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.

Uninstall Misbehaving Apps

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.

Uninstall Crapware

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

older. 

I'm pretty sure that having too many messages is slowing it down (over 3500), but it

freezes when I try and delete them all. Any suggestions?

promoted by Whitson Gordon

  Whitson Gordon  @food_science

@food_science: Oooh, never thought about that tip. Yeah, clearing the messages

would be a good idea. 

I'm not sure, but maybe if you go to Settings Applications Manage Applications All

Messaging and hit "Clear Data", it might clear them?

  jessecbrennan  @food_science

@food_science: I had the same problem with my hero with the phone becoming

unresponsive when trying to delete messages 

I downloaded "SMS Backup+" to backup my old messages to gmail, and "Delete Old

Messages" to clear out messages. Both apps are available for free from the market.

Gerardo Zamudio approved this comment

  Jurai  @food_science

@food_science: ouch, possibly try a third party sms app, you might be stuck having

to do a factory reset if nothing else though, atleast that would clean out your

messages

  Decad3nce  @food_science

@food_science: 

If you're rooted, just use adb shell and clear/delete the mmssms database: 

./adb remount 

./adb shell 

rm /data/data/com.*.*.telephony/databases/mmssms.db 

Otherwise, use an app like Root Explorer to access the above directory and just long

pressdelete. 

-Decad3nce

  DanBroChill  @food_science

@food_science: just FYI, my old android would rack up about 3k + messages and I

had the SAME issue you did. But finally one day, I hit delete all, left my phone alone

for about 45 minutes and it actually finished. Keep in mind the phone stayed frozen

this whole time, so maybe you should set them to delete and just walk away for a

while.

  Gabriel Féron  @food_science

@food_science: You should root your phone, and simply delete the SMS directly in

the filesystem. If you don't want to root, then you need to reset your device...

Gerardo Zamudio approved this comment

  bmatic586  @food_science

@food_science: use chompsms....it's a far better sms app for the hero...had the

same issue...after switching to chompsms...no lagging in accessing sms anymore

Gerardo Zamudio approved this comment

  BlaqkAudio  @food_science

@food_science: When you say delete, do you mean all at once? If so, have you tried

deleting by thread? Just long press over a thread in the inbox and it should give you

the option to delete.

  Chief Chili Fry Maker  @food_science

@food_science: I have an HTC Hero, and am getting great results using the latest (or

close to it) nightly build of CyanogenMod 6.1, plus Launcher Pro. 

I use voice for text messages... I am not sure if they are stored on my phone at all...

  food_science  @Decad3nce

@Decad3nce: unfortunately I'm not rooted yet. It's on my (long) to do list, though I

had a go with z4root the other day, which just made my phone lag like crazy.

  food_science  @Chief Chili Fry Maker

@jalb: what did you use to root it? (see my above comment)

  Ninety-9  @food_science

@food_science: I have a Hero as well, here's what I did to speed it up: 

First, I installed that one-touch rooting app, check Gizmodo for that. 

SetCPU overclocked the phone, and I saw no difference in battery life or heat. 

Titanium backup (I believe it will auto-install BusyBox, which is required). Allowed

me to uninstall a bunch of nonsense stuff, like NFL live and whatever else I didn't

want. 

Installed Launcher Pro as my UI. This requires a program called HomeSwitcher,

which basically reprograms the home button to bring you to the Launcher Pro

interface, instead of the Sense Interface. 

Phone is very quick and feels like new.

  the john  @Whitson Gordon

@Whitson Gordon: You can use an app like WaveSecure to back them up, and the

new version of Handcent SMS has that ability as well.

  shokkapic  @food_science

@food_science: I own a HTC Hero too. And since I installed a 2.2 Rom on it, I felt I

had one of the fastest cellphones in the world. :P 

Regarding the messages, I delete them once a week.

Gerardo Zamudio approved this comment

  jhench  @food_science

@food_science: In the Messaging settings you should be able to set a text

messaging limit. Set it and forget it. 

I would combine it with something like SMS Backup + that uploads your texts to

gmail so you still have them all even when they're deleted from your phone.

