Database Users

Lag reports...like bigfoot?

Since there appears to be such conflicting reports about lag or lack there of; I think it would benefit us all if we start to list who is having lag and who isn't whilst including where you bought the phone etc....
so to those that are having lag, give us these details:
1.) where and when did you get the phone, including the color
2.) branded or unbranded
3.) look under the battery or where ever for serial numbers or manufacturing dates
4.) report what firmware (if possible) and what the "about android" says in the OS
5.) what you are perceiving to be slow and when it occurs
If you would like some other examples of "slowness" check out the comments here: http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2009/08/htc-hero-review-part-two/
Note that after some discussion, all parties involved are equally confused and can't understand the opposing experiences of the other. I would also like to see reports from those that haven't experienced any lag or nothing like what some of the laggers are experiencing. I think we are experiencing some manufacturing differences here that have yet to be documented or made certain. I suspect this is all due to sense UI but who knows for certain. Is it possible to have the G1 Hero rom installed on a stock hero? Perhaps the Hero rom that is mentioned the in the hero dev forum would help? In any event, we should really start compiling specifics in a single thread as nobody likes buyers remorse

Not geographical. Its about the way you use your phone.

Sawkes said:
Not geographical. Its about the way you use your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fine. But it shouldn't be. If the phone is "just suppose to work" then there apparently still needs to be some optimization to account for the apparent excesses of others. I'm SURE it's JUST about what these people are doing...come on man, there has to be something else going on even if it is simply due to sense UI needing some optimization tweaks. You can't just toss away the experiences of many different folks (reviewers included) with the implication that the phone is not at all at fault for the negative reports.

I agree, I think there are variables we aren't considering. I think it comes down to the use of widgets and the amount of screens you have running, though I'm not totally sure.
I personally have not experienced any lag. I have a white sim free Hero, I use 3 screens, one with wifi, bluetooth, mobile data and gps widgets, a weather widget and a few icons. Another page has all icons, and the third has the bookmarks widget. I used to have the contacts widget on the second page and noticed no lag when using that either.
Once I tried to start up as many apps as I could to see if I experienced the lagginess people were talking about.... with no result. Still very slick.
What I don't have is a clock widget. I personally think it's useless when you have the time in the taskbar. I don't use a twitter widget either, but Peep seems to start itself sometimes.
That leads me to something else, I have apps which start themselves up spontaneously. Peep, Glympse, calendar for example.... they all show up in the task list (Taskiller) when I haven't used them. I've switched off any auto updates/ stay logged out etc. So that's a bit weird. That's part of the reason I'll use Taskiller maybe 4 or 5 times a day to kill everything running.
All in all I'm very happy and impressed with the useability of this device.

Switchbitch said:
I agree, I think there are variables we aren't considering. I think it comes down to the use of widgets and the amount of screens you have running, though I'm not totally sure.
I personally have not experienced any lag. I have a white sim free Hero, I use 3 screens, one with wifi, bluetooth, mobile data and gps widgets, a weather widget and a few icons. Another page has all icons, and the third has the bookmarks widget. I used to have the contacts widget on the second page and noticed no lag when using that either.
Once I tried to start up as many apps as I could to see if I experienced the lagginess people were talking about.... with no result. Still very slick.
What I don't have is a clock widget. I personally think it's useless when you have the time in the taskbar. I don't use a twitter widget either, but Peep seems to start itself sometimes.
That leads me to something else, I have apps which start themselves up spontaneously. Peep, Glympse, calendar for example.... they all show up in the task list (Taskiller) when I haven't used them. I've switched off any auto updates/ stay logged out etc. So that's a bit weird. That's part of the reason I'll use Taskiller maybe 4 or 5 times a day to kill everything running.
All in all I'm very happy and impressed with the useability of this device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Makes no damn sense to me and it's posts like this that make me think it isn't the software afterall....geez. I guess I'll just have to order one some time soon and cross my fingers that it really isn't hardware related.

