Database Users

[Q] Phone very slow, hang, unresponsive

Sometimes my phone will get very unresponsive such that any action takes many seconds to show up, and everything is very choppy. Often I see this when I wake up in the morning, but it happens often enough in general. It's so bad that I can't shut it down normally because it would take over 10 min (I've actually never waited to see exactly how long it would take). Thankfully I just found out about the three finger reset (volume up, camera, power), so I shouldn't have to pull the battery anymore, but it's still a problem.
I don't remember this happening before using custom roms. It happens with both DK28 roms I've tried - Bonsai and Viper. I believe it also occurred on the 2.1 Epic Experience, although I'm not sure. I guess I should try flashing to DK28 stock to see if that works, but it's a pain to set up everything each time. I figured I'd ask here to see if anyone else has had this problem and found a way to fix it. Also, I have a feeling this could be related to WiFi being turned on, but can't confirm yet.

My phone was stuttering yesterday.
But that was only after installing smartbench and using theonscreen keyboard.
However, since I've upgraded to dk28, the phone does take (relatively) forever to shutdown.
It'll go black but the bottom lights would still be on and then like a minute or two later it vibrates and actually cuts off
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

When my phone does this, it reminds me that I like to have SeePU installed. It's pretty useful in pointing out the apps that are hogging CPU and most likely slowing down your phone.
For me it's often Touchdown, and I kill it and things are back to normal.

I have found a few things that are useful. When I need to reboot my phone I use quick boot from the market. Works every time. In between I use fast reboot also from the market. Try them and see how they work.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Thanks for the app suggestions. I like the taskbar icons for SeePU. It's always been useful on my Mac (stats from iStat). Quick Boot makes things easier as well.
Next time my phone hangs, I'll see if some process is taking 100% CPU.

The phone hung again, and it seemed like something was taking 100% CPU, if the taskbar SeePU icon is to be trusted. I wasn't able to figure out what the culprit was though, because the phone pretty much stopped responding. Otherwise I would have loaded Android System Info to check.

can the epic 4g run this lag fix? if not, do we have any other ways to fix the lag?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=784691
edit: nvm

So I was able to view Android System Info while my phone was hanging, but it did now show any processes taking 100% CPU, although the total CPU usage was 100%. My guess then is that the Android 2.2 OS is buggy.
However, I did find people who said leaving USB debugging on would fix it, so I'm going to try that.
For reference:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=826507
http://androidforums.com/desire-hd-support-troubleshooting/244553-100-cpu.html#post2140890

My phone hasn't hung for a while, so apparently enabling USB debugging prevents the hang / lag / crash / 100% CPU. Weird but I'm glad it works
Now the only problem is kswapd0 eating CPU sometimes. I think this is caused by lack of memory, but I'm not sure what I can do about it.

[Q] encryption...

has anyone done this yet? I noticed it in the settings, but it said it can take up to 1 hour... just wondered if it was worth while.
if you have done it, does it slow anything down, and how long did it take you to run?
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

iamdarren said:
has anyone done this yet? I noticed it in the settings, but it said it can take up to 1 hour... just wondered if it was worth while.
if you have done it, does it slow anything down, and how long did it take you to run?
Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried but it appears to not work. You have to be plugged in and fully charged (seems to work from 90% ish), and you have to have unlock PIN set. But once you have selected and confirmed encryption, the screen blanks except for a green line drawing of an Android logo, and then after a minute or so the screen blanks out and then you wait...and wait....and wait...and wait. I gave up after 4 hours.
If at any point you switch screen on, you get the PIN prompt: enter PIN, and you're presented with the blank screen with green line diagram of android logo. I've left it like this for several hours. In the end I reset, and got my device back - but still unencrypted. I've also tried without ever trying to log in until at least 4 hours have elapsed, in case the login attempt disturbed the encryption.
I have logged a defect with Asus for this and a couple of other things, and this morning got a response back saying that "We're still looking into this", which seems to suggest that they agree it is a problem.