  Pete Venkman  @food_science

@food_science: Let me know how you fare with your HTC Hero. Mine is an absolute

DOG.

  gawyn210  @food_science

@food_science: I use an app on my HTC Hero called SMS Backup. This app wakes up

and runs in the back ground. It will archive all my incoming and outgoing sms

messages to a folder in Gmail called sms. I can delete all my messages every so

often without the fear of losing anything. In fact the added bonus is that I can now

use Google's search capabilities to find old messages faster.

  fdisk  @food_science

@food_science: You can always factory wipe your phone, just make sure you backup

pictures and videos before you do this. You will probably also lose your browser

bookmarks, SMS and MMS messages, and game saves. Just carefully backup

everything you need before you do this; I believe there are some apps on the

market that allow you to do this even if you don't have root access. 

Secondly; before you wipe, go into your email account, gmail, whatever, and delete

all the messages you want to get rid of; otherwise they'll sync right back down to

your device and screw you up again. 

Once you've done that do a wipe, your contacts, calendar, and emails will come

back on the first sync since those are being stored on the Google Cloud; your phone

will probably take a day or two to be updated once again to the latest firmware (If

you do a full wipe, not sure if you can do just a data wipe on Android). 

I definitely recommend getting a custom launcher whether you wipe it or not,

Launcher Pro is excellent and it will make your phone "feel" faster even if in reality

it's not.

  dannkherb  @food_science

@food_science: Dood, I also have an HTC Hero. I just rooted, CM6 rom, and

overclocked and it's literally like a brand new phone. Totally worth it. 

[Full Update Guide - Sprint Hero with Android 2.1] 

[http://www.cyanogenmod.com/]

  wonderyak  @food_science

@food_science: There are several apps in the market for backing up and deleting

SMS. I'd try one of those.

  dannkherb  @Pete Venkman

@Pete Venkman: I've got a Hero that I just rooted, CM6 rom, and overclock. You will

have a new phone.

  Pete Venkman  @dannkherb

@dannkherb: I've looked into rooting and instaling a new ROM, but everything

always seemed so "experimental" to me. 

I'm definately up for it, but I just haven't found anything that seems to really walk

me through the process, and let me know what I'll have when I'm done.

  Kanged  @Whitson Gordon

@Whitson Gordon: Congratulations, u just made into my list of tech journalists who

really know what they are talking about. I just came to read the article to see what

information have u supplied and to my surprise u have written everything

accurately. 

U missed surface dithering in CM here which is by default in Gingerbread. With

surface dithering u get real less banding but its costs on CPU a bit. Should be

disabled on old phones but is a good option on new phones. About VM heap size

most people using smartphone as a business cellphone the VM like 24 should be ok

not less than that. Only old devices need to keep VM heap low. The phones with

1ghz should prefer 32m due to the fact that they take more resources for the same

app as their mdpi phones due to bigger graphics etc. 

Nice Man, loved to see someone with real knowledge and not like other writers who

dont even think generally what they are writing cough Nilay Patel cough and some

giz writers though giz writers are mostly taking fragmentation

Gerardo Zamudio approved this comment

promoted by Whitson Gordon

  RMRenfield  @food_science

@food_science: Look for SMS Backup & Restore in the Market. It's a free app. You

could backup your texts before deleting them all, and restore them back if

performance doesn't improve.

  FauxReal  @food_science

@food_science: My friend has Droid Eris and when he tries to delete a conversation

of say 50 messages it takes about 15 minutes and he has to shut his phone off to

get it to stop otherwise. He said he waits till it gets past a thousand then starts it

right before he goes to bed, and has even a few times still been going when he

woke up. Never seen anything like it before. Mine literally takes about 2 seconds

tops no matter how many messages there are in the conversation.

  geolemon  @food_science

@food_science: I never clear my messages, BUT I'm running a Cyanogen ROM that

includes Apps2SD, which lets me move my apps to the SD card, freeing internal

memory. 

Note that once you get that 'low internal memory" warning icon in your taskbar, you

may also simply stop receiving text messages until you clear up space. 

