Live wallpapers and lag? - Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Most of the live wallpapers I use introduce lag when navigating around the home screen. Is this the case for everyone?
And if it is, why bother having them? Seems to favor style over functionality.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA

I think everyone gets the lag. It's worse with some wallpapers than with others. It's not only the loss of performance but they also tend to use more battery. I don't bother with them. In fact, I like a pure black background.
Each to their own.

Yes its the case for everyone. Every LWP except "Phase Beam".

Paradigm runs well vertically with all lwp baked in the rom. Horizontally lags some. That said 3 of the lwp run well on my phone. Running stock and almost stock kernel.
bow chicka wow wow.

@rbiter said:
Paradigm runs well vertically with all lwp baked in the rom. Horizontally lags some. That said 3 of the lwp run well on my phone. Running stock and almost stock kernel.
bow chicka wow wow.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haven't tried that one. I'll give it a shot.

martonikaj said:
Yes its the case for everyone. Every LWP except "Phase Beam".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then why have it? I don't get why Google would add a feature that slows down the UI. It's a tease. "Here, check out these really cool looking features that slows down the user experience."
Not yelling at you obviously, just ranting

Henchmin said:
Then why have it? I don't get why Google would add a feature that slows down the UI. It's a tease. "Here, check out these really cool looking features that slows down the user experience."
Not yelling at you obviously, just ranting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well this has generally been the case for all previous versions of Android, too....

Henchmin said:
Then why have it? I don't get why Google would add a feature that slows down the UI. It's a tease. "Here, check out these really cool looking features that slows down the user experience."
Not yelling at you obviously, just ranting
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not all live wallpapers. The ones from Maxelus (https://play.google.com/store/apps/...XhlbHVzLnNoYWRvd2dhbGF4eWxpdmV3YWxscGFwZXIiXQ..) don't lag at all - and the Galaxy Pack is pretty complex. I was using the Galaxy Pack for the last few months until I made an Aperture Laboratories (static) wallpaper.
I think it's more of a coding issue than the feature itself. 'Don't hate the game, hate the player' - as it were...
Here's a thread with more lag-less suggestions:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1472261

martonikaj said:
Well this has generally been the case for all previous versions of Android, too....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was burnt out on Live walls when they showed up on the Droid 1
Disliked the performance hit then, dislike it just as much now.

adrynalyne said:
I was burnt out on Live walls when they showed up on the Droid 1
Disliked the performance hit then, dislike it just as much now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like Phase Beam because its subtle.

Ya know, if you turned off Wallpaper scrolling, that takes away a lot of the lag
Also, Force GPU Rendering on the UI helps a lot.

Renderscript is what runs Live walls, which is already GPU rendered.

I got really bad live wallpaper lag only on stock Gnex.
Flashed AOKP and franco and even the most sluggish life wallpaper is now smooth.

Related

Why Galaxy Nexus is so laggy!!!