[Discussion] Sense Builds vs. Non-Sense Builds

I'm actively experimenting with newer builds everytime they come out. But I can't help to experience some sort of slow-/sluggyness with Sense builds?
It also seems that the Sense builds aren't that highly customizable as non-sense builds are? I might be just not that much of a sense-fan (however I really liked it under WinMo), but since I see lots of phones, in the screenshot topic, running sense builds, I was wondering if I might do something wrong ()?
Sense over non-Sense:
[+] Nice HTC Widgets
[+] Nice Clock/looks
non-Sense over Sense:
[+] Highly Customizable (especially with ADW.Launcher)
[+] Seems faster (to me that is, subjective of course!)

SENSE FTW!
i've tried non-sense (not nonsense though, just personal preference) builds b4, but i couldn't get pass the plain contacts which can't really link from here to there.
the HTC People seamlessly links your contacts to emails and facebook and twitter and whatsapp accounts, and the ability to view the facebook albums using HTC gallery as though the pictures were in the phone.
Plus the decently nice weather widgets, friends stream widget, and the multilanguage supported keyboard with handwriting tools for Chinese input, etc etc.
I vote for Sense because it makes Sense!

I'm pro sense, because of its contact manager and dialer.

I don't like sense builds. But non-sense builds freezes will kill me..

I've came across some weird crashes with Sense builds. Sometimes SetCPU would crash, or even Sense would crash and reboot.
I also like the fact that in non-Sense builds it is possible to change the DPI, probably also possible in Sense builds but I haven't found out how yet..

I cant use sense builds. Id prefer them but every single one I have tried has a screwed up contacts directory. Every contact is duplicated about 6 times.
Saying that I do love the non sense and the amount I can customize it. There are things I like and dislike about both

Below are my conclusions regarding sense vs non sense
Disadvantages of Sense are
[+] Have a nice looking of "Sense"
[-] Camera only 3M,if there's 5M,it usually have camera premature
[-] Unreliable connection and most of all PPP based
Disadvateges of Non Sense (CM Based) are
[+] Stable connection of data,usually use RMNET
[+] Good camera (dont have premature flash)
[-] G-Sensor dont working very well,sometime freeze
[-] Cant use automatic backlight because light Sensor not working well

non-sense builds!
i started using android with sense-builds. after some times i got tired of switching from one screen to another, so i reduced ist to only 4, 3 and so on.
now i'm on a non sense build with adw-launcher. i can use more shortcuts, use other apps and have all i want in 3 screens.
adw-launcher is awesome, very stable and gives you so much possibilities!!

Well I'm for sense i guess, used both and come to the conclusion that I bought the HTC HD2 for the look of the GUI, and i can't draw myself away from it, its pretty customisable and the build I'm currently using it brilliant, no lag, no sod, superb!

I love the sense widgits and UI and such, but I absolutely hate the Sense dialer and contacts setup. I much prefer AOPS or Wysie's contacts and dialer setup, and if I could figure out how to get them working in Sense, I would totally have the best of both worlds.

Does it matter which is better? We as HD2 users have the liberty of choosing between many different builds and that is what makes it the best phone ever.
For the record, I use both.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

sense with no sense
I´m also experiencing overall slowdown when using sense, particularly in desktop swipeing. But on the other hand sense brings good keyboard, dialer, sync and widgets.
So I decided to go the "Darkstone"-way - using sense ROM with LauncherPro as desktop UI. SenseUI does not even load which saves up good memory.
My experience with that combination is very good.....

psykick5 said:
Does it matter which is better? We as HD2 users have the liberty of choosing between many different builds and that is what makes it the best phone ever.
For the record, I use both.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope, it doesn't matter at all. I just wanted to discuss the pros and cons of both UIs. It's nice to have a discussion about it, so people can read up and have a decent overview of the differences between the two type of builds.