Not that I know this from experience or anything. Cough. 

moving all my apps to the SD card (except core apps - just ones I installed) seems to

have permanently resolved the problem. 

I doubt that it's slowing down your phone though. My G1 I think is older than your

Hero, and I've never deleted messages (short of restoring my phone to a previous

version and wiping out whatever I might have received in the meantime), at least

from friends I talk to regularly. 

I also use Handcent, which lets you long-click any given thread, and delete it

entirely. That makes maintenance easy.

  Olly 'Olive' Treen  @food_science

@food_science: My sister had speed issues with her Hero that turned out to be

partly message-related. She's not very computer literate, so we didn't root, but we

messed around with launchers and watchdog and did it no end of good. I did the

same to my legend too. 

As someone who has been rocking some of these tweaks for a while already, I can

thoroughly recommend them.

  dannkherb  @Pete Venkman

@Pete Venkman: Here are the links I used. 

[http://www.cyanogenmod.com/] 

[Full Update Guide - Sprint Hero with Android 2.1] 

I used the Universal Androot and ClockworkMod for the recovery image, radio flash,

Google Apps, and rom install. All in all it took about 30 minutes - an hour to get

everything up and running the way I like it. 

Hope that helps!

  surj08  @food_science

@food_science: Old android devices I had I just had to wait it out. Don't force close

it. You'll be waiting a while fer sure but it should do it in the end :)

  Whitson Gordon  @Kanged

Thanks for the compliments. I try to do my research :-/

I know about surface dithering, but I left it out of the article since it was pretty self-

explanatory in the settings. It's basically "check this for better graphics but worse

performance", so I figured people could figure it out for themselves and just uncheck

it for extra speed. :-)

  Chief Chili Fry Maker  @food_science

@food_science: I had a really, really hard time rooting it, tried all the well-sung one-

click methods, even tried some long method via terminal, but never found success.

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

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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

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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.

Speed It Up with Some Settings Tweaks

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.

 Whitson Gordon @HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.

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.

promoted by HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.

 HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H. @BillyC333

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.

1 Since I suspect that this is because of low free RAM (I have a low-end Android phone), I recently

installed optimization apps, kept my homescreen free from widgets and running apps etc. and it did

help to an extent. However, I feel like it still needs to be lightning fast and always accessible feature

like in conventional handsets. How can I achieve this? How do I lock the dialer in my RAM or is

there some super light dialer apps that can replace this stock dialer?

Also, could it be because I have around 150 Facebook and Google contacts synced in? (I don't think

that is a big number)

How about finding a way to turn off the picture data in contacts? Will that reasonably reduce

memory footprint?

Very same situation : Can I set it so the "Phone" on my phone takes priority over all other apps? (tried

all the answers)

UPDATE: I found something called "FUSIONboost" on the FUSIONideos custom rom that seems to

set the priority of apps or something. This seems to be exactly the solution, but I don't want to switch

roms now and would really like if someone can tell me how I can get this..performance dialer

7 Answersactive oldest votes

up vote

8down vote

This is likely a combination of two things: a) stuff that the dialer has to load on startup and b)

possibly shortage of memory (RAM) created by loading those things. The biggest gains are to be had

by resolving (a) however, this will also have the side effect of resolving (b)

You might like to try clearing the following:

Call log - this is loaded each time the dialer is loaded.

SMS messages - Some users have reported that a large number of SMS messages can

cause the dialer to slow down, though I'm sceptical that this makes a difference.

Contacts - finally, number of contacts does have a baring. Not only the ones you can

see "My Contacts", but anyone you've ever emailed (i.e. Other contacts in GMail

contacts).

The last point can be quite important. I have about 130 'real' contacts but nearly 1000 people I've

emailed at some point while using GMail. There were all being synced to my phone, just not always

shown.

It is important to make the distinction between RAM and persistent storage. For example, clearing out

your trash, deleting emails, uninstalling unused apps, or moving them to SD storage is unlikely to help,

because these are using up persistent storage, not transient RAM.

Having lots of persistence storage free means just that... apps can't use it to run any faster. RAM,

however, can make them fly.

