[TIP] Remove widgets to decrease homescreen redraw - AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III

I'm unsure how much "news" this is, but my GS III kept redrawing the homescreen, if I stayed in another app for longer than 30 seconds (even opening Settings!).
After some Google'ing, I saw that widgets may be an issue. I was just using two small ones, the built-in calendar (2x1) and email (4x2): nothing for a 1.4GHz dual-core with 2GB of RAM, right? Well, I removed both of those and now my GS III is as zippy as I got it. Everything is faster: the Apps menu loads faster, no homescreen redraw, everything is way more fluid.
This "tip" might be uber-common knowledge, but coming off an iPhone, I had no idea widgets were so draining. I'm just really happy and I thought I would share my happiness, just in case someone else is trying to diagnose their GS III.
~Ibrahim~

Or just install the v6 supercharger script. It modifies how android handles memory. Also, using nova launcher I almost never have home screen redraws.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I run about 3 times the widgets you were with no issue, but neither of the ones you did. Perhaps the issue isn't with widgets entirely but one of those widgets malfunctioning. Have you tried other widgets to test your thesis? Did any combination of two regardless of the widget cause redraw? I would test it further if I were you, I'll run those two also and see if I can recreate it.
Additionally, are you running stock Rom? Rooted? Custom Rom/which? Uv or oc?etc...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium

theraffman said:
I run about 3 times the widgets you were with no issue, but neither of the ones you did. Perhaps the issue isn't with widgets entirely but one of those widgets malfunctioning. Have you tried other widgets to test your thesis? Did any combination of two regardless of the widget cause redraw? I would test it further if I were you, I'll run those two also and see if I can recreate it.
Additionally, are you running stock Rom? Rooted? Custom Rom/which? Uv or oc?etc...
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the homescreen redraw is a little sporadic. I just know that for the few hours I removed the two widgets, the phone felt faster and I experienced no homescreen redraws (in comparison to the weeks where I had many homescreen redraws and a bit of lagginess). I placed 9 widgets on for about 10 minutes (but did not include the two "bad' ones): no redraws. I then put the two "bad" ones again and I had a homescreen redraw after about 3 minutes of using Boat Browser.
Stock as can be: i747 running UCALG1. No root, no custom ROM, no UV/OC, nothing. Just bought it out the store and took that one OTA update that removed universal search.
lessthanzach said:
Or just install the v6 supercharger script. It modifies how android handles memory. Also, using nova launcher I almost never have home screen redraws.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried Nova and Apex, too, but I didn't like their style and they didn't seem quite as smooth as TW. But, I did see the V6 Supercharger script as a fix (I think it lowered the OOM priority of the TW launcher?)

And I eat my words!
I needed those two "bad" widgets and the redraws were slowing my mojo. Tried a few launchers apprehensively, but pleasantly surprised. Currently a fan of Nova which-unlike my previous try-is blazing!
You may think stock should be faster because Samsung should know more about their device than an app developer...but my experience is beginning to show that is not true. Already replaced the SMS app because of bugs and now the launcher, too.

Related

Screen Artifacts

Here's a weird one....
Samsung Galaxy Nexus...unrooted,
I downloaded Beautiful Widgets and for the first time used there live wallpaper(open gl version),
Noticed today a lot of screen artifacts ie. Letters being dropped and unreadable,
I've factory reset the phone and all seems OK now,
What the hell happened ?
Cheers in advance
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
I think I might be having the same issue. It seems if my phone is running and I lock it for a while. Then unlock it after it's been sleep. All of my widgets are showing garbled pixels all over the screen. Then when I reboot the issue is gone. The next time it happens I'll take screen shot and see if you or anybody else is having the same issue as me.
Also using BW but reading this I'm scared to use their LWP, let us know how it goes, did BW cause any reboots? Fishing here because I'm not sure if BW is to blame or not.
Mine has rebooted a few times but I've found nothing to blame it on yet.
BTW no artifacts.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Hello mate...it was probably more of a coincidence than anything, I'd had bw on for 24hrs then this happened so very possibly a very big coincidence
I found after a factory reset it spot on again....
Maybe I'll try the bw lwp again and see how it goes.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Hey. This is kinda old but I am having similar issues.
I also have BW but Ive had it for about 3-4 days and just started experiencing this today. Only changes I have made today was auto-flashing franco-r116. This could just be a coincidence I suppose.
I managed to catch a screenshot. Its tough because it comes and goes rather quickly, mostly when im scrolling through stuff.
Really dont want to reflash
I just posted in a different thread with the same issue and I'm also running Franco nightly 116. I guess I need to revert back to M2.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA
Good to know. Ill reflash M2 aswell and report back here if problem persists!
If you are running R116 and you are getting artifacts then maybe your gpu can't handle the overclock, one version is 384mhz and the other is 512mhz. If 512 gives you artifacts use 384, if 384 gives you artifacts then you will have to use a milestone Franco kernel because that is stock gpu, 307mhz.
This was my first thread (screenshots included).
Since then it's been an intermittent problem on Apex and Nova Launchers. Not on launcher 7, however, and not on the new miui launcher, and (as far as I can remember) not in any app besides the launcher. The problem also seems to be exacerbated by having lots of widgets, though naturally it's hard to measure since it only happens intermittently.
aLogCat also comes up with "OpenGL is out of memory!" when these things occur. The problem seems to transcend kernels and GPU overclocking (my device seems to be bad at CPU overclock, and I've never tried it seriously).
I think that narrows it down to: launcher issue, widget issue, usage issue (maybe it's being strained too much at a particular time), or some combination.
My current best hypotheses (or suggested solutions, sort of):
1) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9412662/how-can-fonts-cause-opengl-out-of-memory-error i.e. certain widgets have fonts too big. This fits with your usage of BeautifulWidgets and my large clocks. But it doesn't always cause an issue, or for everyone.
2) Large grid (in my case, 5x4). One of the common denominators for Apex and Nova, but not MIUI, is resizable grid. As such, I'm currently in the process of testing 4x4; it seems to be able to handle more strain, but since it's intermittent I'll have to try for longer time to be sure.