I have my GN for about 2 days. I'm coming from a Nexus S with ICS and, with the SAME Live Wallpapers the NS was more fluid and smoother than the GN.
WHY?????
More RAM, better procesor, HW acelerator, etc... yet the NS was smoother...
(SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH I'M FROM CHILE)
Someone have this problem??
Higher resolution too.
Live walls suck for wxga devices.
HTC Rezound is the same way.
It's probably mostly because ICS is new and not yet fully optimized.
Wait for ICS 4.1 or 4.2 and most of these problems should be gone.
4.0.3 livewalls are less laggy too.
I don't have any lag here... My Gnex have 4.0.1 and stay unrooted and bootloader locked.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
As many have stated, only one of the stock live wallpapers is completely optimized for ICS, that is phase beam. Any other is going to cause lag. Also, 4.0.3 is the smoothest version out right now which is why Google chose it for the base version. They are probably cleaning up all the bugs and will release it, or another version soon.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Valynor said:
It's probably mostly because ICS is new and not yet fully optimized.
Wait for ICS 4.1 or 4.2 and most of these problems should be gone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the same way that I've wait for the unluggy Honeycomb...
Thanks...
kangxi said:
As many have stated, only one of the stock live wallpapers is completely optimized for ICS, that is phase beam. Any other is going to cause lag. Also, 4.0.3 is the smoothest version out right now which is why Google chose it for the base version. They are probably cleaning up all the bugs and will release it, or another version soon.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's weird, not even the Nexus Live Wallpaper runs smooth enough...
Ok, I have to wait...
Running a custom kernel may help with this. It OC's the GPU to 384MHz
Found a solution, change to static wallp.
TF101 Revolver ROM
henrik_h83 said:
Found a solution, change to static wallp.
TF101 Revolver ROM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bingo! And save yourself some battery while you're at it.
henrik_h83 said:
found a solution, change to static wallp.
Tf101 revolver rom
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
jajaja!
:d
martonikaj said:
Bingo! And save yourself some battery while you're at it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you spend all your time in the launcher, you can save 1-2% battery. Id rather run a LWP.
IMO, if you use your phone for apps, you don't care what the wallpaper looks like, much less if its animated.
Not a solution but a compromise. /s
I never understand how someone could live with problems a Live Wallpaper presents.
I've commented in a couple other "lag" threads, and I find it utterly ridiculous--unacceptable, really--that the flagship Google phone can't run live wallpapers. Yeah, we use our phone for apps, etc., but the point is that lesser phones can do so without issue.
Frankly, it's shocking that people are so willing to accept it. If this were any other phone, people would be ragging on it up and down. Then again, I can also appreciate accepting trade-offs.
Still, to me this is not about how people use their phones or how they think others should use their phones. This is about some of the most fundamental aspects of a phone and its capabilities (at least to most consumers). I mean, when Android phones first started running live wallpapers, people were gushing over the coolness factor.
As I've said in previous posts, I love this phone in theory, and want to get it so badly, but the lagginess for a $300 flagship phone is tough to dismiss. Not to mention, by all accounts it got WORSE with 4.02!
I never understand how someone could live with problems a Live Wallpaper presents.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Live walls have sucked hard ever since they first showed up. I guess like most, we enjoy using the phone and the extra glitz just isn't worth it. I certainly am not going to switch devices or OSes over a silly animated wallpaper that gets boring at 5 minutes.
ssmug said:
I've commented in a couple other "lag" threads, and I find it utterly ridiculous--unacceptable, really--that the flagship Google phone can't run live wallpapers. Yeah, we use our phone for apps, etc., but the point is that lesser phones can do so without issue.
Frankly, it's shocking that people are so willing to accept it. If this were any other phone, people would be ragging on it up and down. Then again, I can also appreciate accepting trade-offs.
Still, to me this is not about how people use their phones or how they think others should use their phones. This is about some of the most fundamental aspects of a phone and its capabilities (at least to most consumers). I mean, when Android phones first started running live wallpapers, people were gushing over the coolness factor.
As I've said in previous posts, I love this phone in theory, and want to get it so badly, but the lagginess for a $300 flagship phone is tough to dismiss. Not to mention, by all accounts it got WORSE with 4.02!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This one doesn't lag in the least.
And they do get boring
I was stoked when live wallpapers first came on the scene, but they lost their cool factor real quick. Now the only live wallpapers I actually like are the ones with minimal animation (ie, phase beam, spectrum ICS) where you don't notice it's a live wall until you really stare.
No lag on this one: http://bit.ly/xjyfgd

Can the GN ever be as smooth as an iPhone 4S?