You might also like to take a look at Superdial and Dialer One. Two dialers that I've found most

agreeable. They also have T9 contact lookup, which can be a dream to use.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.episode6.android.superdial

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

are generally not needed.

up vote

1down vo

I agree that this is a memory issue. I've had times with my previous phone in which my phone froze as

soon as it turned on because of memory issues. If you have Froyo or above, move as many of your big

apps as you can to the sd card. If you have already done this, uninstall apps to free up memory. Morris

suggested 17MB. This sounds small to me, and I think the actual number depends on which version of

Android you have and what types of apps you use.

up vote

1down vote

I had similar problem, though we cannot completely rectify this we can reduce the startup time by

these approaches,

1. Contacts -> More -> Check 'Only contacts with phones', select only required groups in the bottom

groups, better u can create a starred group and select it.

2. Use 3rd party Contacts app like Go Contacts - https://market.android.com/details?

id=com.jbapps.contact to view the complete list of contacts

3. Never press back button to exit the dialer, use home button to exit dialer, pressing back will kill

the dialer activity

you can also try Go Dialer or https://market.android.com/details?id=kz.mek.DialerOne&hl=en

up vote

0down vote

You could attempt a factory reset, but like you said you do not want to wipe data. Do not use task

killers either they will bog your phone down a great amount. Also check to see what apps are using a

lot of RAM. Go to manage applications and view running applications.

up vote

-1dow

try this low-end dialer app, http://www.appstorehq.com/dialerone-android-155708/app

gingerbread update has been officially available for Huawei IDEOS now, try that !

n vote

Troubleshoot/ Tune Android performance / speed

1. Leave some empty space in the internal memory. When there is less than 10 MB left in the

internal memory, Android can become very sluggish. Leave at least 20 MB. In my experience,

low internal memory is often the root cause of sluggishness (and random errors).

Use app2sd as much as possible, especially if you have small internal memory

Uninstall big applications that you do not use much.

(!) In rooted ROM, you can use pm setInstallLocation 2 trick to force installing

applications on SD card (note that not all applications can be safely installed on SD card).

(!) When system applications are updated, the original version of the applications are not

deleted so you can uninstall the update. This takes up valuable space; if you're rooted, you

can remove the stock application entirely and reclaim this space. I do not recommended

this unless you are already using a Modded ROM since you can no longer use "Factory

Reset" to return your system applications to the factory version (at least not without

reflashing a fresh stock ROM).

2. Choose fast applications.

Use Opera Mobile or Mini. The stock browser is a great browser, however it's also quite

sluggish (even Google's mobile home page it is sluggish as hell). Opera's touch interface is

a bit annoying to use, but it is much snappier than the stock browser.

Choose a fast Home Screen. Some manufacturers equips their phones with pretty, but

sluggish home screen. You may want to use a simpler and faster home screen apps. Also,

live wallpapers kills snappiness; if you want to use them, use the simpler ones.

3. Do NOT use Task Killers, especially the automated ones. You should not Force Kill an

applications unless you are sure that the application has gone extremely wrong and the

application is ignoring a more polite requests to shut down. Force Killing applications may leave

dangling resources in system services that cannot be safely cleaned up. Leave the job of killing

applications to Application Life Cycle.

4. You should not need to clean caches, caches are there to speed up applications. If an

application's caching causes it to slow down, report that to the developer as a bug.

Cleaning out cache may temporarily help with #1 (low internal memory), however cleaning

cache is only a temporary fix. The application will just generate the cache again, and your

memory will fill up again. Some applications allow you to adjust the size of the cache, which

is much more useful permanent solution than cleaning out cache. Generally you want to

give applications as much cache as possible while still having a decent amount of space in

the internal memory.

Applications that have big caches (e.g. maps) should cache to the SD card, file a bug

report to the application developer if they don't.

Due to the nature of caching, there are times when cache may become inconsistent and

this may confuse the application, possibly causing random crashes, slowness, ANRs, or

other random behaviors. This sort of thing is rare, but it does happen. Generally, you

should leave the cache alone unless you suspect there are erroneous behaviors that may

be caused by bad caches.

