an old phone. Of course, trying a few different ROMs is always a good idea to see what works best for you.
Overclock Your Phone's Processor
A surefire way to get a speed boost out of your old, underpowered phone is to overclock it. We've also discussed this already before, so we won't get too deep into it here, but I will remind you that to overclock, you'll need to install a custom kernel. These are specific to your device, so you'll have to do some googling for compatible overclocking kernels to find one that's right for you. Generally, kernels are organized by two things: voltage and clock speed. The higher clock speed you choose, the more likely you'll need a higher voltage kernel (which, by the way, will drain battery faster). As long as you're not going overboard with the overclocking, you should be able to get by with a low or standard voltage kernel without a problem.
If your phone came pre-installed with all sorts of applications that you don't need, you can unisntall them with an app calledTitanium Backup. Once you've downloaded it, just open it up and hit the "Backup/Restore" button at the top of the screen. Tap the app you want to get rid of. You'll probably want to back it up first, in case it ends up being integral to your phone's operation, but once you have you can uninstall it from the same screen. Alternatively, you can just freeze the app, which won't free up space on your phone's memory, but will keep it from running in the background and slowing your phone down. Note also that, like all these root-only options, you could seriously mess up your phone if you go too crazy, so maybe a full-phone backup is also a good choice here.
Play With Your ROM's Advanced SettingsThis is one of the most difficult tweaks to perform on your phone, because it varies so much from person to person what works best. Furthermore, some ROMs may not have these settings in their preferences—you may have to do some terminal work to enable them. I'll go through what they are, and point out their location in the CyanogenMod ROM since it's the most popular and widely available, but if you don't have them in your ROMs settings you may have to do some googling to find out how to tweak them. That said, here are some of the handier features.
Compcache: Compcache is essentially virtual swap space in your RAM. In a nutshell, it gives you "more" RAM, but it's a bit slower than regular RAM because it takes CPU to compress and decompress packages that are swapped into it. This is one of the most debated features: many find that it helps things like the home
screen load faster; others prefer to keep it off. Try it both ways and see what works for you. New versions of CyanogenMod also allow you to choose how much RAM compcache sets aside as virtual swap space, so you can play around with that as you so choose.
JIT: JIT is a Java compiler available in Android 2.2. Enabling it won't give you a big speed increase as far as small apps, loading the home screen, and other such niceties, but it will likely give you a big speed boost in intense applications, like games.
Lock Home in Memory: This is similar to the LauncherPro memory features we discussed above, as it attempts to do exactly what its name implies: keep your home screens in memory so that it doesn't have to keep redrawing them all the time. I'd recommend enabling this if you have the memory for it.
VM Heap Size: This is one of the more interesting settings. the VM heap size is the maximum amount of memory an application is allowed to allocate. Resource-intensive apps will require a larger VM heap, while simper apps don't need as much. You'll want to play around with this setting, but you should be able to tell after going through the other settings what setting you'll want here. If you allocating tons of memory to LauncherPro, or your have JIT enabled for resource-intensive applications, you might want to try 32M. If you're trying a more minimalistic approach to everything, you might find 16M or even 12M boosts the speed of your phone considerably.
With all these settings, try changing just one at a time and see how your phone responds over the course of a day or two. Everyone's settings will be different; there is no one size fits all here. Depending on your phone, the apps you use, how you've set up your home screens, and other tweaks you've made, your phone will respond differently to different settings. So, if you're dedicated to messing around with them, go for it—otherwise, you'll probably just want to leave them at their defaults (which are set on a per-model basis, for what it's worth). Also note that if you start messing with these settings, you never know what might happen, so many developers won't let you submit bug reports if you've changed the defaults. And, of course, always always always make a backup.
08 Dec 2010 9:08 AM
this is exactly what I need! I've got a HTC Hero, which I've had a year, and feels far
However, mine is an Alltel Hero, not a Sprint Hero. Apparently, there are some
obscure differences in the chipset. I finally found a guy's post on XDA where he'd
create an .apk just for it.