Alright, you're gonna be mad about the topic but I'm being honest here.
I never had a nexus phone and I was hoping that if I got a Galaxy Nexus, the phone wouldn't stutter (in browser and in apps) and it does. On websites the stuttering when scrolling is annoying. The phone is fast (home screen, app drawer, settings) but a lot of apps are jittery and not fluid.
I'm running AOKP Milestone 4 with Lean Kernel v2.4.
So my question is, is it possible to get the Galaxy Nexus to be as smooth as an iPhone? Some reasons would be good because there's no doubting the 4s is very fluid with rare if any hiccups.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
what apps...all mine are as smooth as the iphone.
AOKP is the king of extra features, but if you want smooth you should try Peter Alfonso's Bugless Beast.
The selling point if the iphone 4s is Suri.
My buddy tried to show it off and it didn't work at all.
He was really embarrassed.. It screwed up everything.
I showed him my nexus, and then I proceeded to pull 15 down 13 up in a speed test.
Boy was he jealous of my Nexus.
If all you care about is smooth scrolling, use the stock firmware. It's smoother than most ROMs, but lacks many features in the custom ROMs.
Don't forget, you're running a beta version of community created code. We don't have as much access to the hardware as the original designers, and can't optimize things as easily.
Whinging about it not being as smooth as an iPhone when you're running user created firmware is like complaining that the shelves you built yourself aren't as nice as the ones that your friend paid a professional carpenter to create.
AOKP runs great for most people, myself included, but there are tradeoffs for the extra features.
also, one more thing you gotta take into consideration is that aokp is more for customization. you want more of a rom that works only on stability. i havnt tried m4, but i do know that bamf is amazingly smooth. and alsooo when was the last time you saw the 4s? sure you can slide smoothly but doesnt it matter much more how quick you can load the page? try a diff browser also... mines working perfectly on google chrome and stock.
RobbieCrash said:
If all you care about is smooth scrolling, use the stock firmware. It's smoother than most ROMs, but lacks many features in the custom ROMs.
Don't forget, you're running a beta version of community created code. We don't have as much access to the hardware as the original designers, and can't optimize things as easily.
Whinging about it not being as smooth as an iPhone when you're running user created firmware is like complaining that the shelves you built yourself aren't as nice as the ones that your friend paid a professional carpenter to create.
AOKP runs great for most people, myself included, but there are tradeoffs for the extra features.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a poor analogy. The ROM devs are not building these ROMs from scratch, they are making relatively small changes to the code provided by Google. A better analogy would be assembling an office desk from IKEA (store that sells put-it-together-yourself furniture for you non-U.S. folk) vs having a carpenter friend put it together. Sure your friend might drill a hold here or there to make the fit better, but he isn't carving the shelf out of lumber.
-- also, one more thing you gotta take into consideration is that aokp is more for customization. you want more of a rom that works only on stability. i havnt tried m4, but i do know that bamf is amazingly smooth. and alsooo when was the last time you saw the 4s? sure you can slide smoothly but doesnt it matter much more how quick you can load the page? try a diff browser also... mines working perfectly on google chrome and stock. --
stock browser and chrome are jerky but the stock browser is a little better
Stock software was slow for me too, worse than AOKP M4
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
-- what apps...all mine are as smooth as the iphone. --
XDA, web browser, maps
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
-- AOKP is the king of extra features, but if you want smooth you should try Peter Alfonso's Bugless Beast. --
Ok I'll try bugless beast ans see if it helps
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
android will never be as smooth as the iphone, its running a dalvik client
Do iPhone users just get Android phones and swipe and down all day to see how fluid it moves. You guys know there is much more to the phone then just scrolling pages up and down, right?
You also realize the device is pushing a higher resolution then an iPhone as well so a lot more pixels are in play.
Seriously, even if the GN scrolled smoother then it already does, I don't think I would really give a sh.t......It would not change my experience in the least.
BlackDino said:
android will never be as smooth as the iphone, its running a dalvik client
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not to mention iPhone 4S GPU absolutely blows away any other mobile GPU on the market, and on top of that pushes fewer pixels.
iPhone 4S is a graphical beast.
Have you turned on Hardware Acceleration in the Settings?
qtx said:
Have you turned on Hardware Acceleration in the Settings?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, it's turned on
matt2053 said:
Not to mention iPhone 4S GPU absolutely blows away any other mobile GPU on the market, and on top of that pushes fewer pixels.
iPhone 4S is a graphical beast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The iPhone 4 is smooth as well and the GPU isn't as good as the iPhone 4S
[email protected] said:
Do iPhone users just get Android phones and swipe and down all day to see how fluid it moves. You guys know there is much more to the phone then just scrolling pages up and down, right?
You also realize the device is pushing a higher resolution then an iPhone as well so a lot more pixels are in play.
Seriously, even if the GN scrolled smoother then it already does, I don't think I would really give a sh.t......It would not change my experience in the least.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jerky scrolling is annoying (in the browser and in XDA app)...it's as if the frame rate is running at 20fps as opposed to 60fps
BlackDino said:
android will never be as smooth as the iphone, its running a dalvik client
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If that's true then that sucks.
crossover37 said:
If that's true then that sucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
of course its true, everything is in java
and of course don't forget about the fact that Android handles the UI in a different way compared to iOS (the UI isn't prioritised or something along those lines).