5. Upgrading Android may bring performance updates, however higher Android versions tend to be

bigger than the previous ones and may cause #1 (low internal memory). If an upgrade leaves

you with much smaller internal memory that you cannot install all of your favorite applications

and have some space left, you may want to stay at an older version.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) comes with a JIT compiler (Just In Time Compiler) that will increase

CPU-bound programs by up to 5x (in my Spica, JIT raises Linpack's score from ~3 to ~9).

Sluggish program is usually I/O bound, but helping with CPU-bound processes helps quite

a bit.

Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) have an improved task management, the Application Life cycle

will kill applications that causes sluggishness and battery usage. Gingerbread also have

concurrent garbage collector, which should reduce random stutters/pauses.

6. Some applications can slow down when they have a large amount of data or a large number of

items to manage. For example, the stock SMS app on the Incredible gets progressively slower

as it accumulates more messages. The only way to fix that is either replace the app, delete

messages, or archive them off the phone (SMS Backup+ is great for this).

7. Another possible improvement could be the removal/modification of widgets. My phone came

with a Daily Briefing widget on my desktop that had Weather, Finance, and News. I removed the

Finance and News portions and just left Weather; the News portion was constantly updating. I

feel that my performance as far as navigating my desktop has improved. The same principle

could apply to other widgets as well. – Chance Apr 1 '11 at 22:04

-----------------------

I have a motorola Xoom (not rooted) and kinda new to the android world (at least as an advance user). I've

installed several (around 30) games + several (around 30) apps. I've noticed that it became a lot more slow.

Actually browsers can barely work (they hang from time to time). I noticed that several games and apps have

active daemons running.

I wanted to: Track the apps that are being used. Track the apps that are loaded on startup (and eventually

change it). Do anything to improve performance

In brief: I want to troubleshoot / tune my android installation.

Is there any application for that? Is there any document recommended for this? (I'm an advanced user -

developer)

There are a bunch of Tutorials around on the net on how to increase performance of your Android device (e.g.

on LifeHackers here and here). One thing to definitely keep your fingers AWAY from are so-called "boosters"

and (automated) Task-Killers. As rm-vanda already stated, they make things only worse; tasks should only be

killed if they misbehave (e.g. are hanging, running havoc while eating your CPU and the like). Android

manages its RAM fine, no need to worry about that.

As for the auto-starters, I can recommend AutoRun Manager, which is actively maintained and simply the best

of all I tried (and I tried a lot).

To figure out what is consuming your ressources, a good candidate helping you would be System Tuner. While

the free version simply lets you monitor activity life, the pro-version also offers background-monitoring and

stores its data for later analysis.

Some other steps you could perform include:

from time to time, clean up caches (to remove old data and get back precious internal memory;

helping apps in this segment include Cache Clear, Quick Cache Cleaner, CacheCleaner NG,

andAndroid System Cleaner - the latter taking care for more things than just cache

Moving some rarely used Apps to SD (if they don't have widgets you are using) saves additional

internal space.

uninstall unused apps

Well, if you are an advanced user, I would recommend rooting your device. The Tegra 2 is brick-proof, so you

have nothing to fear. The XDA forums can help you with rooting and whatnot.

But, if you have several apps that are simultaneously running services or processes, well, that's exactly your

problem! I use Fast Reboot to clean up excessive processes.

It is also noteable that TASK MANAGER APPLICATIONS can cause the sort of problem your talking about.

As of Android 2.2+ task managers are obsolete - Android handles task management for you.

For managing startup applications, you can use Startup Manager.

You can also see which applications are burning the most battery under your battery settings! This has helped

me to find applications that are running rogue processes they shouldn't be running.

Regular maintenance to keep the phone running quickly and smoothly

I've noticed that over time my phone has slowed down and feels laggy and less responsive in general.

In the same way you'd get your car serviced every year, what can you run to keep your phone running nicely?

I've got One Click Lag Fix installed and to give an example, the messaging app seemed very slow to load so I

deleted all the threads in there but it's still slow regardless.