I *think* it was this thread, but approach at your own risk. I did it a long time ago.
How to Speed Up, Clean Up, and Revive Your Android PhoneWe're all decluttering our closets and basements in celebration of spring, but it's time for a break. Kick back on the couch, pull up your Android phone, and act like you're still being productive by giving it some spring cleaning of its own.
Reclaim Drive and SD Card Space
Full size
Most Android devices have two different storage spaces: your internal space (where apps are stored) and your SD card (where your music, photos, and many of your apps' settings are stored). The SD card is easy to clean up—just delete any music, photos, and videos you don't need. If you see any folders that look like settings for apps you've removed, you can delete those too. If you're rooted (which is really
easy to do), you can even use an app like previously mentioned SD Maid to clean up all that cruft for you.
Cleaning up your internal storage is also pretty simple: just uninstall unnecessary apps. Chances are you have a few apps you don't use anymore, not to mention games you don't play—they'll take up the most space—and you can just uninstall them from the Play Store to free up that space and, hopefully, speed up your phone a little bit. If your phone is starved for internal storage and you can't spare any of your hard-earned apps, you can try moving them to your SD card instead. This will free up that internal space and speed up your phone, but keep all your apps close at hand. To do this, just head to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications. Select an app, and tap the "Move to SD Card" button to move it. Some apps won't have this ability, but you should find that lots of your space-hogging apps have no problem living on your SD card. You can read more about this process here.
Give It a Battery Boost
Full size
Android phones in particular are notorious for sucking the life out of your battery. If you haven't dug through your settings in awhile, this is a good time to make sure you're getting the most out of your battery as possible. This means turning the brightness down, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off when not in use, and turning off any eye candy (not to mention uninstalling apps that constantly use up your data). Tweak these settings yourself orautomate them with a program like Tasker or JuiceDefender for an easy, hassle-free battery life boost. I'm always an advocate of getting a second battery, too—just keep it in your glove box or in your desk drawer for those emergencies where your phone is about to die.
If your phone is a bit older, or it's just feeling sluggish, there are a number of things you can do to make it feel a little smoother. Trying a new home screen launcher is always good for a bit of speed, as is lowering your number of home screens and ditching all those widgets. If you're rooted, you can even overclock or install a custom ROM for even more speed. And, if you really want to get technical, there are some advanced settings you can play with to eke every bit of speed out of your phone possible. Just don't use a Task Killer, whatever you do (unless you're on a really, really old version of Android—like, 1.6 old). For more info on how to speed up your phone, check out our in-depth guide.
Remove and Clean Your Case (If You Use One)Of course, the inside of your phone isn't the only thing that needs cleaning. If your phone has gotten a bit dirty over the past year—which is even more likely if you have a dirt-trapping case on it—you might want to take it off and clean it up. The case shouldn't be too hard to clean, but make sure you don't clean your phone with anything that'll harm the screen. We've gone through how to safely clean and disinfect your gadgets before, so check out that guide for more info.
HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.
30 Mar 2012 12:09 PM
I disagree with the "don't use a task killer" bit; you just have to use the right one. I use Watchdog, and it actually tracks application behavior and will tell you which ones are actually consuming way too much CPU in the background. I was able to use it to identify Facebook and Amazon Appstore as the biggest culprits causing my phone to drag; once I ditched Facebook and used Watchdog to set up Amazon Appstore to get killed if it starts taking too much CPU while in background, my phone actually became usable again.
Ah yeah, Watchdog is good (which I talk about in the Task Killer post). I still don't think killing tasks is usually a good solution though. Watchdog is good for finding problem apps, but instead of killing them, you should either restart or, if it's a regular issue, uninstall the app.
lelang @HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.
On that note, why is Facebook's app so inexcusably horribly bad? It eats up CPU power and memory, while somehow also managing to be really slow. I might see an interesting post on the widget, but it takes maybe 10-20 seconds to open it up. My phone is a tad old (Evo 4G), but with 1GHz and a speedy custom ROM, you'd think it could handle the demands of goddamn Facebook.
HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H. @Whitson Gordon
Fair enough, and that's what I did with Facebook. I can't uninstall Amazon, though, not unless I want to rebuy all the apps I've gotten from their Free App of the Day from Google Play. Blacklisting it to where it gets killed if it goes over 30% CPU usage while in the background is effective enough.
Edited by HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H. at 03/30/12 12:29 PM
Jeb_Hoge @lelang
I ditched the FB app (kept FB Messenger) and also the official Twitter app. You can install Seesmic and read/post to both of them. There are other apps that let you do this too, but I've really come to like Seesmic. Plus, it's a smaller app than either of the two official ones.
BillyC333 @HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.
I believe in Linux, and a task killer is not needed. It's obvious that any app that is syncing, updating, checking for updates will eat resources...
Rooting and installing aftermarket ROM's usually has great performance benefit, especially for people like me still on old phones... the Verizon Droid1. I also installed a swap partition on my SD card to make up for lack of physical memory. Still runs beautiful.
You haven't seen how hideously slow my phone can get when Amazon Appstore gets out of control. A task killer is most definitely needed for me.
And I'm well aware of the benefits aftermarket ROMs can provide. I'm running CyanogenMod.
BillyC333 @HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.
I believe you... and i never tried amazon app store (prob never will).
I use Steel Droid Rom, it's built on Cyanogen. Cyanogen by itself got way to buggy.. and he recently stop support for my old phone. Adding a 512mb swap on my SD card made my phone run like new... much better than using Compcache
kokodhem @Whitson Gordon
That's great advise unless you can't remove them. =j It seems like most of the runaways on my phone are all AT&T stock apps that I never use, yet will launch themselves every time I have to pull the battery and restart the phone. I don't want to root my phone until my service contract is up, so I just have to live with it. I listened to your article and removed my task killer a few months ago, and while it doesn't crash as often as it did I seem to be getting more runaways now. I'm trying the free Watchdog as of now, we'll see what it can do.
trekie86 @kokodhem
You can always un-root your phone and take it in to AT&T. Trust me, rooting at the minimum will make a huge difference. Root it and throw on Titanium Backup to remove the stock AT&T crap. if you are worried about it, back up the apps first, uninstall them, and if anything happens, restore them with TiBu and then un-root the phone. Best of luck.
Dialer app becoming too slow and less responsive
up vote
7down vote
It takes almost more than 5-10 seconds to open the dialer application in my phone.
This has been happening for a while now and is especially critical since during incoming calls, when
my phone snaps back from standby to show me who is calling, I actually have to wait sometimes more
than 10 seconds to see the caller id and its like the phone is stuck during that time.
It has been the case before (stock) and after I've put a custom ROM in my phone. Though I noticed this
became more severe after I installed a lot of apps etc.
https://market.android.com/details?id=kz.mek.DialerOneshare improve this answer edited Dec 1 '11 at 23:21 answered Nov 28 '11 at
20:25
up vote
2down vote
I experienced a similar situation with my Samsung Galaxy GT-i5700 (SPICA), and I got up to a very
weird solution to this:
It seems that the huge number of SMS was causing the mobile to further slow down (apart from the
large number of apps in the device). I then deleted many of the messages, and there was a significant
improvement in the dialer operating speeds.
I don't know whether the same thing would work for you, it's only a loophole I discovered on my
mobile (Fact: Samsung SPICA can only accomodate up to 2000 SMS). I can only say you can give it a
try (of course, this stands true only if you have many SMS stored on your device).
I don't have answers for the other factors.
up vote
2down vote
Slowdowns like this on phones older than 1 year old are most likely a side affect of memory shortages. To check to see if this is the issue, go to the Android settings and look at SD card & Phone Storage. The last item, "Available Space" should be 17 Mb or more.