Live wallpaper jumping

After several updates this bug is still with us..! You would think that a phone with 4 cores and a gpu that can handle complex 3d shading, could handle sense moving from one screen to the next without stopping..?? Now my question is this.. Is it a HTC problem or Nvida problem and who should sort it out?
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA
I think this is a Sense problem to save GPU / CPU power. There are 3rd party launchers out there that have this option to make the launcher more responsive. I also believe (but not tried) if you install and use a 3rd party launcher this problem is not there. I'm unsure if HTC will fix it and that is meant to be like this by design (just like the multitasking).
BTW there was no real need to start a new topic for this...
chris_lyon82 said:
I think this is a Sense problem to save GPU / CPU power. There are 3rd party launchers out there that have this option to make the launcher more responsive. I also believe (but not tried) if you install and use a 3rd party launcher this problem is not there. I'm unsure if HTC will fix it and that is meant to be like this by design (just like the multitasking).
BTW there was no real need to start a new topic for this...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
100% sense every other launcher doesn't have this, I don't use live wallpapers battery hog.
There is a nice launcher called Regina and it is 100% 3d graphic launcher runs really nice on tegra 3
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium
chris_lyon82 said:
I think this is a Sense problem to save GPU / CPU power. There are 3rd party launchers out there that have this option to make the launcher more responsive. I also believe (but not tried) if you install and use a 3rd party launcher this problem is not there. I'm unsure if HTC will fix it and that is meant to be like this by design (just like the multitasking).
BTW there was no real need to start a new topic for this...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apex Launcher doesnt have this problem. Works fine
whats weird is that live wallpapers were actually pretty smooth on 1.19 firmware (the one my HOX shipped with) in rosie. but yeah just use any other launcher and you wont have issues with live wallpaper.
I still get the same issue with another launcher, when I unlock the screen. The live wallpaper is static like it was closed by the android task scheduler.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
sense launcher freezes the widgets while scrolling, maybe thats related to the bug we have when using live wallpapers
I mailed HTC about this, and after some time they mailed me back saying that the problem was sent to their development in Taiwan for further investigation and to find out if the problem can be solved with an update. I can give you a copy of the mails, but it's in danish
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA

Screenshots!

I have seen a couple of these posts and I am curious as many I'm sure, about our phones and operation from day to day use, I am sure we all wouldnt mind showing off our systems anyways as its always been an open source tradition for developers and testers to show off our skills and our differences.
If you dunno how, just press and hold both the home+power keys at the same time and it will take a screenshot and save it in /mnt/screenshot or similar..
So without further interruption, here is my lil piece of contribution to the stable ics with patches applied to fix small issues and yes everything works beautifully in my phone.
Here are mine lol. Something went wrong my last attempt.
And lastly to share the version and kernel
I'm using nova launcher prime, along with power amp paid, I bought nova prime for a quarter because of a promotional from Google and love it!
I also have system tuner pro(useful as a tester, gives you lots of control over the system), sense mini clock and weather widget(free), and the last widget is the bit defender widget for battery optimization. All others are default from my nova launcher settings.
I use this system as my day to day running ics 4.0.4, litekernel so I can overclock the CPU and control it all, using system tuner pro.
I wish I could change the boot animation but lol oh well.
Here is mine...
Sent from my SGH-I927 using xda premium
Love that wallpaper

So laggy..please help.