Cool in gonna try now, at 95percent battery.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

That didn't seem to do anything.... I saw the green android with cog body, maybe I need to give it more time. I will set out before i go bed.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

I'm wondering how the encryption is handled, is it software or hardware enabled. I have seen with PC's that use software encryption that there is a performance hit and if the encryption is handled by hardware, like a hardware enabled HDD encryption, there is little to no performance hit. The PC I tested the software encryption on took forever to boot vs the hardware enabled one.

Havoc6266 said:
I'm wondering how the encryption is handled, is it software or hardware enabled. I have seen with PC's that use software encryption that there is a performance hit and if the encryption is handled by hardware, like a hardware enabled HDD encryption, there is little to no performance hit. The PC I tested the software encryption on took forever to boot vs the hardware enabled one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You must have used some strange encryption application or had an old computer.
Try truecrypt - on modern (2 core) computer there is practically no performance hit whatsoever (decrypting and even encrypting on the fly is faster than hard drives - on SSD it could be too slow though). The same goes for standard encryption used by Ubuntu (it's very probable that Android tablets use the same method).
Truecrypt (and probably most other full-disk encryptions too) work like that:
- all the data on hard drive is encrypted (edit: it's encrypted all the time, never, ever is decrypted data written to disk),
- when system reads data - it's decrypted before being send to applications,
- when system writes data - it's encrypted before it's saved to the disk.
Also - Tegra2 should have a part handling encryption and decryption so it could be at least partially hardware encryption.

Your right, it has been a while since I have used encryption due to a bad experience early on. I'll give Truecyrpt a try. The software I used before was Safeguard Easy.

iamdarren said:
That didn't seem to do anything.... I saw the green android with cog body, maybe I need to give it more time. I will set out before i go bed.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I left mine overnight, and it still was not encrypted. I had even done a factory reset beforehand to minimize the amount of data to encrypt.
I'm pretty sure this doesn't work. I'll post as soon as I get a reply from Asus.

It did not work, maybe this feature isn't ready yet?
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

As a feature, it's not ready for prime time. I have it working on the xoom, but every reset it erases my timezone and sets it to GMT. Also, it uses the same PIN as your lock screen, so if you have a numeric pin for easy access, anyone who sees it now knows your encryption password as well. It really should be two different passwords. I intend this weekend to reset my machine and remove the encryption, because it doesn't serve the purpose it was supposed to serve.

Bump. Any info from Asus? I started it at ~7pm. It's midnight, and on the last few power-ups I get nothing except the green android logo after I enter the PIN. So it seems it's still not doing anything? Gonna reset now I guess.

Same problem here with a Transformer TF-101 Build number HRI66.TW_epad-8.2.3.8-20110423
See nothing but a android robot after enter the PIN. 7 hrs later I manually shutdown the machine.

Same here on the Modaco ROM.
Left it on the android pic for 9 hours... it didn't lock the screen or anything, and at the end, the accelerometer still worked when I rotated the screen, but I had to power off and on to get it back.
What does the encryption do, anyway? Does it stop you being able to load files on from the PC? Does it ask for the password when you plug it into the PC?

So no one has been able to get encryption working? I was just going to test this out and saw this thread. Thanks.

I've seen someone talking about some minor issues when running with encryption, so someone got it working.
That MIGHT have been on xoom, but I think it was the transformer.

Just thought I would share my experience with the encryption feature in Honeycomb since some people can't get it working:
At first I couldn't get it working like some people on this thread, I too was stuck on the green wireframe Android for hours on end until I discovered I could still exit back to the homescreen by pressing the home key on the keyboard dock. This happened on both the stock Asus 3.1 ROM and v1.4 of the PRIME! ROM (installed via nvflash).
I then updated recently to v1.5 of PRIME! via CWM and I can report that I was able to encrypt my Transformer after this update. It displayed the green Android wireframe logo for a few seconds, then rebooted and went into the encryption progress page. I had not really done much with the ROM other than change a few small settings and add my Google account, so the encryption was complete in less than an hour. I think the 'hour or more' estimate Google gives within the encryption description text is probably more accurate if you've installed a few more apps afterwards, but of course your timing will vary.
Furthermore I think that the encryption is likely only partial, because I was then able to flash one of the zip files from this thread via CWM without any issues or prompts. Otherwise I'm sure it would've thrown some kind of error such as not being able to mount the system partition or something of that ilk.
Finally (lol ) I also found this page on the Android source website outlining the details of the encyption implementation in Android Honeycomb for anyone interested. There is a mention somewhere of the 128-bit flavour of the AES algorithm being used to encrypt the master key.
Hope this helps anyone trying to get encryption working on their Transformer .