If you are using the Email app (NOT Gmail) then you should check your trash folder. In mail, hit
Menu, then choose Folders and scroll down to Trash. Email NEVER empties the trash folder, even if
you have deleted hundreds of messages. You will either have to delete them manually or delete and re-
create the account.
Sometimes the browser builds up a large set of data. You can go into browser settings and hit Clear
Cache. But there seems to be even more data associated with the browser. It is easiest to go to the
overall Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, then choose the All tab and find Browser and tap
on it. Then click on the action to Clear Data. This will delete your bookmarks as well so you should
make note of them first.
Finally, you may have background tasks that are hogging the phone's CPU time. You can get an app
like Advanced Task Killer (free version avail.) that will periodically kill off any apps that you don't
want. For instance, the Skype and Backup apps on Verizon phones run in background all the time but
touch event processing, etc to finish, instead of waiting for some calculations. In CPU-bound application, increasing
CPU speed can mean less latency between touching the screen and the screen updating to reflect the touch event.
However, up to a certain point, there will be no longer any noticeable benefit of adding even more CPU; beyond a
certain point, the input turnaround will be much faster than our own brain's turnaround time (approx. 100-200ms)
and we will not be able to perceive the benefit of adding even faster CPU. Also, note that input-to-output
turnaround time depends on a large number of other factors, e.g. the latency of the cables, speed of the bus, etc.
Second, having some extra CPU time to spare also means that Android can assign those spare CPU cycles to
background processes, so background processes can run better.
Summary
More RAM:
better task-switching
can run more complicated apps or open larger/more complex files
More CPU:
faster turnaround between input and response (less lag) on CPU-bound apps
better background processing
In short, both are equally important; your own personal usage pattern will determine which is more valuable for
you. If you generally stays in a single program and is sensitive to input-to-output latency then having faster CPU
will be more valuable for you; if you constantly task switch between many different apps or if you need to run
complex memory-hungry apps to open complex large files, then having extra RAM is going to be more valuable to
you.
up vote
4down vote
In a phone most of the programs you will use are thinks like email, IM, web browser,…
This kind of apps does not need a powerful CPU, but given the fact that you will be using an Android
Phone you will be running multiple applications at the same time which needs some extra CPU time,
but more importantly, needs enough RAM memory to accommodate all the applications.
So, more than one or the other, the important thing in and Android phone balance. With a 2Ghz CPU
and 512MB of RAM you will be wasting CPU power because the phone will not have enough
memory to accommodate sufficient applications to consume that amount of CPU cycles. The same
occurs with a 500Mhz CPU and 2Gb or RAM, the processor will not have enough cycles to execute
enough applications to consume that amount of RAM.
So BALANCE is the thing to consider. A CPU at 1Ghz with 512 to 1Gb of RAM is a great
combination. The same goes for a 600Mhz with 256Mb to 512Mb (a little underpowered for recent
versions of Andorid), or for a new two cores 1Ghz CPU with 712Mb or more of RAM.
Given this considerations my recommendation will be to search for a phone with a 1Ghz or more
CPU and 1Gb or more of RAM, this phone will be powerful enough to run all the applications you
will need in the next 2 years that is the maximum period of time you will be using the phone giving
the evolution rate of the mobile technology.
Why is my phone slow?
My phone has lately been really slow. When I turn on the screen, particularly if it has been off for a while, the phone is really sluggish. For example, it might take 30 seconds to respond to my input. Or if someone calls, it might not respond to my answer gesture until after the caller has already given up and hung up.
If I leave the screen on for several minutes (up to five), the phone will eventually start to respond more normally.
The CPU information in the developer options shows that the processor is pegged during all this slowness, and the process system_server is consuming almost all of that CPU capacity with other processes fighting for a little CPU time.
Also, this CPU activity is killing my battery. I'm only getting half the battery life I should be getting.
I recently lost root in an OTA upgrade; in re-rooting I had to do a wipe of the phone. Once I restored everything, the problem came back.
My phone is a Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean (4.1.2). I also experienced a similar issue with my previous phone, a Nexus One running MIUI and "ICS". I attributed that phone's slowness to its age, but now I think there must be something else going on.