Project Butter - Is it obvious to the naked eye?

People that installed Jelly Bean, do you see any increase in perfomance?
Write your opinions.
Its not a performance gain. Its just as fast as before just not nearly as choppy. There is a video around here sums it up pretty well.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
I do feel like it's snappier, but it's hard to say how much of it is just placebo for hearing about how much snappier it is. There's still some lag every now and then when bringing up the app drawer and such, but there's also graphical improvements that I think make up for everything (the "notification center" or whatever it's called is great).
Although there is Lag in odd spots, I notice neater and smoother transition effects more then anything else. The Keyboard also dissappears when returning to the home screen immediatly rather then lurking on the home screen like it did in ICS. Nothing Major or Revolutionary, but generally neater.
I can tell a major difference after flashing jb.
in old rom chrome is not rendering smoothly when you flip through horizontal tabs comparing to vertical ones. now the problem is completely gone.
From the off, the rom seems noticeably faster and smoother to me.
1. The new app transitions are fantastic. They fade in and out, which is quite slick.
2. The keyboard has ZERO lag, I didn't think it had any lag when I was running AOKP, but running the new JB rom, it's a lot faster again!
3. Home screen/App drawer transitions are a lot snappier. It is now on par with the transitions of an iPhone 4s (Compared with my friends earlier) No lag in the app drawer, even with all of my many apps installed.
4. Last but not least, scrolling long lists is buttery smooth for me Everything just seems so slick at the moment.
On a side note, some subtle changes, like when choosing default action, or long pressing on home screen look a lot nicer. The lock screen looks way cooler. And of course google now seems to be working great. (Aside from having to tell it to use English US, because its not fully functional in the UK)
Hope this helps anyone who was maybe sitting on the fence, I have been running AOKP since getting my nexus, Think is was build 11 or 12 I first had. I am now running Jelly-Belly by Team Inferno and have not even though about returning to AOKP. I will gladly return to AOKP when they release a stable JB update (which will likely be in August some time (JB Source to be released in mid July))
+1 to earlier posts. I can confirm, the "flow" thanks to "Project Butter" is very much appearant to the naked eye. I doubt there is an Android device out there that has a smoother UI than the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 with Jelly Bean right now. Love it.
EDIT: The smoothness of live wallpapers seems to have been greatly improved as well. A live wallpaper called "Fresh Leaves" lagged quite bad when using AOKP 4.0. Now, with Jelly Bean - no lag at all
sjrp said:
+1 to earlier posts. I can confirm, the "flow" thanks to "Project Butter" is very much appearant to the naked eye. I doubt there is an Android device out there that has a smoother UI than the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 with Jelly Bean right now. Love it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, I also think it is definitely closer, if not on par with that of the iPhone and Windows 7 phones.
Definitely solid 60 fps in more areas. My ics setup is probably 45-50fps solid. I noticed less quirky transitions in jelly bean but a few other odd quirks. Still it is overall smoother than ics. And could use a little more polish.
...
I agree with what everyone has said. Its noticeably a little quicker but it wasn't like ICS was horrible. One thing no one has mentioned is that the delay when pulling up your recent apps is gone. Its now pretty much instant which makes multitasking better. I think everyone should try jb. I've been running stock rooted jb since Wednesday night and couldn't be happier.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
There is LAG.
Whoever says there is no lag, do not see properly, or are fanboys willing to not see or ignore those quirks.
I'm a HUGE Google fan, and I've been disappointed. This is 2012, and I genuinely believed that Android is better in almost EVERY way than iOS. But I disagree now.
I watched the io live, so much chest thumping, project butter n stuff - got me very excited. After installing it on my nexus, and experiencing it - I concur with most of the statements mentioned here.
Now it disappoints me because THERE IS LAG and the way Google boasted about butter, and the hackery that has gone into it to make it "appear" smoother - while the odd lag and jerks still exists as before, is a bit of a dampener.
The phone is noticeably smoother, the jerks are still present - if you have an eye to look at it, and considering Android top smartphones pack 1.5 times the power of an iOS or Windows phone - backed by Google, can still not solve this basic UI fluid problem - is disappointing.