WoutH said:
Nope, it doesn't matter at all. I just wanted to discuss the pros and cons of both UIs. It's nice to have a discussion about it, so people can read up and have a decent overview of the differences between the two type of builds.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I enjoy having both hand generally use the one that gives better battery life.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

I started out with non-sense builds, but I find the sense ones to be a little more stable (They're the ones where the compass works well and freezes are minimal). I don't really like the Sense UI though so I run ADW on top of it.

SpacemanGep said:
I started out with non-sense builds, but I find the sense ones to be a little more stable (They're the ones where the compass works well and freezes are minimal). I don't really like the Sense UI though so I run ADW on top of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you don't like the Sense, why did you buy the HD2? That was the main selling point of this phone when released, the ease of use and beauty that sense provided!
But I do agree with you that sense builds are a little more stable and freeze free when it comes to the build I'm using, I can honestly say hand on heart, for two weeks now I've had 0 freezes!!

burpingboy said:
SENSE FTW!
i've tried non-sense (not nonsense though, just personal preference) builds b4, but i couldn't get pass the plain contacts which can't really link from here to there.
the HTC People seamlessly links your contacts to emails and facebook and twitter and whatsapp accounts, and the ability to view the facebook albums using HTC gallery as though the pictures were in the phone.
Plus the decently nice weather widgets, friends stream widget, and the multilanguage supported keyboard with handwriting tools for Chinese input, etc etc.
I vote for Sense because it makes Sense!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everything you stated is incorrect right down to the weather widget.
I know you didn't do it on purpose but I have never seen a more blatantly wrong series of statements.
I use HyperDroid (Non-sense) and my contacts are linked to Facebook/Twitter etc, etc.
I actually have and use the same weather widget as sense BUT I can change my weather icons and it does more than just show me the weather.
Freinds streaming is certainly available also... I use the facebook widget. I dont know about chinese characters but i dont need them either. However there are other languages that are supported.
To each his/her own... but at least lets have the real info.
Cheers.

I'm using cyanogen builds hyperdroid1.6 and bangsters1.5. I have tried a lot of builds and cyanogen stuck out over sence aesthetically and was more stable. I did enjoy sence dialler until I discovered dialler one in the bangsters build. I'm not giving up on sence once a good one rolls out that can please my demands as good or better than cyanogen or stock froyo it will have a home on my SD
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

jmmmmm said:
Everything you stated is incorrect right down to the weather widget.
I know you didn't do it on purpose but I have never seen a more blatantly wrong series of statements.
I use HyperDroid (Non-sense) and my contacts are linked to Facebook/Twitter etc, etc.
I actually have and use the same weather widget as sense BUT I can change my weather icons and it does more than just show me the weather.
Freinds streaming is certainly available also... I use the facebook widget. I dont know about chinese characters but i dont need them either. However there are other languages that are supported.
To each his/her own... but at least lets have the real info.
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, after reading your post, and experiencing unresolvable errors with com.htc.bgp force close due to HTC Facebook syncing, i've decided to give non-sense another try. This time it's bangster 1.5, still downloading.
Cheers!