Hi guys, I just got the tab 3 8.0, and I like most part of it but the performance is seriously bad..I have already restored all my apps from Google server. While running apps and switching between them, I can't take all the lags it has. I just got it today so I can return it if I want but I'm wondering if rooting this device actually gains much performance improvements. I used to have a galaxy s2x, which has a similar if not worse spec than this tablet, and I don't know if It was because I running rooted version of touchwiz or not but the performance was pretty good. This tablet is much worse. A simple reboot fixes the lag but after a few hours, as I use it, I notice the stutters while using it. I just had a serious lag in Google plus app, it was stuttering so bad, but it came back to smooth after 5 seconds.
So will installing the custom Rom available for tab 3 8.0 improve the performance significantly? I know there are not many ROMs for tab 3 8.0, so any user of this device just rooted the tab and tweak it themselves to gain performance improvements? Not just little bit, but a lot.
Thanks!
sw6lee said:
Hi guys, I just got the tab 3 8.0, and I like most part of it but the performance is seriously bad..I have already restored all my apps from Google server. While running apps and switching between them, I can't take all the lags it has. I just got it today so I can return it if I want but I'm wondering if rooting this device actually gains much performance improvements. I used to have a galaxy s2x, which has a similar if not worse spec than this tablet, and I don't know if It was because I running rooted version of touchwiz or not but the performance was pretty good. This tablet is much worse. A simple reboot fixes the lag but after a few hours, as I use it, I notice the stutters while using it. I just had a serious lag in Google plus app, it was stuttering so bad, but it came back to smooth after 5 seconds.
So will installing the custom Rom available for tab 3 8.0 improve the performance significantly? I know there are not many ROMs for tab 3 8.0, so any user of this device just rooted the tab and tweak it themselves to gain performance improvements? Not just little bit, but a lot.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One thread is enough, you don't have to post the same question in multiple sections.
As I said on your other thread, stop blaming the device and look at your apps. My 8.0 isn't laggy at all. In fact it's pretty zippy. Chances are one of your apps is causing the issue or you have too much stuff filling your memory. Do a factory reset. If the lag stays gone add your apps back a couple at a time till you find the one that's not playing nice. How much free space/memory do you have left? The fact that the lag goes away when you reboot points to it being an app problem.
sw6lee said:
Hi guys, I just got the tab 3 8.0, and I like most part of it but the performance is seriously bad..I have already restored all my apps from Google server. While running apps and switching between them, I can't take all the lags it has. I just got it today so I can return it if I want but I'm wondering if rooting this device actually gains much performance improvements. I used to have a galaxy s2x, which has a similar if not worse spec than this tablet, and I don't know if It was because I running rooted version of touchwiz or not but the performance was pretty good. This tablet is much worse. A simple reboot fixes the lag but after a few hours, as I use it, I notice the stutters while using it. I just had a serious lag in Google plus app, it was stuttering so bad, but it came back to smooth after 5 seconds.
So will installing the custom Rom available for tab 3 8.0 improve the performance significantly? I know there are not many ROMs for tab 3 8.0, so any user of this device just rooted the tab and tweak it themselves to gain performance improvements? Not just little bit, but a lot.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
go to developers options and turn off all animations,
also disable CPU power saving option in power saving mode,
then check if you feel any difference
Thanks for replies guys!
So I believe it was ram issue. Too little ram left when it was stuttering really bad. However, I'm wondering why this device was not releasing ram by closing open apps for the forgoing app to run well. This is the android way of managing ram isn't it? But when I checked the ram manager in the task manager app that came with the tab, there was very little ram left, less than 100mb I believe.
After I have been using it for more now, I also rooted it, and I deleted almost all the unnecessary bloatware. I think I see a huge improvement in performance after I did this, deleting bloatware.
The tablet runs pretty well now.
Although..I still see some stutters in animations, where the animation has dropped frame rates. Is this just due to Touchwiz? It doesn't happen every time, but sometime when opening app, or switching between apps in recent apps panel. The animations sometimes are pretty choppy. It is not a huge deal, but I just remember that my S2X was much smoother. Maybe it's because I was running a custom rom which was heavily tweaked by deviant development.
Any info would be great!
Thanks for your help again guys.
Hmmm, i have no problem at all, the tab 3 runs pretty smooth, stock. Now I have set the animations to 0.5 in developer options and it runs even smoother. Ok, it's not as fast as the Note 2, but it runs very nice. Very happy with it. (Using Nova launcher)
(I also disabled some if the apps that come with it, SNS Samsung Facebook, Samsung widgets, flipboard an the lot)
Sent from my SM-T311 using XDA Premium HD app
Gede said:
Hmmm, i have no problem at all, the tab 3 runs pretty smooth, stock. Now I have set the animations to 0.5 in developer options and it runs even smoother. Ok, it's not as fast as the Note 2, but it runs very nice. Very happy with it. (Using Nova launcher)
(I also disabled some if the apps that come with it, SNS Samsung Facebook, Samsung widgets, flipboard an the lot)
Sent from my SM-T311 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see. Mine is running pretty nice right now but I'm feel kind of afraid as I use it thinking "will this animation be choppy?" As I long press the home button or something. Lol I really don't like choppiness.
So you don't notice ANY choppiness in animation? I want to know if it's only my device so that I can figure out what's the cause. I'm using nova launcher as well btw.
Thanks!
Sent from my SM-T310 using Tapatalk 4
sw6lee said:
I see. Mine is running pretty nice right now but I'm feel kind of afraid as I use it thinking "will this animation be choppy?" As I long press the joke button or something. Lol I really don't like choppiness.
So you don't notice ANY choppiness in animation? I want to know if it's only my device so that I can figure out what's the cause. I'm using nova launcher as well btw.
Thanks!
Sent from my SM-T310 using Tapatalk 4
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can't remember I did. Running smooth.
Sent from my SM-T311 using XDA Premium HD app
Gede said:
Can't remember I did. Running smooth.
Sent from my SM-T311 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Okay thanks for letting me know. Now I need to find why sometimes it lags even though it's better than before now. Hmm..
Sent from my SM-T310 using Tapatalk 4

