Why Android's UI appears laggy compared to other mobile OSes

[Drillbit]

Yes I definitely believe this to be the case.

Out of the box when I first got my Galaxy S it was automatically connected to the network and sync'ing mail, market. Then when I installed some apps and enabled the weather and finance widget, they also started sync'ing.

Then when I tried browsing it was slow and not smooth at all. Games wouldn't run so well either.

Back then when samsung didn't have its one task killer, the one most suggested was advanced so I tried it and it did its job. I'd run it and open a browser or play a game and it would be quick and smooth.

Later, I decided to keep things minimal (few apps, no widgets, no auto sync, no network connection etc) and everything got way way better. These days I only use samsung task killer.



Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Don't use live wallpapers too.

Apps, and maybe Android itself at the OS level, need to add add "Sync only on Wifi". Some apps already do that.


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A note on how the Android/Linux OS works. The Samsung task killer would also list native apps that are running the background. Dalvik only self terminates Dalvik (Java written) apps that are dynamically compiled. It doesn't kill native apps that are compiled in C and distributed in executable form. This is actually a Unix characteristic, and you will see it in iOS as well --- an unused process will only be paused in the background, maybe cached but never killed. The user has to manually terminate them either through the quit command in the app itself, or by process kill. Most Android apps are Dalvik, not native, but some games are native. Opera and Firefox are both native and possess quit commands. Its a good chance that an app that has a quit command, has native extensions or is a native app itself. Another characteristic of the native app is that when they are launched, they may sometimes say, installing libraries or something like that.

So its good to use the Samsung task killer over such apps like Advanced Task Killer.

[Varjak]

I usually turn off all 'animations' when given the options. Recently, my cable box was 'upgraded' with 'better' graphics and smooth 'animations.' Result? Now the box is slow and laggy. Sometimes I'm not even sure that my 'button-press' registered. Then I press again and end up in the wrong screen. I often wonder if ANY testing takes place with these decisions.

Just to re-address something a few comments back. Yes, I agree, WHAT is running makes a difference too; but it seems that several 'little' things can also muck up things pretty well too.

[Drillbit]

Additional notes since we mentioned the Samsung task killer app.

In HTC you will find a similar app by going to Quick Settings on the notification bar, then total Memory. It would list all the processes with Activity or have a high memory usage on it. It is easy to miss HTC's task killer, since unlike Samsung, it does not take the form of an app that resides in the homescreen, but rather, an integral part within the menus of HTC Sense itself.

Again, if you're using a phone with a late generation HTC Sense, it is better to use this menu app to kill tasks rather than 3rd party task killers in the Android Market. You don't need to be killing services that occupy memory like 22k, which is what such task killers list. If you have to kill a process, it has to be something meaty like 22mb or 70mb.