What could be wrong, or how could I go about tracking down the problem?
Answers to questions posed
My current phone is running 4.1.2. The problem became much worse after the update. My previous phone was the one I said was running "ICS". I put that in quotes because it was a custom ROM that claimed to be 4.0 but which I suspect was actually Gingerbread+.
My RAM typically runs at about 85%. But, I doubt this is too useful since Android automatically kills apps when it needs more RAM and the Linux kernel is designed to keep RAM mostly full so as not to waste it.
Currently, Google Maps is using the most battery, followed by Tasker. I'm quite sure that this isn't typical, however. I can't imagine why Google Maps would be so high, as I don't use it often. Anyway, I turned off the location permissions, so hopefully that'll cure Google Maps. And Tasker doesn't usually consume so much, but when the CPU is pegged it seems to have a harder time operating than most apps. (By the way, I have no location-based profiles in Tasker.)
Upon rebooting my phone, it's OK until the screen goes off for a period of time. Then, the problems resume. They're so severe that it's often faster to reboot than to try to use the phone without rebooting.
Auto-rotate seems to have no effect. I regularly toggle it in the normal course of using my phone, and haven't noticed any difference either way.
Apps would appear to be the culprit since I've experienced the same issue on two different phones and since doing a factory reset. However:
The process that's consuming the CPU isn't an app but system_server, which is a core part of Android.
I have a lot of apps, so disabling them one by one would be a time-consuming process.
I tried re-nicing system_server, but I didn't se any effect.
4.0 is ICS, 4.1 is JB. But anyway, perhaps you could post some more info on how full your RAM is when this happens. You can see this in Apps>Running. And have you looked at which apps use the most battery? Which are those? And how often does this happen? Once a dat? Evevery time you turn on the phone? A few random things to try: - turn off auto-rotate; - update to 4.1.2. If you say the problem came back after restoring, could it be that a certain application, or a combination of certain applications, is the culprit? I would probably force-stop all apps if I were you, then turn on 1 by 1
This looks like it could be an issue with certain background services malfunctioning. Try observing the background services and disable some of them to see if you might hit the culprit. To do it in a way that is less hit and miss, there are several battery app in the market or you can use ICS native battery monitor to see if there are anything that are consuming more battery than it really should.
Thanks for this answer. I used Titanium Backup to freeze a number of background processes. My phone is running normally now. I don't know yet exactly which process it was, but I'll work that out eventually. – Scott Severance Nov 1 '12 at 10:08
It turns out the offending app was Google Goggles. I had a similar issue with HD Widgets causing all kinds of problems on my Nexus 7. Further experience has shown that the actual culprit is any antivirus software
I've had a similar issue with my new mobile, Razr Maxx running ICS. It turned out to be an overzealous car HUD application that consumed CPU cycles even when not running. Uninstalling it solved the problem. What confused me initially was that Android OS was shown as the main battery drainer and not the app itself. Since you had the same issue with your previous phone, this suggests a misbehaving application that you have installed on both.
I would try turning off GPS and mobile data/Wi-fi and observe whether the battery continues to drain at a similar alarming rate. If it's the internet connection that triggers the problem, this is likely due to an ad-supported application unsuccessfully trying to phone home.
Another very common source of Galaxy Nexus slowdowns is quite a nasty hardware/firmware issue documented here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=39154 .
This will probably affect you if you have less than 3 to 4Gb storage free. There are some workarounds but they involve root and thus possible warranty invalidation. I found that clearing out some storage and rebooting does help somewhat, but have not yet tried the workarounds.
Thanks, but this isn't my issue add my problem occurs without regard to free space. Check the running services. You will know what is running unnecessarily. I closed these, and I could immediately see a change in speed.
This is basically the same as using a task killer. It doesn't work. If a service is running unnecessarily, it has to be uninstalled. However, as mentioned in my question, and in the accepted answer, it isn't a simple thing to just look in the process list and realize which app is responsible. -1 for the suggestion that's like a task killer, and for an answer that is less helpful than the existing answers
What are the drawbacks of moving an app to SD card?