yet another absolutely useless feature, besides bricking the thing for whoever tries to steal it. keeps your data safe.. even from yourself.
i noticed a problem when inserting a microsd (into the pad itself) that it would not be able to boot as long as this is inserted. i am guessing this is because it tries to decrypt the microsd (that is not encrypted) and therefore is stuck in boot.
This is another aspect one should expect if this was a pre-release software. I am extremely disappointed with this product so far, mostly because of the software. most of (not any of the cameras) the hardware (including the keyboard) is pretty good

I did it 2 days ago, and it worked flawless. It tooks about an hour. I use it since and I have no problems at all.
The only thing is that I have to insert the SD card again each time I power on the transformer. Any idea how to change rhat?

fjoesne said:
yet another absolutely useless feature, besides bricking the thing for whoever tries to steal it. keeps your data safe.. even from yourself.
i noticed a problem when inserting a microsd (into the pad itself) that it would not be able to boot as long as this is inserted. i am guessing this is because it tries to decrypt the microsd (that is not encrypted) and therefore is stuck in boot.
This is another aspect one should expect if this was a pre-release software. I am extremely disappointed with this product so far, mostly because of the software. most of (not any of the cameras) the hardware (including the keyboard) is pretty good
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You likely have ASUS to blame for this, as my understanding is that the Thinkpad tablet deals properly (from the spec anyway) with SD cards attached to the device even to the point it can additionally encrypt them. Again we are all early adopters, Honeycomb was sort of an experiment for Google, and Ice Cream Sandwich is the real next version of the andoid platform.
And encryption is hardly a useless feature, it means Google is finally trying to consider enterprise usage of their products which is very important to the further growth of the platform.

