Database Users

Why is Calendar so slow?

Calendar takes 2 seconds to start and if I use the navigation keys to skip from day to day it takes more than a second to move to the next page. I've pinned it down to the number of appointments I have (with less appointments it seems faster) but still I think that's hardly an excuse. My ancient palm VX (20mhz) was always lightning-fast no matter how many appointments. This device has a far superior cpu and a memory capacity.
I've tried many tweakes, ROM's and even though many parts of the OS seem to run faster after each of these changes the Calendar stays at this annoyingly pace. Is it not buffering all apointments? are there any Calendar specific tweaks to make it "usable"?

Just wondering, having you tried your Calendar just after hardreset? This can rule out the posibility that other software (background) is causing the slow down.
If you really want to, you can try the overclocking option. Overclocking your unit from 195 to 240 should improve the Calendar performance. And since the OmapClock can be used specifically an app, you only be overclocking it on Calendar not other software.

Thanks for the reply. Calendar slows down after first sync and filling up. I've tried overclocking and it gives a little more speed. I guess it bugs me my old palm was way faster then this device. I hate it when I click and I have to wait when using calendar. Especially when I am browsing through various days to find an open spot I miss the speed.

Is there any way to make Calendar "buffer" more of the appointments database to improve scrolling from day to day?

My Calendar is also slow. Overclocking to 240 MHz helps, but not significantly. I did the "improve performance" tweaks, have not noticed a significant improvement either. I found that the number of appointments makes a big difference. After hard reset with zero appointments the Calendar flies, but what's the point? I have about 360 appointments, of which about 180 are recurring. Have not tried any unofficial ROMs, maybe that will help.

Still, shouldnt a device with these specs be able to handel a few thousand appointments easily? 360 isnt much...
What helps a little is making sure no tools close it down. I use spb pocketplus and noted it down as an exception to the close button. I am not sure, but i think poutlook needs to be made an exception as well.
Is there an easy way to see the # of appointments or is 360 a guess? Could check how many I have...

I also think 360 is not much at all.
You can count the number of appointments in the PC's Outlook. Click on Calendar, then go View - Current View - By Category. I personally have only two categories ("None" and "Holiday"), and it tells me the number of appointments in each.
I agree about not closing the Calendar but minimizing it instead. It cashes something, and it starts working noticeably faster after a while. That, plus overclocking, plus performance tweaks makes it not too bad, although not ideal.

I have 4300 items in outlook. Guess my history goes a long way back. Still I don't think much if this gets synced. Most of it is way too old (2002-2003 etc)

The best weather software I have seen yet!

I rarely ever post these types threads but I found this tonight and had to share with all. It works great and has more weather info than you will ever need.
From The Weather Channel
Know what to expect from your day
Now The Weather Channel is just one click away from your email, your calendar and all the other tools that help you manage your day. Get detailed forecasts, severe weather alerts, airport delays and more in a software package designed specifically for your device.
Radar Maps that pan, zoom and animate
Ability to save multiple locations for fast, easy access
Customizable Home Page
Video forecasts on select devices (WORKS GREAT WITH MEDIA PLAYER ON MY XV6800)
Annual or monthly pricing plans (PM me for some inside info on this)
Download application here:
http://www.weather.com/mobile/pda.html
How to Patch:
Go into your PPC registry and find the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TWC\twc\Internal
Change nrl value to 9999
You will be able to try The Weather Channel 9999 more times.

I like this one better from local XDA Developer and others. Check out link;
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=401781
And it is free. Cool, Animated weather icons like the Diamond
gives you tons of information. Not to difficult to install and use.
Edit: Of course Donations are welcomed by the developer.

been there used that and uses memeory, this one from weather channel doesnt use nothin just sittin there and very fast when open even the weather videos that play in media player load and play fast
just my 2cents

it isn't using much memory for me. Sure some but not much. When I was using continuous looping icons it sure did use a lot of mem plus huge drain on battery, but with single loop - not much mem use. Also I have it set up in Ultimate launch on it's own page and the plugin is disabled when not in use, so not much mem use then. I have not had any problems yet, and I have been keeping an eye on the memory consumption.