I would prefer less chest thumping, and more action in dealing with this problem but after doing some heavy net searching - I've found this issue relates to the core of android, and makes it an inferior user experience to iOS and even Win P7 which runs on inferior hardware too
search more on the subject and you would find, here's just one piece...
https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
dhruvraj said:
Whoever says there is no lag, do not see properly, or are fanboys willing to not see or ignore those quirks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have better than 20/20 vision and am hardly a fanboi. It's a significant boost in performance over ICS. Can't wait to see the AOSP ROMS, they shall be killer.
So keep looking, and you shall find.
Considering this is a Developer PREVIEW, I'd have to say it's amazing. There is most definitely a difference in smoothness when compared to ICS. There is slight lag, but nothing that hasn't been seen on competing OS.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
dhruvraj said:
So keep looking, and you shall find.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I shall find that it's not a significant improvement over ICS?
CMNein said:
I shall find that it's not a significant improvement over ICS?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Find proof in what I said earlier which you nitpicked
Observe your phone carefully - and you would find the same thing as what I wrote.
Now for your question here - yes, you are right, it is a good enough improvement over ICS.
The animations are faster, switching to messages and coming back - is much faster. App drawer, open close is faster - the screen "feels" more sensitive - it works with feather touches - and almost feels like the system is eager to make you feel how smooth it is.
All that works. ICS was smooth too. Granted this one is smoother.
Lag and jerks existed in ICS too, and they do in Jelly Bean as well. They have resorted to other ways of making the phone experience to appear smoother while the problem with lag - scrolling through screens, app drawers, switching from app back to home drawer, and then scrolling - the MAJOR components of lag, still exists.
and irritate. If you're fine with it, cool. Good for you. I expected better of Google. Given WP7 and iOS do a phenomenal job with inferior hardware. Even the iOS part doesnt hurt as much as the WP7 does.
I mean come on! MS making this better than Google? There's some serious questions to be asked on our love for android here.
I don't pay attention to the animations since I typically disable them, and they can indeed be "hacked" to appear smoother. I've always felt that animations are just wasted time. I think that this preview is a sign of good things to come, but also some bad things to come, i.e. the new wifi drivers STILL suck.
I can see your point however. I think it's the trade off we have to make to have such great customization vs the Iphone.
dhruvraj said:
There is LAG.
Whoever says there is no lag, do not see properly, or are fanboys willing to not see or ignore those quirks.
I'm a HUGE Google fan, and I've been disappointed. This is 2012, and I genuinely believed that Android is better in almost EVERY way than iOS. But I disagree now.
I watched the io live, so much chest thumping, project butter n stuff - got me very excited. After installing it on my nexus, and experiencing it - I concur with most of the statements mentioned here.
Now it disappoints me because THERE IS LAG and the way Google boasted about butter, and the hackery that has gone into it to make it "appear" smoother - while the odd lag and jerks still exists as before, is a bit of a dampener.
The phone is noticeably smoother, the jerks are still present - if you have an eye to look at it, and considering Android top smartphones pack 1.5 times the power of an iOS or Windows phone - backed by Google, can still not solve this basic UI fluid problem - is disappointing.
I would prefer less chest thumping, and more action in dealing with this problem but after doing some heavy net searching - I've found this issue relates to the core of android, and makes it an inferior user experience to iOS and even Win P7 which runs on inferior hardware too
search more on the subject and you would find, here's just one piece...
https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Finally someone had said what I have been thinking. Jellybean still lags a ton! How can Google talk about project butter so Mich while the rom still lags a crap ton?
Its a leaked developers version, its not ready for primetime and was never meant to be. Once AOSP is updated I'm sure it will be sorted. However, it is a promising start IMO. Seems smoother (NOT lagfree) then stock ICS
Everything's amazing and nobody is happy.
You want to see some lag, try a Vibrant on stock Froyo. This stuff does not bother me in the least. It didn't bother me in ICS. JB is awesome. JMO.