It really does take 30 minutes to flash Synergy RC2 + God Mode

With the understanding that RC2 will be superseded by RLS1 very very shortly, I thought I would share my godmode "upgrade" experience from yesterday anyway:
For me, the elapsed time between booting into Amon Ra and finally getting a booted OS (let's define that as the earliest you can pull up the lock ring and get to a homsecreen, even if it is very laggy still) :
20 minutes grand total.
The total time before I could launch an app or actually use the phone in a meaningful way was more like 30 minutes.
Total time before the pain of initial lagginess no longer called attention to itself (ie, you could use the phone without the thought of "damn this is slow" intruding in your mind) : hours.
The long delays during the install process happen at times that are different from what I expected
Flashing the actual zip while in Amon Ra:
8 minutes total. Progress bar seems to hang on around the 50% mark (right under the "u" in Virus") for at least half the time, then the bar fills in to 100% suddenly, then a long wait at 100%, then back to the interactive Amon Ra interface.
At this point Rosie 3.0 carousel "non-landscape" people such as myself flash the appropriate mod ( I did the one with Rosie 3.0 widgets). Very brief ( a few seconds to navigate to your zip, a few seconds to flash).
What happens after you select "Reboot now" in Amon Ra?
First, the "white screen with black 'htc EVO 4G' text" (Note this is different from the "white screen with green 'htc' logo" you get later (and indeed any time Sense reloads, whether due to crashes, first boot, reloading after titanium activity etc)).
This lasted only 3 minutes.
Then the glowing green "SYNEAGY AOM" ( <-- not a typo, look carefully at boot animation ;> ) throbbing-synapse-loop boot animation.
This lasted 9 minutes. Sometimes the synapses throbbed very slowly.
Then finally a brief glimpse of lock ring on top of wallpaper. No shortcut icons visible. If you don't touch phone, the screen promptly goes to sleep. Which is fine. It could probably use a little quiet time at this point.
(If you just touch the power button but don't actually mess with lock ring it's amusing to watch what time it is. First it will be something like UTC time, totally off from your local time unless you're actually in England. Then a while later it will spontaneously change to local time, except in 24-hour format (eg 21:57) . Then finally it will revert to 12-hour format (eg 9:57). Takes several minutes.)
Finally I unlocked it and the first thing I was greeted with was a modal dialog saying "Process com.android.phone is not responding...Force Close / Wait". I chose wait and immediately was shown the "white screen with green 'htc' logo" for a good five minutes of totally non-interactive wait time.
I left the phone alone during this time and eventually it finished doing what it was doing and it fell back asleep. When I woke it up, I was placed directly in the Setup Wizard app. Interestingly, the first screen of the setup wizard has a 'back' button. Not feeling like signing in to anything just yet I hit 'back'. Again came the "white screen with green 'htc' logo", then a desktop with a dialog just saying "Loading" for yet another minute.
At last a real homsecreen appears (now with the familiar constellation of six icons, and, again, no clock/weather widget), the tips widget throws up a balloon with its first tip, and finally you can actually use the phone.
This would be around the 30 minute point since the flashing process started.
There are times during this initial break-in stage where it seems the phone is almost unresponsive. Touches may *begin* to get responded to after a five second lag or more. The response itself can take 5 seconds more to do something simple like simply redrawing a button with its highlight color after a button press, let alone performing the requested action.
That phone / wait dialog comes up a lot. For instance I just saw it again today when someone actually called me. I chose wait and then answered the call normally.)
Ominously, I also saw a dialog later concerning "android.process.media" which concerns me because the point of god mode is to change the way the filesystem works for basic I/O functions.
Still haven't ever signed in to my main google account yet. Seeing how far I can take this before I do. I suspect as soon as I sign in it will start downloading all my apps from the Market. Which force closed on me by the way when I was doing something totally unrelated (just poking around Spare Parts I believe it was).
Also the first time I tried all this the internet browser app simply did not work right out of the box. Force closed every time. (I restored app+data for just the browser app from my titanium backup I made (while running RC2 non god mode) prior to the install and got my browser back. That didn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings.)
Later I repeated the entire install procedure from scratch and did not experience market FC's or internet browser FC's. Not sure why the second time would be different.
Note I was not connected to AC power during any flashing or initial boot up.
For those playing along at home, you may be curious to know things like what kind of phone do I have, how did I prepare to flash, and what was the exact sequence of steps during wiping / flashing?
OG Evo HW 004, original SD card ( I believe that means 8 GB class 2), never toyed with any kind of partitioning. Previous ROMS have all worked fine with the SD card which has the usual folders full of pictures, nandroids, titanium, folders created by previous ROMs including Synergy, etc.
Latest radios, PRI, PRL, GPS works, 4G keys happy, never had any drama.
Before flashing God Mode I was already running Synergy RC2, and once I was ready to say good bye, I did a nandroid backup, then rebooted, connected to a PC and offloaded any new camera pictures, some recent nandroids and uploaded the ROM image ( I did check the md5) and the Rosie mod I intended to use (dkdude, not fdb) . Then ran titanium, backing up all user plus system apps, then finally did one last quadrant test (just under 1000), took a deep breath, and rebooted into Amon Ra 2.3 .
From there I did these wipes in this order:
rotation
battery
dalvik
cache
data
factory reset
Yes I realize many of these are redundant. Then, to be *really* redundant, I left wipe mode and went into flash zip mode and flashed calkulins format all tool. I believe this also wipes boot amongst other things.
So now at this stage the phone is fairly re-virginized. The only thing I haven't touched is the SD card which has the zips I want to flash.
Now I flash the actual synergy RC2 god mode zip (as described at the very top), then the rosie mod, getting no errors for either one, and then without further ado selected reboot now, which brings us back to the firstboot behavior chronicled above.
Edit: I did restore quadrant and got 1600 on my first run: make of that what you will.