Here is some performance tips:

Have plenty of extra space in the internal memory. The phone uses the internal memory to store apks and

caches, if you have very little internal memory, it might make it difficult for the phone to find contiguous area

large enough to store and load the cache. While flash-based storage are not as badly affected by fragmentation

as disk-based storage, there will still be a major performance hit if the apks or cache file is fragmented into

1000 pieces.

You should not need to clear caches. The caches are needed for the best performance of the phone. If you clear

caches, and you have performance improvement, that's just because you've made an extra space and that makes

it easier for new programs to create and load their caches. While you might be happy with this, it is only a

temporary fix until the program rebuilds the cache and it becomes sluggish again. Best way to resolve this

situation is to keep an amount of empty space (about 10-30% of the internal memory, the optimal figure

depends on the size of your internal memory), do not install too many programs and uninstall programs you do

not use; this way you prevent program you do not use to build caches you do not use. Prefer small programs,

which generally produces smaller caches.

Avoid App2SD for applications you frequently use, unless you have Class 6 or higher SD card. Put only big

applications that you do not use frequently on SD card (e.g. games); homescreen, keyboard, and widgets should

be in the internal memory for best performance (Android prevents you from installing them on SD card, but it

is not impossible to force move them to SD).

Avoid program that have background services and avoid home screen widgets. While there are valid reasons

for programs to spawn background service (e.g. Music Player, IM, etc) and while some home screen widgets

are very useful; they can degrade performance if you have too many of them. Background service and Home

screen widgets will eat up RAMs that the OS cannot reclaim as easily as sleeping applications. Android usually

will reclaim memory from unused applications first, but only in very dire circumstances that it kills background

services and home screen. This is not an outright ban on background services and home screen widgets; just to

be a bit conservative in the use of widgets since no OS in the world can smoothly run more programs than it

was designed to handle.

Keep on top of your apps: deleting the ones you don't use and the ones that are poorly coded resource hogs.

Clear individual apps caches in Settings > Applications > Manage Applications by choosing clear cache.

Reboot your device periodically (I have no evidence to back up that this improves performance but it seems to

work for me)

(this answer is a community wiki so feel free to add or amend)

Don't clear cache unless you're experiencing cache errors or is doing a major updates (e.g. flashing a new

ROM, etc); caches are there to speed up operations, if you clear them out, you're just going to slow down the

program down until it rebuilds the cache again. Clearing cache is a just temporary fix. – Lie Ryan Feb 21 '11 at

5:02

How do RAM and processor speed affect overall performance on Android?

Since Android can be installed on wide range of devices, I'm wondering how important RAM and the CPU speed

are to the performance of a device. There are always tradeoffs when something is increased and another one

decreased!

Is more RAM or a faster processor better for general browsing and less mulititasking? What if I'm interested in

gaming or doing lots of things at once? Will more RAM make up for a slower processor or vice-versa?

4 Answersactive oldest votes

In the context of Android, more RAM means Android can keep more sleeping program in the RAM so they will be

ready to be quickly resumed when you return back to the apps. More RAM means Android is going to spend less of

its time killing and reloading apps from the internal memory/sd card, and instead spend more time doing actual

work you care about. This means that more RAM usually give you better/faster task-switching. Also, more RAM

means your homescreen is less likely to be killed; and you won't experience that 10-second-wait-that-feels-like-

forever. Having more RAM also allows you to run complex apps that naturally requires a lot of memory, e.g.

photo/video editor, complex games, etc.

A higher CPU is able to calculate things much faster, while this might look tempting at first, it is notable that most

programs -- except for games and synthetic benchmark and possibly flash-heavy webpages -- are I/O-bound and not

CPU-bound; in other word, most programs are waiting for network transmission, flash storage reads, DMA reads,

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)

Services

Alarm Services

Live Wallpapers

Live Folders

App Widgets

Account Managers

Sync Adapters

Device Administrators

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.

 7 more comments

up

vot

e23d

own vote

Android comes with a widget to easily turn on and off the most common power drainers.

To get it on the home screen:

1. long press on empty area of home screen

2. select 'android widgets'

3. select 'power control' (it takes up a whole row)

It allows you to turn on/off bluetooth, wi-fi, gps, auto aync and screen brightness.