Since I upgraded to Android 2.2, I noted some minor disadvantages of moving an app to SD card, like having to
wait the SD card to be mounted after a reboot to be able launch the app.
What other disadvantages are there?
3 Answersactive oldest votes
taken straight from android developer site
There is no effect on the application performance so long as the external storage is mounted on the
device.
The .apk file is saved on the external storage, but all private user data, databases, optimized .dex
files, and extracted native code are saved on the internal device memory.
The unique container in which your application is stored is encrypted with a randomly generated key
that can be decrypted only by the device that originally installed it. Thus, an application installed on
an SD card works for only one device.
The user can move your application to the internal storage through the system settings.
Also -> Applications That Should NOT Install on External Storage (more details on android developer site)
Broadcast Receivers listening for "boot completed"
up vote
9down vote
Applications installed on SD card cannot run if you remove your SD card or you're turning on USB Mass storage (so it can be accessed from a computer). That's the only drawback I have been experiencing.
I've actually seen performance improvement since moving to SD; before I moved to SD I had
exhausted the internal memory (about a few kilobytes left) and the phone lags quite badly. Since
moving to SD (and therefore freeing some space in the internal memory), and the lag disappears.
What can I do to increase battery life on my Android device?
What can I do to get better battery life on my Droid? Battery life seems awful. Less than 15 hours or so
on normal usage.
17 Answersup vote
91down vote
I played with this for a little while after getting my Droid, and found that there are a few easy
things you can do that make a big difference. There's also a lot of misinformation out there,
so you need to do some testing. I get 20 hours of regular use or 16 hours of heavy use.
Note that these are my results on a Motorola Droid with OS 2.1. Your results may vary,
particularly if you're using a different OS version!
Don't use Live Wallpapers. They're cool, but they eat battery.
Don't use Sense UI. That's HTC's home app. Again, it's pretty, but not friendly
to battery.
Prefer the back button over the home button. The back button lets apps decide
if they want to run in the background. The home screen often leaves apps
running when they don't need to.
Don't use app killers! There's no need for them if you use the back button, and
you'll end up crippling other apps because of non-obvious dependencies
between apps.
Use WiFi whenever you have access to a network because it uses less battery
than 3G. (Shorter distance, lower power.) Turn WiFi off when you don't have
access to a network, otherwise it will keep looking for a WiFi network it can use
(which drains battery).
Reduce the frequency at which apps refresh their content. Common offenders
are social media clients (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and news or weather apps.
Finally, watch your battery usage under Settings -> About Phone -> Battery ->
Battery Use. This will show you what has been using the battery since it was
last charged. (So it shows nothing while charging!) If anything unexpected is
using the battery, consider replacing it with another app or service.
Best of luck, and enjoy your Android phone!
show 2 more comments
up vote
60down vote
Some of the biggest power drainers: GPS, Wifi, and Bluetooth.
In general, it is best to keep these services off unless you are using them. However, GPS will
only be used when an application calls for it, so you could technically leave it on all the time.
Some other tips:
Lower the screen brightness
Turn off 3G (if you have a phone that you can switch between 3G and 2G).
Disable automatic Data Sync or:
Set your apps to sync at longer intervals or don't use apps/widgets that do
synchronize often
Turn off any unnecessary vibrations or haptic feedbacks
Disable the keyboards backlight
Avoid using the speakers, opt in for using headphones
Underclock the CPU (rooted users)
Turn off data completely (using an app like APNDroid)
Don't use task killers to automatically kill off processes. They simply will
respawn. Uninstall undesired apps.
Use applications like Locale or Tasker to control your phone's
Wifi/GPS/Bluetooth/Sreen brightness/etc. settings automatically with profiles
that activate under certain conditions
Set your screen timeout to a short time interval. Then use Screebl to keep your
phone screen on when the phone is only held at certain angles.