[Reserved for updates on 4G experience, bluetooth, gapps, general usability etc...]
Quick update: I did successfully test 4G, WiFi, bluetooth, and GPS.
I finally signed in to Google and sure enough market downloaded all my apps. This may be a Synergy thing- Synergy also seems to remember things from previous installs despite the elaborate wiping regime described above, such as the password to my WiFi access point some search term history, maybe a few other settings.
Anyways, during the download and install of a moderately small number of market apps (I have like 15, all free) the phone was effectively unusable. Almost unresponsive. Finally a half hour after the install activity was no longer apparent, things seemed to settle down and the phone gradually seemed to become normal again.
Quadrant scores were originally as low as 1200 something. Then got it up in the 1400's, then finally i have seen several in a row in the mid-1500's. Again, for reference, I consistently got around 1000 with vanilla RC2 (and the same hardware gave me 1200 with CyanogenMod 7.1 RC1 for you AOSP fans out there).

And this is supposed to be an upgrade???

The party line is *once the phone has had time to settle in* things get a little faster in real world experience. I am in fact beginning to see the promised behavior now, 12 hours after install (including maybe 4 hours of heavy usage)
Certainly the improvements to the benchmark scores are immediate, but we can all agree actual 'driveability' is more important.
So far, I will say it's looking better with each passing hour.
As an example, the simple spinning carousel action (remember I'm doing the Rosie 3.0 carousel mod) under RC2-non-GM was clearly straining the limits of what the Evo could smoothly render. With god mode, it's clearly different, faster and smoother.
Here's the feeling I get: every time you do something for the *first time*, let's say the first time you launch a particular app, activate a certain part of the Rosie UI, get a new dialog box, there's a punishing lag. The *next time* you launch that app, or swipe that tab, or experience that same condition, it's faster. Indeed perhaps faster than it ever was in plain old RC2.
But the make-or-break thing will always be stability, or should I say predictability: days from now, if I still see a lot of Force Close's, or if I am still experiencing unexpected moments of slowness while it "learns" how to do something (and you know how Murphy's law works- it will always happen at just that moment where you can't afford to be surprised by a mysterious delay) - well, it may be back to regular Synergy. Hard to say. I'm a patient person. I intend to give this a good long audition.

When I Flashed the Alpha it took forever, but yes RC2+ was a very pleasant flash by comparison, just flash ROM - flash mount zip - flash carousel + widgets - flash unmount zip. then Im using link2sd and TB. Does anyone know of another a2sd gui that is good? want to prepare for RLS1

I had a similar experience giving rc2+ a try. It was borderline useless on my phone for whatever reasons. Went from rc2 to + after a nandroid backup and did a wipe of dalvik and cache. After about 6 hours of usage I said screw it and restored back to my nandroid backup which is blisteringly fast. The "seat test" on the phone wasn't great at all but the quadrant resulted in test results in the 1700-1800 range which is awesome. I too am on the stock class 2 card and I planned on buying a new card so maybe the results will be better with a new card?

TruthAEE said:
When I Flashed the Alpha it took forever, but yes RC2+ was a very pleasant flash by comparison, just flash ROM - flash mount zip - flash carousel + widgets - flash unmount zip. then Im using link2sd and TB. Does anyone know of another a2sd gui that is good? want to prepare for RLS1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The main Synergy thread is full of discussions on a2sd stuff.
Interesting that you flashed the rosie mod using the mount / unmount strategy. I chose to use a rosie mod that had specifically been re-written for godmode. I suppose you end up at the same place either way.

I wonder how it would run on a 32gb class 10.
Sent from my locked tight OG EVO using XDA Premium App

I have seen a lot of wildy varying reports on upgrading your SD card. When it works, it works. It's awesome. But there are also reports of even "class 10" cards that did not improve performance at all. Could come down to who the SD card manufacturer is.
If you tweak everything just right (note most people say to leave dalvik in internal memory regardless) with a swap partitioin, ext3 paritition, a2sd, then maybe one of the new custom kernels that have just come out, and maybe even apply the v6 super charger memory management trick, I bet this ROM could fly, benchmark or no benchmark.