seems like this has been dormant for quite some time...
After using bangsters 1.5 for like 2 weeks, i've decided to switch back to M-deejay's evo sense 1.8 revolution with the latest Hastarin 7.6 kernel to try again.
Some of my findings:
Sense wins in terms of:
Facebook link to contacts:-
Sense: manual linking is alot more simple and user-friendly
Non-Sense: have to rename contacts to be exactly same as facebook, otherwise manual linking is possible but very tedious: contacts, settings, edit contacts, join, find facebook contact, confirm, back, back, back, and if any mistakes, have to separate and re-join.
Dialer:-
Sense: predictive t9 + phone no. dialer showing facebook display pictures fine
Non-Sense: default phone dialer no predictive t9, but shows facebook pics; Dialer One with predictive t9, but no predictive phone no., and facebook display pictures does not show
Default email app
While there are dedicated email apps for Gmail and Yahoo Mail, the default email app on Non-Sense builds is really restrictive, you cannot move mails between folders, you can't even retrieve your mails that you accidentally deleted but still in the trash folder. But these could be solved by 3rd party apps like K9.
but Non-Sense wins in terms of:
Customizability:-
Non-Sense: Best part of Non-Sense is its customizability. From changing LCD density, and choosing one out of so many launchers, customizing the themes and looks of your phone, no. of rows and columns, smooth transition from portrait to landscape, setting soft buttons, shortcuts, folders, drawers, etc.
Sense: somehow most of the sense widgets (weather, email, sms, friendstream, news) are oversized, takes up a full page, and cannot customize the size.
Alot of other things like camera 5mp, overclocking, battery, screen freezes, sods, etc are dependent on roms, builds and kernels, so i won't use those as a comparison between sense and non-sense.
Both are good in their own way, and i'm just glad that i'm using a HD2 which allows me to experience the best of both worlds!

Yet Another Which Rom Question. Please Halp :)

All,
I know this has been talked about again and again and again, but I haven't quite found my answer looking through other threads. This is what I'm looking for, could one of you Rom Wh*r*s help me out. I have pretty precise wants!
1) Must be stable! No random reboots, no FC's
2) NO LAG! I don't care about scores! I don't care about how fast it is, I care about whether or not it's going to lag on me while I'm using it, or trying to make a quick call or a quick camera shot (for those moments) and not being able to
3) Battery Life MUST be at least the same as the stock rom!
4) Everything must work! I don't want a Rom where WiFi randomly disconnects, or Voice Calling doesn't work, you get the idea...
5) I really don't care about blurry or not. I use slidescreen as my primary home w/ Go Launcher as the "alternative". The slidescreen 2 beta 3 has been PERFECT for me
6) Contacts Picture integration from Facebook would be nice, as well as Picasa integration in gallery as well would be nice
7) Good Theme support. I'd like to try out a bunch of themes w/o having to load different roms.
8) A bunch of extra teaks and features would be cool too. I love to play with settings.
What do you guys think, is it out there? Basically, I'm trying to get as close to CM without actually running CM, since we can't
Up Your Moto

I'm not a rom wh*re but I installed Fission and as far as I can see it qualifies all of your requirements. Compared to standard blur it's a lot snappier and seems to give a pretty good increase in battery life. Which I think has to do with all the services that are no longer running, I've got 3 now compared to several dozen with Blur. You can also use the Fission Rom Manager to install themes for you so it's just as easy as select and install. I had a hard time deciding between all the roms out there but decided to go with this one as it seemed the closest to what I wanted; A vanilla like rom with some tweaks of improvement.

Likes and Dislikes on Blur

I know a lot of people totally hate Blur. I just want to know what exactly do you guys like and don't like about it? I really don't like Blur too much, but it does have a lot of features I like. I personally like a little Blur in my ROMs.

The only thing I really liked about Blur was the change in appearance to the text message conversations. They were little bubbles, which I personally thought looked cleaner than the current text message style.
That, and also for some reason with the stock Blur on my phone, my D2 never made a noise when connecting to USB charging. Now that I have Fission ROM, it makes a notification noise every time.
Small things, and I'm much happier without any Blur.
These are the droids you are looking for