Buzz Launcher Beta

IF anybody is interested here is a great new launcher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buzzpia.aqua.launcher&feature=more_from_developer#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwMiwiY29tLmJ1enpwaWEuYXF1YS5sYXVuY2hlciJd
Looks intressting!
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
I've tried it and it is really nice, but I uninstalled it because it consumed too much battery and ram. The final version when it comes out I will definitely try again
I use it, it works pretty good.
I installed this launcher to try the Chrome OS theme from mycolorscreen, The Launcher is pretty good, but i just cannot leave the fast and fluid stock one.
http://mycolorscreen.com/2013/03/23/os-transfer/
Likes good...has anybody got it to work on Nexus 7?
Edit: never mind I got it working on Nexus 7
Nice launcher, but it needs a bit more development.
This is amazing. Just downloaded it and it runs beautifully and love how it comes pre set up.
Rather confusing launcher, I think I will try it out again and try to get the Chrome theme on it, but honestly wasn't impressed.
This is not just another launcher. A completely new launcher.
Congrats guys, very innovative. More innovative than apple and Samsung all together
Gotcha, now after watching the tutorial video I see the potential this launcher has. Great work!
Just a very very good launcher, I'm impressed !
Buy it's very annoying to have to download a lot of gadgets for it to be perfect.
And some french traduction of the main app and of the widget are awful, that makes the application hard to configure.
battery
it indeed eats too much battery...but i have to admit, it does look good
freeintruth said:
it indeed eats too much battery...but i have to admit, it does look good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Drain battery but overall really nice launcher :good:
vicino said:
+1
Drain battery but overall really nice launcher :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yea it does eat battery on more ram but wait till they sort that out i think mite be up there with nova apex ect one day
second thought: after a couple of days using this launcher and paying close attention to the battery usage, I have to say that it does not drain as much as i thought. I guess it depends on what homepack you download/use.
This launcher really makes my phone a lot better looking, with very little time and energy. And the customization freedom is huge!
I have now officially uninstalled Go Launcher.
freeintruth said:
second thought: after a couple of days using this launcher and paying close attention to the battery usage, I have to say that it does not drain as much as i thought. I guess it depends on what homepack you download/use.
This launcher really makes my phone a lot better looking, with very little time and energy. And the customization freedom is huge!
I have now officially uninstalled Go Launcher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its alot closer to SSL Launcher but in a clean more user friendly interface. Can't wait for it to be stable now. I put the Chrome theme on it that was shared earlier and its sick! Trying to replicate the Chrome theme on other launchers like Apex and Nova using Multi-Live Wallpaper and its becoming even more tedious. This makes things alot easier when creating a theme for mycolorscreen.
Corrupt colors and textures.. I was seeing alpha channel instead with some textures.
Beautiful and innovative home screen, high battery+ram usage, boring app drawner
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
This is a fantastic tool for customization, a congratulations to the app developers on this one. Let's hope it catches on and we get an influx of themes.

Why can't Samsung make Touchwiz smooth?

Even on a super fast device like this one, Touchwiz is still garbage in terms of fluidity and smoothness compared to Sense. 6
I just switched from HTC One M8, and it was smoother than Touchwiz in almost every respect. Sure, some scenarios are nearly indistinguishable on both devices in terms of smoothness, but some are really bad on Note 4.
For example, whenever something happens in the background that requires storage access, the Note starts to chug.
Do this test on your device. Start updating 5-10 apps in the Play Store, then go and scroll in some other app. You will see immediately that the scrolling becomes jerky and sometimes stops completely for half a second when a new app starts updating. Sense doesn't do that. If you've never played with Sense 6, I suggest you go to a store and check it out - it's completely smooth regardless of what happens in the background.
It's as if Sense can utilize only idle cpu cycles for background processes, so everything remains smooth and fluid at all times, while Note 4 appears to give full real time priority for certain routines of background processes. For a modern flagship devices, this is unacceptable.
I really hope we can get root very soon, so developers can possibly fix this travesty.
How do we get Samsung to care about this? I took their survey from the email I got. I focused on speed and performance. How else can we alert Samsung? That people who care about speed and performance should have a voice?
Touchwiz is sorta like windows vista lmao
I doubt anyone on XDA uses Touchwiz versus Nova and the other choices.
chamberc said:
I doubt anyone on XDA uses Touchwiz versus Nova and the other choices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Touchwiz here refers to the entire Android "skin, " not just the launcher. You will have jerky performance of the kind I described in the op with Nova and any other launcher.
I have used Nova for years and the performance blows TW out of the water. No "jerkiness" at all.
chamberc said:
I doubt anyone on XDA uses Touchwiz versus Nova and the other choices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tons of people use the TouchWiz launcher. Nova is nice, and I used it on my g3, but I need the stock widgets that can't be replicated.
OP. I agree to a point. Touchwiz is much more fluid that in the past. It has hiccups, but it's a trade off for feature rich software. It's odd, because the g3 lacked features and lagged worse than any phone I've owned. The m8 is buttery smooth, but it's also boring.
chamberc said:
I have used Nova for years and the performance blows TW out of the water. No "jerkiness" at all.
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You didn't even read what I wrote did you?
Rippley05 said:
Tons of people use the TouchWiz launcher. Nova is nice, and I used it on my g3, but I need the stock widgets that can't be replicated.
OP. I agree to a point. Touchwiz is much more fluid that in the past. It has hiccups, but it's a trade off for feature rich software. It's odd, because the g3 lacked features and lagged worse than any phone I've owned. The m8 is buttery smooth, but it's also boring.
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I don't think it's a trade off. It feels like there's a fundamental problem with the way the skin is programmed by Samsung.
But I'm not an expert. It would be nice if a developer could chime in.
nabbed said:
You didn't even read what I wrote did you?
I don't think it's a trade off. It feels like there's a fundamental problem with the way the skin is programmed by Samsung.
But I'm not an expert. It would be nice if a developer could chime in.
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You bet... Nova is far less laggy than touchwiz.
chamberc said:
You bet... Nova is far less laggy than touchwiz.
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Please stop derailing the thread. Touchwiz is an android skin, not just the launcher. You can't use Nova while scrolling in a web browser, can you?
nabbed said:
Please stop derailing the thread. Touchwiz is an android skin, not just the launcher. You can't use Nova while scrolling in a web browser, can you?
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LOLOL he is just not getting what you're saying dude... give up on him... the rest of us understand exactly what you mean... cannot wait for root.... hopeful after reading the last few posts of this thread ---> http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4-verizon/general/talk-root-t2908919/page18# we may be getting somewhere...
nabbed said:
You didn't even read what I wrote did you?
I don't think it's a trade off. It feels like there's a fundamental problem with the way the skin is programmed by Samsung.
But I'm not an expert. It would be nice if a developer could chime in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not an expert either, but it's obvious, at least to me, that the more you cram into an OS..the more it taxes the hardware/software.
It is a tradeoff because everyone who has owned a Samsung device knows it will be this way..so we trade off butter smoothness for software features. Maybe Samsung will figure it out one day, maybe they won't.