The notifications bar allows wi-fi, bluetooth and gps to be turned on and off.

up

vot

e16d

own vote

Consider JuiceDefender. This app turns off your data services when the phone's screen is off

and then only enables them again for 3 minutes every 15 (this is configurable). By making all

your apps sync at once on a schedule you prevent a lot of thrashing on your radios. It can

also prevent the wifi from searching for hotspots when you are not close to any stored

hotspots. Also, watch out for task killers, since they are always running, monitoring apps,

they can end up causing more drain than the apps themselves

up

vot

e14d

own vote

I usually find that the display uses the most battery. Turning down the brightness drastically

improves my battery life.

up

vot

e13d

own vote

I run Tasker on my HTC and it's made a noticeable difference without me having to think

about power-management. It's kind of a scripting tool for the phone - set a condition and

what you want to happen as a result.

Mine is set to turn off Mobile Internet whenever connected via Wifi (and vice versa), only

turn on Bluetooth when docked in the car, turn off Wifi when I leave home or work (and

forget!) and dim the display after dark.

I've also got it to automatically turn on/off GPS when set apps are running.

It's a set-and-forget app and allows you to automate a lot of the good advice on other answers

above. Downside is that it's not free; but cheap. YMMV, but I'm a happy user.

up I discovered one thing that absolutely killed my battery life:

vot

e11d

own vote

Setting Wi-Fi Sleep Policy to When screen turns off. <--- Don't do this!

Make sure it is set to Never sleep or else it will power the Wi-Fi radio on/off every time it

needs to sync something.

On my Samsung Galaxy S Captivate this can be found under

Settings -> Wireless and network -> Wi-Fi Settings -> MenuKey:Advanced

up

vot

e11d

own vote

There are so many things one can do I don't wanna repeat here: Remove bad apps, reduce

brightness of your dis... ahem, said: not repeat, OK. But if you think about what you could

turn off/down and what effect it offers: There's a nice table to be found at the German

technology site Heise, titledEnergiesparplan (Google Translate Version here). They slightly

modified a Motorola Droid to be able to get precise data on energy consumption -- and ended

up with a nice table like this, which already substracts the "base consumption" and thus gives

the data for each component/action.

In July 2012, the same publisher again made something similar with his

article Durchhaltetraining(Google translate: Hang on! -- this article is not yet available

online, but usually becomes available after a while, say 12 month or so), this time utilizing

the more recent Samsung Galaxy S3 -- so I add its values here:┌─────────────────┬────────────────────┬───────────┐

| Action | Motorola Droid | Galaxy S3 |

├─────────────────┼────────────────────┼───────────┤

| Video recording | 1557 mW | 1683 mW |

| UMTS Upload | 1410 mW | 1033 mW |

| UMTS Download | 1349 mW | 1074 mW |

| EGDE Upload | 1179 mW | |

| Wifi Download | 1158 mW | 549 mW |

| Play Video*1 | 1135 mW | 597 mW |

| UMTS call | 983 mW | 637 mW |

| Camera*1 | 934 mW | 1460 mW |

| EGDE Download | 853 mW | |

| BT receive | 751 mW | 487 mW |

| Display (max) | 730 mW | 1568 mW |

| GPS Searching | 550 mW | 263 mW |

| GSM call | 511 mW | 297 mW |

| BT send | 487 mW | 454 mW |

| Wifi Upload | 479 mW | 488 mW |

| Display (min) | 310 mW | 567 mW |

| MP3 play | 160 mW | 153 mW |

| UMTS Standby | 18.3 mW | 10.9 mW |

| GSM/EDGE Standby| 11.6 mW | 9.5 mW |

| Wifi Stdby 2.4 | 7.8 mW | 9.3 mW |

| Wifi Stby 5 GHz | - | 14.6 mW |

| BT Standby | 2.8 mW | 1.8 mW |

| GPS Standby | 0.4 mW | 0.7 mW |

| NFC Standby | - | 4 mW |

| Wifi Tether*2 | | 372 mW |

| Wifi Tether DL*3| | 1254 mW |

└─────────────────┴────────────────────┴───────────┘

*1 fullscreen, already minus the display

*2 Tether active with 1 user

*3 download from notebook via Wifi Tether

As an additional reference, the baseline: Ariplane Mode: 6.4 mW.