I love the dialer and the email client

I like the rich text in the email client. Unfortunately, the rest of the email client is awful. Unless I just didn't dig deep enough to find it, I couldn't find settings for update and notification for individual email accounts. So, I was stuck with the same polling schedule and notification scheme for all of my accounts. Also, I didn't like having text messages in the same interface as email. I understand that people may like that, and there are plenty of apps out there to do that. I don't want that to be the default behavior on my phone.
I really do like the text select. It's pretty smooth. From what I've seen, Gingerbread is using a pretty similar text-selection style. This is probably Blur's biggest (only?) real positive.
I despise the Facebook app. Or maybe it's the Accounts app. I only want to sync Facebook contacts that have a contact in one of my other accounts (gmail, corporate, etc.). So, I was stuck with all Facebook contacts even though I really only cared about 50 of 'em (Hey, I know I'm not the only one).
I do not like the accounts app. When attempting to set up an Exchange account, upon failure, I had no options. Under stock Android I have the option to modify some params - like the login domain (an essential change with my company's Exchange setup). With blur, I can't use my company email/calendar without some other app (like Touchdown). With stock android, it only takes a few seconds to update a connection param to something non-standard to get it working.
The worst thing about Blur is the set of services running on the device for the blur apps. They take up processor time and memory even when you're not using any blur widgets or blur applications.
The onscreen keyboard is slightly better than standard, but I've got a physical keyboard so I really don't use the onscreen one except for the most simple of inputs.
I don't like the image gallery. Lots of people seem to like this and I suppose I can understand. It's a good app, overall. I'm just used to the stock gallery.
And of course there's the bloat. Devices with Motublur come with a helluva lot of apps that I really have no desire to ever use, but there they are taking up space. In some cases, they run in the background sucking up memory. At the very least, they take up a MB or two that I could user for an app that I actually want.
So, overall, I really don't like Motoblur.
I really wish manufacturers/service providers would stick to base Android. If they really want to differentiate themselves via software I think they should have an installation package that would add their own apps (and/or replace default apps).
The hardware is great, but I really don't want those damned motoblur modifications. So, I'm glad that there are devs creating vanilla roms for moto devices.

I like the dialer and contacts apps a lot with blur. That's about it though. The bloatware and extra useless processes on it slows the phone down noticeable. Switching home screens is laggy and choppy with the blur launcher. I honestly don't need 50 widgets to see what everyone on facebook is doing seeing as how I'm not 14 years old.
And THANK GOD this phone doesn't have full blur or it would be so slow it would be unusable...
Sent from my Motorola Droid 2 with Fission 2.4.1

i like the social networking status widget. thats about it. lol

I love the resizable Blur widgets a lot, and I love the idea of linking different source of contacts. But I still have a lot to complain about the contact app:
* It mix social network with my contacts without clear visual clue, like colored tags, for me to distinguish them easily; (I withdraw this point now)
* It does not offer necessary filters like 'sort by family name' and 'hide contacts w/o phone number' ;
* It does not support non-english names as well as the stock app: for example, Chinese names are totally unordered;
* When sms is deleted, it's still in the contact's history, WTF!
If moto would fix theses small but fraustrating issues, I would love to use Blur-enhanced phone.
Sent from my MotoA953 using XDA App

Where are you guys getting that you can't hid fb contacts? Hit menu->show/hide->and the click your fb account and uncheck all contacts. It will hide any fb contact not linked to an already existing contact
Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using XDA App

Likes: None
Dislikes: Everything

@Botnryan
Thanks, but I was trying to mean that tags should be used to give user a better clue when showing all contacts. Anyway I agree that's too picky, and I would withdraw that point.

botnryan said:
Where are you guys getting that you can't hid fb contacts? Hit menu->show/hide->and the click your fb account and uncheck all contacts. It will hide any fb contact not linked to an already existing contact
Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where is that option? It was certainly not on the Facebook app on the D2G before I rooted and installed a vanilla rom.
I came from stock android on the original Droid to Motoblur on the D2G. Within the stock facebook app, under options, there's a simple selection about what you want to sync: all, only existing contacts, none. I assure you that these options do not exist in Motoblur. Now that I'm on the Fission 2.4.2 rom, I see the same old options and can sync contacts the way I want.