I'm quite fond of SBSH's Pocket Weather. Very nifty program with an awesome today plugin.

okyourabeast said:
I'm quite fond of SBSH's Pocket Weather. Very nifty program with an awesome today plugin.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 for Pocket Weather.
I like to be able to glance down and see the current conditions, the forecast and radar any time I want without hitting buttons and waiting for it to load or paying a monthly fee.

PhoneAlarm has a weather feature and it's an awesome phone / profile management program. It's not free, but it's great.

Yean not bad. Only $35 EVERY year to use it and they are on average 10 degrees off on thier forcasts for my area. I use weatherbug. Its free and accurate. You can have the current temp displayed on the top bar if you want so you arent having to take up Today Screen space.

CPU load too high - sluggish device

Hello,
i already posted this in some other thread. But here i go again maybe we get some more information from this thread.
When i made a cold reset, the CPU load of my Hero is about 10% (or lower) when measuring with "System Monitor" tool available from the market. Hero is scrolling quite smoothly as well.
After some time using the device i notice that scrolling through the Sense and the "All programs" list gets noticably slower and when i check back with system monitor i notice that CPU load is constantly high at around 30-40% and won't drop down again.
I already tried closing all programs including sense using TasKiller and Advance Task Manager, but neither one does the trick - the CPU load stays at this level until i make a hard reset of the device again.
Now it would be interessting to find out which application/process is causing this is it's also a heavy battery drain for the Hero.

this is actually encouraging news. this means the speed issues can most likley be fixed with new firmware release. or when donut gets put onto the hero. As I have heard that donut has lots of performance tweaks.

The biggest offender seems to be the HTC Widgets. I removed the people widget and the clock (after it the weather feed stopped working) after hearing suggestions and now my Hero is running blazingly fast. The only widgets I have now are the original android clock, the mini calendar and the large music widget.
People have been recommending NOT to use process managers such as taskiller to stop programs because not only can stopping the wrong apps cause problems (stop "clock" and your alarms won't go off, for example) but also it seems that Android is fairly intelligent with regards to process management and can handle it better by itself. You won't get much (if any) speed back by killing processes.

Yes that was also my suspicion - stopping apps might actually cause more (or even this one) problems than it solves.
But thanks for the hint with the clock, i already encountered this twice and came late to work

I removed any task killer software now, but even then i just noticed that i get the 30%+ constant CPU load phenomenon.
I suspect it has something to do with the market app or the installation of software as it seems it's happening right after that sometimes.

Weather Wrong (Temp, etc.)

I've searched for this issue without success.
I love my HD2, but the weather it displays is simply wrong.
The temperatures are often (almost all the time), much different from reality, and what I mean by reality is the actual temperature in my city as reported by Environment Canada.
For example, right now it's 12C, but my HD2 is reporting 8C. Yes, I just updated the phone, and this problem occurs virtually ALL the time.
The actual weather conditions are often wrong, too, but not as often as the temperature differences.
Where does the HD2 get its temperature from? Can it be changed?
Thanks,
Peter

this is true, yesterday i was in Southport,UK..it was bright and sunny and abt 9 or 10 degrees, but for some reason accuweather thought it was 3 degrees with heavy rain. this obv, is not the phones fault..but is there any way we can link the weather app to a more reliable source?

SreePillai said:
this is true, yesterday i was in Southport,UK..it was bright and sunny and abt 9 or 10 degrees, but for some reason accuweather thought it was 3 degrees with heavy rain. this obv, is not the phones fault..but is there any way we can link the weather app to a more reliable source?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, "Accuweather" appears to be an oxymoron.
Yes, I wish there was another link to which we could direct the application.

Not Accuweather ... ?
You suggested that it's Accuweather from which the HD2 gets its weather; however, I just checked Accuweather's Canada site, and their information for Mississauga, where I live is, in fact, correct.
So, I wonder where the HD2 gets its data?