HTC was the same way until they stripped Sense down to barebones. While it is nice to scroll on the m8, it is also boring for me to have such a generic feeling device. It's all about preference.
My N4 is very smooth. Especially compared to my G3. Only thing that lags is the recent apps button up, which is a bit disappointing as I use that all the time.
I agree with the issues with tw. Part of it has to do with the work on the Java threads which is why the choreographer process always drops frames which is the jitter. The kernels are also tuned differently and more for stability than anything else.
Rippley05 said:
I'm not an expert either, but it's obvious, at least to me, that the more you cram into an OS..the more it taxes the hardware/software.
It is a tradeoff because everyone who has owned a Samsung device knows it will be this way..so we trade off butter smoothness for software features. Maybe Samsung will figure it out one day, maybe they won't.
HTC was the same way until they stripped Sense down to barebones. While it is nice to scroll on the m8, it is also boring for me to have such a generic feeling device. It's all about preference.
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Since you've made it abundantly clear that the launcher is a separate issue, how is sense boring, not counting the launcher?
Just about every Android Ive ever used gets herky jerky when apps are installing. Thunderbolt, GNex, Note 3, etc.
Samsung should be able to tune the response in things like recent apps though. I was using a DROID RAZR M recently and recent apps pops up instantly on that old thing. The Note 4 takes a good second or three to bring up recent apps depending how many recent apps are in there.
deefster said:
Since you've made it abundantly clear that the launcher is a separate issue, how is sense boring, not counting the launcher?
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Actually. Where did I make it abundantly clear? May want to pay attention to what you read. Wasn't me.
Sense is boring to me. It's generic, doesn't offer a fraction of the software features and customization that samsung/LG offer. That's the tradeoff for being so smooth..and that's what I was talking about. Not the launcher.
I'm enjoying touch wiz. I don't see how u guys don't like it. If u don't like it then just don't buy a Samsung phone.
It's more of a fundamental issue with android in general. Here is an older article, but it explains the issue pretty well.
http://techland.time.com/2011/12/07/is-android-doomed-to-lag-more-than-ios/
Maybe lollipop will change how the UI is rendered , maybe not. But I don't think the lagginess is the sole product of touchwiz. Touchwiz does not modify the deep level coding that controls CPU access prority, ISR behavior, etc. Seems like Samsung is trying to do the best with what they got.
Here is some follow up on the guys original post where google developers comment.
https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13fzt2wrwaxwjqxc04cdx0jsve5hhl4b04
While I'm not a software engineer, I am an electrical and computer engineer. I quit my full time job and went back to school at 30 because I was tired of not being educated enough to understand the things I had questions about.
It's funny.. the more I learned the more I realized how astonishingly difficult it was/is to build the technology we have today. The amount of engineering that goes into designing today's modern processors is incredible. Now that I am "in the know" with exactly how these things work, it's a lot easier for me to understand the milestones and why things are the way they are (heat dissapation in modern multicore CPUs is one of those things that is hard to solve and even harder to explain to the layman why it's hard to solve, a commanding grasp of quantum physics and modern microscale transistor design theory is needed) and I don't get bothered by it, I realize that it's being worked on and I can identify the subtle improvements and I recognize the significance of those improvements.
The point is, it's easy to "blame" samsung or Google for the stuttering you are experiencing, but it's better to recognize the progress that's being made. The problem is not trivial to solve and to think it is or that "it should have been fixed by now" is really naive.
crazed_z06 said:
Just about every Android Ive ever used gets herky jerky when apps are installing. Thunderbolt, GNex, Note 3, etc.
Samsung should be able to tune the response in things like recent apps though. I was using a DROID RAZR M recently and recent apps pops up instantly on that old thing. The Note 4 takes a good second or three to bring up recent apps depending how many recent apps are in there.
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Click to collapse
This is really the thing that bothers me the most. Bringing up recent apps is SO SLOW. There is a huge delay when you press that button. It really makes that feature useless for the stuff I use most, because I can just hit the home button and the app shortcut faster than using recent apps.

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