The biggest reason I removed it was battery life. My battery life is almost twice as good after removing blur. Although I did kinda like the launcher and the contacts, it wasn't worth my phone dying halfway through the day.
Oh and I almost forgot about the alarm! Oh how I miss how the alarm slowly got louder. It was awesome! I need to look for a new alarm app....
Sent from my DROID2 using XDA App

Putting blur on the phone is like putting a 500 pound man in a Ferrari.
You are not going anywhere with any sort of speed whatsoever.

zse45tgb said:
Where is that option? It was certainly not on the Facebook app on the D2G before I rooted and installed a vanilla rom.
I came from stock android on the original Droid to Motoblur on the D2G. Within the stock facebook app, under options, there's a simple selection about what you want to sync: all, only existing contacts, none. I assure you that these options do not exist in Motoblur. Now that I'm on the Fission 2.4.2 rom, I see the same old options and can sync contacts the way I want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not in fb app. In the contacts app..hit the menu soft key and then show/hide
Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using XDA App

blur is not so bad as features, but slows the phone down and uses a lot of cpu

ive not really had anything to compare it to but i dont have a problem with blur at the moment. ive dragged all the blur social widgets off of my homescreens as i dont use them. from the screenshots ive seen i actually prefer the green call button and blue contacts button over the standard android ones. the contacts app is nicely laid out, but dont know if thats motorola or just how it is anyway on android.
dont have a problem with the messaging app since ive got Handcent sms installed instead which is awesome and i cant recommend it high enough.
for peace of mind i would of liked to be able to uninstall the stock music player and other stuff i dont use.
also, if you dont want to use motoblur you dont have to sign up for the account. just hit the squares button and select Skip setup when you first set up your phone...
milestone 2.

I like the SMS app alot except no notifications when receiving MMS. Checked my settings and they are setup right so I just see it as one small flaw. Other than that blur can go away

If you've never experienced the phone without blur you wouldn't know you were missing anything. I mean they didn't put out an incomplete thing it's just not that efficient. That's why the Developers have made their stuff so that we can experience new software on the phones. I really like the speed of everything besides stock and the themes and animations make it all just click.

I don't mind Moto Blur. It doesn't have to be visible and some of the widgets are clean looking and ok well.
Count yourselves lucky you weren't a Xperia x10 owner like I was. You'd have a stupid timescape app that was poitnless compared to an app and it would automatically start up from time to time and your android version would be mutalated to the point where you expect features to be missing rather than included.
Moto Blur just need to suck less power that's all.
"Most truths were once deemed Blasphemy"

Blur eats resourses which drains the battery and it's laggy. You really need to try a Blur-free ROM just to see for yourself the difference in performance.
<insert plug for Fission here>
Sent from my DROID2 using XDA App

I've lost interest in my phone - how can i make it more interesting?

I guess i lost interest about mid-december. I dunno why, but for some reason I've had it a year now and i don't bother with new apps or anything, the home screen sort of bores me, and I think i need re-integrating with the android world to find out what apps are good nowadays, what homescreens and i was wondering what ROMs people would recommend i use for revitalising my android experience?
Currently i'm using Floyo 1.1.9.
On my computer i generally use tumblr and twitter a lot, dunno if there's any new (or newly improved) apps out there for either of those, as an addition?

Get launcher pro and check out their transition effects http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIK9yBlWYt4
also beautiful widgets are nice as well
and there are lots of themes and icons in the market to beautify your phone check the themes and apps section in this forums
lot of people have posted they screenshots of their phone home screenshots
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=587964

Suggestion
Hi
I too had lost interest in my Hero, and still have to a certain extent.
I found that the Market had lots of apps, but many of them were too big/resource intensive for my lil' old Hero. Also that the memory size is so small on the Hero that I kept getting warnings saying that there was insufficient space for any new apps.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Flash the Elelinux gingerbread ROM v 1.1.1 (or whatever the latest version is). It is very nice, pretty stable and makes a nice change.
2. Play with overclocking apps, you might get a bit more performance out of the Hero
3. Go to the new Market web site. It is very cool. It allows the installation of apps from the web page straight to the phone. Much easier to navigate and mess about with.
That's pretty much it.
Hope this helps
Hamish