Stutter?

Is it just my phone that stutters quite frequently or is this just a general problem with the m9? All the reviewers said something along the lines of "this phone is a speed beast" or something like that but I hate the stuttering. My brother's Nexus 6 is time and time again smoother than my phone. For example, when I go on nova launcher with a vertical scrolling app drawer and scroll, the m9 stutters when scrolling while the Nexus 6 is at a constant 60fps. Yet when I looked it up online everyone said the m9 was faster. Also, could this be a problem with the ROM, would I be better off with a custom ROM such as CM or ADHD? This lag is especially annoying since I paid good money for my phone
Is it just my phone that's bad or is this the snapdragon 810?
try to play with scrolling options in nova settings. there shouldn't be a problem normally, also be sure to keep power saver off, it will make the phone lag and stutter/slow
DeeZZ_NuuZZ said:
try to play with scrolling options in nova settings. there shouldn't be a problem normally, also be sure to keep power saver off, it will make the phone lag and stutter/slow
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have power saver off and changing the settings does no good, I still get small stuttering when I scroll, although since I got custom Roms it's been reduced, it's still there. But thanks anyway
i really had no problems with stock, aswell as my dad, he is f ull unrooted and no laggs or whatsoever. ICE 10 port is awesome and with ex kernel i have really no lags or stutter or so
DeeZZ_NuuZZ said:
i really had no problems with stock, aswell as my dad, he is f ull unrooted and no laggs or whatsoever. ICE 10 port is awesome and with ex kernel i have really no lags or stutter or so
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed the scrolling in the Nexus 5x is different, it's a lot slower so it's smoother, is there a way to get the same thing on the HTC one m9
Where do you notice these stutter when scrolling? In apps? Or where?
Sent from my HTC One M9 using XDA-Developers mobile app
Nova launcher when using vertical drawers, I can also see it in action launcher and Google launcher, I really want to get to the bottom of this lag.
NDR_man said:
Nova launcher when using vertical drawers, I can also see it in action launcher and Google launcher, I really want to get to the bottom of this lag.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nova shouldn't lag, the others are ****ty. just play around with the drawer settings in nova. sense launcher for example does not lag a bit, also when using nova, tried it now with every drawer, it works as it should, without stutter and lag
DeeZZ_NuuZZ said:
nova shouldn't lag, the others are ****ty. just play around with the drawer settings in nova. sense launcher for example does not lag a bit, also when using nova, tried it now with every drawer, it works as it should, without stutter and lag
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think I have a fix, basically I was going through the kernel settings in my ROM and I turned all my cores minimum frequency to 768mhz and now when I run nova I get 0 stutter and lag, I'm guessing my phone was just turning the core frequency down too much, this still doesn't explain why you don't get lag but I guess a fix is a fix. Since getting 60fps everywhere on my phone I'm in a sense of euphoria, also do you know a way for me to manage my CPU settings on an app basis

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