PeterHTC said:
You suggested that it's Accuweather from which the HD2 gets its weather; however, I just checked Accuweather's Canada site, and their information for Mississauga, where I live is, in fact, correct.
So, I wonder where the HD2 gets its data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On a related issue, I just tried entering the city where my in-laws live, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China.
On Accuweather's site, there are five possibilities for Jinhua, but on the HD2, the moment I enter the name Jinhua, there is but ONE selection. How can I be sure it's the right one? I checked all five sites in China, and their weather reports vary widely.

it must be the same place APPLE IPHONE get's its weather update.
Right now it is:
66 degree F on Weather Channel App
My desktop Accuweather displays 68 deg. F
My IPHONE is showing 43 deg. F and rainy. It's not raining outside - Its sunny!

Weather very strange ...
Okay, now I'm even more confused.
I noticed on the main weather screen a link to "More Detail Online" towards the lower right. I clicked on that and got Accuweather's mobile site for my location, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
Now here's what's strange: According to Environment Canada, the current temperature is 9C at Pearson Airport, not far from where I live, and where the weather facility is located.
My HD2 main screen, just updated, says that the temperature is 3C, but when I click on the link noted above, and go to the online site, Accuweather says it's 9C, the accurate temperature.
Why does my HD2 main screen not reflect Accuweather's data, the site from which it gets its weather?
Anyone?
This is really stupid. What's the point of having weather on your main screen if it's not accurate (not even remotely accurate), especially with such a great home screen weather display?

It's obvious that Sense uses Accuweather as its source. Question though is it the phone/software that messes up so there are sometimes huge differences between phone and Accuweather website ? Try another weather program to find that out. I can recommend you two excellent programs:
1. Touch Weather, which has multiple providers, such as AccuWeather, GisMeteo, Wetter.com, etc (www.touch-weather.com). There is a 15 day trial of the Pro version
2. G-Weather from www.ageye.de (only for Europeans). Also here a trial version.
Personally I use Touch Weather, G-Weather, SPB Weather and Sense UI weather in that order.
P.S. In most cases Sense is giving me the right weather information of my choosen location.

enabling disabling widgets...

Does anyone know if widgets have any major impact on overall phone performance? I know they must take up some performance but does anyone notice any difference when they disable particular widgets or perhaps other objects? Just curious what everyone's take on this is. Any problem widgets for people would be greatly appreciated for future knowledge.

I can notice that several widgets on multiple homescreens can often hurt performance (obviously) but I think it really depends on what other programs you're running in the background. If you have a few widgets updating constantly, but not many other background processes, you'll be fine. If you have lots of background processes AND widgets, it may be noticeable.
If you get a lot of lag just moving homescreens, and have very low free RAM, then it might be a good idea to cut down on the widgets to help yourself out.
I personally only use one 4x2 twitter widget and a 4x1 music widget. I run a pretty tight ship and don't notice any slowdowns. I regularly have 100mb+ of free RAM though.

i usually have like 150 to 200 MB free lol guess I run a very tight ship, with maybe 2 or 3 exceptions I basically have it set so nothing runs without my telling it too. I have the news and weather widget, extended controls widget, doggcatcher widget, and the led flashlight widget, and like 2 or 3 more small 1 by1 widgets running on multiple home-screens. I was just wondering if it would make a difference lol. Not sure if it was me but when I re-ROM my phone it always seems snappier, but then I restore my apps and widgets, so not sure if it's the apps or the widgets weighing it down. Still pretty snappy overall though

I don't think they cause a major impact on performance, but definitely think they are taking up memory. I use GoLauncher's Task manager widget to keep an eye on what pops up, just about all the widgets I've got on the screens pops up on the task list. (CM7's Strobe/light, a2sd, fancy widget pro, etc)
However, more often I've noticed running processes from non-widgets I don't even use or haven't used in awhile, like yahoo messenger and one game. These take up anywhere from 3-15mb of memory.
I'd like to think that there is an association between consistent free memory and battery drain, but I don't really know of a way to log or test this.

hmm true, i noticed that I tend to have more problems with too little ram, rather than processor performance...

I've only got 2 widgets that actually take any battery to use. One is 3g Watdh Dog and another is Battery Monitor Widget. That's about it really, hardly uses any power at all. None at all actually haha.. Oh and a wifi on/off widget I find really useful too.