Recommendation for cold days to get warm fingers: Take your device with both hands, plug

in the charger. Now stream a HD video from youtube via 3G, play it fullsize, and in the

background do some video recording which in parallel gets uploaded via

3G. CAREFUL !!! Wear gloves... #-)

up

vot

e7do

wn vote

To add to these great suggestions;

Dont use live wallpapers.

Use a dark background if you have AMOLED.

Good guide here with these points and more; Android Battery Saving Guide

up

vot

e6do

wn vote

If you have an OLED screen (I know the Droid doesn't), then you can get significant savings

by tweaking what is displayed. Jeff Sharkey has recently posted a blog entry describing his

experiments with screen colour and the effect on battery usage.

Filtering to show only red pixels only requires 35% of the original baseline OLED panel

current, on average. Adding back the baseline current, the best case overall is about 42% of

the original system current, effectively doubling the battery life. Also, showing only red

pixels doubles as an awesome night vision mode, perfect for astronomy. :)

So a dark and/or reddish background could save a lot of juice.

up

vot

e5do

wn vote

Unfortunately battery life on android devices seems to be worse then other similair phones

(iPhone and blackberry). This is from personal, anecdotal experience.

Things to do are to check your update frequency settings-> accounts & sync. You can lower

your update frequencies.

Additionally keep blue tooth or wifi off when you dont' need them. You can find widgets for

your homescreen that will let you toggle these quickly.

Also settings-> About Phone -> Battery -> Battery Use could show you any unusual heavy

hitters on your battery.

You can also find applications in the market such as "Spare Parts" that give you more detailed

battery use information.

Some people have reported that that applications such as "Advanced Task Killer" can be used

to periodically kill running applications if you find that your phone vendor has installed any

pesky applications that you want to periodically kill. On my current phone though I've found

that Advanced Task Killer just used unnecessary battery power and didn't really help me.

up

vot

e5do

wn vote

SetCPU is a great little software available for free on XDA forums and on the market for

1.99$.

It allows to set different CPU profiles in different conditions.

I have set the following profiles and the battery usage dropped a lot:

Default mode is conservative with maximum speed set to 768 Mhz (I have

Snapdragon 1Ghz CPU).

Let the CPU run at maximum speed and performance profile when the phone is

in charge via USB.

Set the CPU to drop to 500 Mhz and powersave profile when the screen is off.

There are many other possibilities. The only draw back is that it requires root access.

up

vot

e4do

wn vote

Don't use Google Voice for Text Messages the way that you are supposed to use it out of the

box.

If you set up GV to push your SMS notifications as email (rather than maintaining the Voice

app and constant polling), and then do all of your replies via email it minimizes the use for

GV, saves on battery, and keeps your SMS's free.

up

vot

e2do

wn vote

For 4g phones, keep the 4g antenna off until you have a use for it. And if no 4g spot is found,

turn it off. 4G antenna is the most expensive power wise antenna out there. And unless you are

watching videos even htc recommends turning it off.

up

vot

e2do

wn vote

If your main power drain is the screen, you might try a magnetic case (or adding a magnet to

your existing case) + Holster Snooze to automatically turn off your screen when you put your

phone away.

up

vot

e0do

wn vote

Try to do CPU-intensive tasks like downloading stuff, installing updates, watching video, etc,

whilst connected to a charger. This will reduce the wear on your battery so it will perform well

for longer.

up

vote-1

down vote

My preferred solution: get a different phone.

I had a couple of Android phones with awful batter life, and I just got a Nexus S, and I'm very

happy with its battary life. I think the amoled display helps.

A bought a couple phones and returned them a week later because the battery life was awful. I

suggest you do the same, if we as consumers keep putting up with poorly designed phones, they

will just keep making them. Who cares if you have a superfast 4g phone if the battery is dead!