[Q] A500 constantly waking itself

Anyone have this problem? My iconia a500 constantly wakes itself up for no reason. Doesn't matter what ROM or kernel, it happens all the time and destroys my battery life because the screen will stay on overnight. I'm afraid it might be a hardware problem :/
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda premium

No one else has this issue? :/
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda premium

Shouldn't be a hardware issue, as something (an app) is causing the display to wake. Think about it for a minute. When hardware fails, it doesn't work, or it gets warm enough, then fails.
So something is telling the display to come on.
Do you have a 500 or a 501?
Which rom/kernel combo?
I'll give a few pieces of advice.
1. Check the display time-out in the settings. Make sure it's not set to "never"
2. Set your wireless to sleep.
3. Uninstall any utility apps (task managers, battery monitors, display enhancements, etc) Anything that "might" cause the display to become active.
4. Turn off notifications and sync's. You can do this for a day and see what happens.
If that doesn't fix the issue, it could also be the fact that the rom wasn't flashed properly. Before you get into a defensive posture let me explain.
When we flash multiple roms/kernels, eventually some code doesn't get wiped fully by just doing the normal 3 wipes. Sure, half the time we can get away with it, depending on what rom we decide to flash.
The next thing we know, some strange things start happening. Usually small things. Like messages that say to insert sim card on a 500 (leftover build.prop from a previous rom). GPS is weak, wifi disconnects, etc.
The proper way to fully get rid of everything is;
1. Do the 3 normal wipes (user, data, and dalvik)
2. Go to Mounts, and do a format on those 3, and also Flexrom.
This ensures there is absolutely nothing internal left. Clean as a whistle.
Then and only then, go back to the main menu, and flash the rom.
As with kernels, never flash a rom and the kernel at the same time. Always reboot after the rom flash, do your setup, then reboot and flash the kernel. And make sure the kernel is fully compatible with the rom.
As I said, whatever it is, it's software related. Install minimum apps, and run it for awhile. Then a couple more apps, till you figure out what causes the display to wake and stay active.

brokentoaster24 said:
Anyone have this problem? My iconia a500 constantly wakes itself up for no reason. Doesn't matter what ROM or kernel, it happens all the time and destroys my battery life because the screen will stay on overnight. I'm afraid it might be a hardware problem :/
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I remember reading something about this from ACER in one of their release notes. They patched it. Because you're running a custom ROM, the patch must be in the boot or something else that typically isn't touched by a custom ROM.
TD

My 7's performance is kinda sorta terrible. What gives?

I'm not rooted, just running everything the way it came out of the box.
Examples of what I mean:
1. Switching users on the lockscreen takes forever. I tap on my user icon...and I wait. like 20-30 seconds. finally my lockscreen pops up and I can unlock the tablet.
2. Auto-rotate can take a long time too.
3. It takes a while for the lockscreen to be responsive when waking the device up.
Things like that. I'm wondering if it's because I have set up two users on the device. Does anyone else see the tablet lag with multiple users set up?
What should I do? I'm not afraid to root it, but I can't lose multi-user functionality so I'd need a ROM that supports that.

Wargzam said:
I'm not rooted, just running everything the way it came out of the box.
Examples of what I mean:
1. Switching users on the lockscreen takes forever. I tap on my user icon...and I wait. like 20-30 seconds. finally my lockscreen pops up and I can unlock the tablet.
2. Auto-rotate can take a long time too.
3. It takes a while for the lockscreen to be responsive when waking the device up.
Things like that. I'm wondering if it's because I have set up two users on the device. Does anyone else see the tablet lag with multiple users set up?
What should I do? I'm not afraid to root it, but I can't lose multi-user functionality so I'd need a ROM that supports that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most people with the 8GB and maybe the 16GB had the multiuser lag problem.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

Same thing happens to my sisters and my nexus 7 I'm rooted unlocked and trying new roms and hers is completely stock, I don't know what gives
Sent from my Nexus 7

When you switch users doesn't the entire Android layer restart? (I don't know, never tried multi user yet.)
If that is the case, then it is always going to take about 10-15 seconds less than a cold start boot. On my tablet that would be about 20-30 seconds.

Auto rotate has a delay built in to prevent accidental rotation. Google made this way too long. Whenever I show someone my tablet they tilt it and impatiently tap it until it rotates.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium