Database Users

[Q] Swiftdroid/Openswift 2.2/2.3 slow UI

Is it just me or not.
Basically, stock android launcher lags on those roms unlike Stock LG ROM, Sense ROM or Galaxy ACE roms.
Home replacements resolves scrolling choppiness on homescreens, but open and closing animations still lags.
Does everyone else have this problem or is this just the nature of Cyanogen MOD?

What do you mean?
What do you mean by opening and closing animations? All launchers lag but it depends on how much it lags.

V6 Supercharger script solved that problem..
Sent from my GT540 using XDA Premium App

I used on my GT540 the stock launcher for months, and I was more than happy with it.
Go to ''Spare Parts'' in CM7, to the 2 animation speed settings, and set them both to ''slow'', it's not ''slow'' but it's more fluid.
Also, in settings, try to set the phone to display all animations.
I hope it helps.

CPU
Try changing the 'MINIMUM' CPU speed to 480mhz. It reduces alot of lag.

S2 Ics - Tw Discussion

I've read on other topics people talking about ics on our gs2, so i decided to create a thread to express opinions
instead of spamming other topics hehehe
So if you want to say twiz is fugly or i like it, this is the wright place for you hehehe
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1396647
For the ones that seek aosp feeling in sgs2 folow the link and post there hehehe

If you ask me the ics in the s2 looks like a car wreck hehehe its the ugliest thing i've ever seen XD
(bla bla if you hate so much why did u bought a s2? Because it was the best smartphone on the market, and still is one of the best)

Personally I like touchwiz way more than the LG, Motorolla, and HTC overlays. The launcher is the only thing I don't like about it, and that's easily fixed with launcher pro. I personally think the TW stuff adds some nice functionality without causing speed problems. The only thing I wish touchwiz had is the inline spelling correction... other than that it's fine for me.

Thats true, tw introduced a lot of things that were missing on gb, but for the best sammy phone it would be expected something better in aspect, not a expensive android copy of bada os

Business and Marketin Wise:
You can't sell a phone and later with an update, force people to change their entire experience with their phone.
So yes, ICS will have TW similiar to Gingerbread TW, there is no escape from that.
Luckily, unlike Apple users, we have options to "choose" from any launcher, even allowed to install different types of Android distros...
However, what I would like is similiar experience to AOSP launcher especially in App Drawer like Widgets, slides etc.

Touchwiz is by far the smoothest launcher for the s2.. The modified 4.5 version is even better..
So ill stick to tw.. Other launchers tends to be battery hungry..
Sent from my GT-9100 using SMS

Better if samsung provides an option in settings to switch between touchwiz and ics launchers. Default being tw will not change the end user experience drastically.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

Unfortunately thats not gonna happen, but we have the option to install a custom ics launcher like nova launcher or trebuchet, and enjoy ics but the framework of samsung will be there =(

Gorjess said:
Touchwiz is by far the smoothest launcher for the s2.. The modified 4.5 version is even better..
So ill stick to tw.. Other launchers tends to be battery hungry..
Sent from my GT-9100 using SMS
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+1 10chars

You see the problem is that any other UI on top of vanilla android is just a wrapper. At an expense. Sense, Motoblur, Tw all consume extra resources. I hear you say, "but our phones have monster resources". True, although unless the interface is offering extra functionality compared to stock, why use a wrapper?
After all the current iteration of android; ICS has proven that as an OS, android has matured in functionality, UX and eye candy. The only reason I use Tw on my phone is cause it enables video calling via the phone, which I hardly every use. Why should I be strongly coupled to Tw just cause I can not get that functionality form stock? I don't know. Here's hoping video calling get implemented in the stock Phone.apk soon...

A lot of people say Launcher pro and other 3rd part launchers are a smooth as TW but its a false smooth. In order to be smooth they must use a high CPU clock speed which chews up the battery. TW uses the GPU to make it fast and smooth. Underclock your CPU to 500mHz and try LP etc. and compare them to TW. TW will still run smooth but 3rd party launchers will stutter.

Initially I didn't like TouchWiz because of its rather iPhone-ish icons which in my opinion looked pretty bad on the original SGS which had an older version of TouchWiz.
After trying it out myself, though, I've gotten used to it and am starting to like it more than LP because of the ability to resize widgets and so on.
Its inevitable that Sammy would include TW into the update of one of their flagship devices. While I do like the original interface of stock ICS I wouldn't mind having TouchWiz in ICS since it was rather pleasant to use in Gingerbread.
If anyone really hates TouchWiz that badly, an AOSP version would be released by CyanogenMod anyways.

I love touch wiz its so cool ..!!
BUt when it comes to ICS

robt772000 said:
A lot of people say Launcher pro and other 3rd part launchers are a smooth as TW but its a false smooth. In order to be smooth they must use a high CPU clock speed which chews up the battery. TW uses the GPU to make it fast and smooth. Underclock your CPU to 500mHz and try LP etc. and compare them to TW. TW will still run smooth but 3rd party launchers will stutter.
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Click to collapse
Indeed, but with ics the ui is hardware accelerated so the advantage of tw is lost
unless they make a real improvement from the leaked alpha to final, its almost certain that ill stick with cm9 when the time comes....
crobat said:
Initially I didn't like TouchWiz because of its rather iPhone-ish icons which in my opinion looked pretty bad on the original SGS which had an older version of TouchWiz.
After trying it out myself, though, I've gotten used to it and am starting to like it more than LP because of the ability to resize widgets and so on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i personally use adw ex and its pretty good no lags, lacks some tw options but have plenty of room for customization, and goes great with ics 1.6 theme by the great vert XD

i like TouchWiz when its gingerbread........
but i like ics framework and launcher than TW4.....
so i want to install ics launcher and frameworks very badly.......

Tyrany said:
Unfortunately thats not gonna happen, but we have the option to install a custom ics launcher like nova launcher or trebuchet, and enjoy ics but the framework of samsung will be there =(
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CM9 anyone?
Sent from my E10i using XDA App

AOSP all the way for me. I'm looking forward to the necessary code being ripped from the Samsung "release" and being applied to the Nexus build. I've always much preferred to start with the basic AOSP experience and then build from there up.
As for the comments about GPU acceleration, this is not something new that is being brought about by ICS. GPU acceleration is an option that developers can enable in their apps when they build them. It needs nothing more than a value being set to true in a manifest file. The only difference between GB and ICS is that it is on by default in ICS.
You can't say that existing launchers don't use GPU unless you've decompiled the apk and checked. My guess is that any developer worth their salt would know this, and would be using GPU acceleration already.

Trebuchet launcher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4s2EVdvKeY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1396647
For the AOSP lovers like me hehehe folow the link and lets help supercurio lets make the diference xD
Sent from my GT-I9100 using the force

TW is the only launcher i've tried so far that maintains iOS-like smoothness on full widget/shortcut load over 5 pages. Everything else either skip frames or just plain stutters in this task.
and dont even get me started on the yet unmatched spectrum of hardware video codec support that the TW framework provides.

Can touchwiz be uninstalled on a rooted phone?

It's been awhile since I haven't been on pure AOSP. I can't remember if Touchwiz can be uninstalled on a rooted phone or just like an app or is it hard coded in the OS.
Lag on such a powerful phone should be embarrassing to Samsung!
Thanks.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium

Catchpen said:
It's been awhile since I haven't been on pure AOSP. I can't remember if Touchwiz can be uninstalled on a rooted phone or just like an app or is it hard coded in the OS.
Lag on such a powerful phone should be embarrassing to Samsung!
Thanks.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not an app. It's built into various parts of the OS as far as I know. I have no lag though so I'm always surprised when people mention lag. Actually, to clarify I have seen some lag since I started doing some tweaks and mods posted on here but they usually clear up after a few reboots. OS seems pretty self-optimizing to me. But again, I always say this, lag depends on what phone/OS you are coming from. Someone coming from AOSP will probably notice lag where as someone like me coming from a stock S3 finds this much faster.

Catchpen said:
It's been awhile since I haven't been on pure AOSP. I can't remember if Touchwiz can be uninstalled on a rooted phone or just like an app or is it hard coded in the OS.
Lag on such a powerful phone should be embarrassing to Samsung!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Depends on what you mean by TouchWiz. If you mean just the launcher, it can be frozen/disabled or removed. But the hooks of the TW framework go deep because a lot of the features in the ROM depend on it. TW can be tweaked, and various unused RAM wasting TW related services can be frozen/disabled. On my previous S2 and S3, I ran custom tweaked TW ROMs with Nova or Apex launchers that were as smooth or smoother than AOSP/AOKP ROMs. Once the bootloader gets unlocked on the AT&T S4 and the devs get to do their stuff then things will get better. Who knows, the lag could just be the result of a kernel governor that needs a little tweaking. These days, running AOSP will make you lose a lot of the features that the manufacturers are putting into their phones. Of course whether or not someone would consider all of these new features useful or gimmicky is another story entirely.

hamzer11 said:
It's not an app. It's built into various parts of the OS as far as I know. I have no lag though so I'm always surprised when people mention lag. Actually, to clarify I have seen some lag since I started doing some tweaks and mods posted on here but they usually clear up after a few reboots. OS seems pretty self-optimizing to me. But again, I always say this, lag depends on what phone/OS you are coming from. Someone coming from AOSP will probably notice lag where as someone like me coming from a stock S3 finds this much faster.
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Click to collapse
Thanks, Yeah it's nothing substantial but noticeable to me. Just scrolling from page to page on the home screen it's just a little jerky, poweramp has skipped a few times, stuff like that. hopefully a root and de-bloat will help.
Over 1 gig of ram is comsumed just with the phone idle and no open apps. I know Android will manage memory well when needed but shesh.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using xda premium

Have you turned off all animations in developer settings? My phone didn't lag, but doing that made it even faster.

TW is so integrated into the ROM you really wouldn't want to uninstall it. Stuff just wouldn't work.
Just be patient and wait for our awesome devs to put together a custom ROM for this wicked cool phone.

Are custom ROMs on this phone laggy currently?

I made the observation that custom ROMs for this phone (I have only tested CM, SlimBean unofficial and Mokee) seem to be laggy while using with the same or even less installed applications compared to my Nexus 4.
The stock ROM runs very fluid. The kernel from Wootever makes no big difference.
Anyone else experiencing this and/or know a reason for it?
Thanks

MaluNoPeleke said:
I made the observation that custom ROMs for this phone (I have only tested CM, SlimBean unofficial and Mokee) seem to be laggy while using with the same or even less installed applications compared to my Nexus 4.
The stock ROM runs very fluid. The kernel from Wootever makes no big difference.
Anyone else experiencing this and/or know a reason for it?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is your definition of laggy? Why would number of installed apps matter? What is your CPU frequency at and governer? Launcher used? Widgets used?

Laggy means that I can see how the launcher has to redraw or Firefox has to reload and stuttering.
Default kernel settings or Nexus 5 recommended settings, No difference.
Nova Launcher beta. Many widgets (five screens)

There's just no way to get rid of the lag

I know, it's a 2 year old phone with just 1GB RAM and TouchWiz on top of it.
I've spent the last 2 days trying a LOT of roms to try to make the phone feel faster, because I don't want to buy a new one. I really like this one. The camera is AMAZING, decent battery life, love blocking mode, etc. As a phone it works great: good speaker, strong vibration, great signal, etc.
But there's one single thing that makes this phone feel "old": the speed. Just the speed. If it were faster and more fluid then there would be absolutely no reason to upgrade to the new phones (except, well, maybe more RAM and battery).
Yesterday I tried like 15 AOSP roms: CM11, temasek, ultimaAOSP, NeatROMAOSP, Vanir, AOKP, SlimKat, etc.
Nothing. It's slightly faster, but the problem is the animations. They just look wrong all the time. There's frame drops everywhere. And bugs and crashes, so back to Samsung stock today. Tried another 10 samsung based roms. Nothing new. Speed is still the same and frame drops are still there...
I guess I'll have to end up buying a new phone, but definitely not a flagship. I'm looking at midrange phones that come with AOSP. Found one with 2GB RAM, 13Mpx camera, 2500 battery, 5 inch 720P IPS screen, microSD and dual SIM for 199$. Great price, and comes with 4.4 stock Android.
Tried the phone at the store the other day and it just made my SGS3 look like the midranger, and that with a MediaTek A7 1.3 quad core!

+++
Exactly. Well,animations are smooth on AOSP with right kernel,but still not as it should be. This phone sucks when it comes to UI performance.
Now I even got broken camera and media playback,too,after stressing it with every new test on my phone.
Well,probably this phone worked the best with 4.1.2. I think it's all about crappy processor,called exynos.
EDIT: Btw,you can try archidroid 1x with his boeffla presets,though. After all,it's not that bad.

I think you are just setting unrealistic expectations if none of those ROMS, without TouchWiz, were any good for you.

There is nothing crappy about the processor mate. your case is an isolated issue. If the archi ROM is not smooth for you then there is something wrong with your phone.
it's always wise to stick to ROMs and kernels which are built using proper sources.
Do not restore a massive amount of data soon after a flash. Let the ROM settle a bit. Trim your device memory once in a while.
Also a megawipe is recommended after so many flashes.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Free mobile app

I put Cyanogenmod CM11 on mine after updating to stock 4.3. It felt like a completely different phone and brought back the speed. It absolutely flies and battery time is double what it was on stock 4.3.

I tested alot of Roms but regading speed and batterylife i use Temasek with Yank kernel. No OC and de S3 flys.

Oh god, it's like reading a thread I could have written myself. I feel you, mate. Got the same damn frustations sometimes.
It seems that whichever ROM "camp" you choose, you're gonna have drawbacks. Tried so many different variants of TW-roms and i just feel they are all too slow and with lags.
Many of the AOSP-roms are quite fast (using ArchiDroid atm which is incredibly fast!) but then you get the problem of crappy camera, no Allshare, tethering issues, many games that have sound-issues and all those random bugs we all know about but try to live with
Perhaps the new Kitkat port can solve these issues but it seems there is a lot of work to be done still. Still I'm glad there's a community like XDA with such awesome people (Like Kryten who posted earlier ) who put the time into developing these things.. Or we would be stuck with even slower ROM's from Samsung.

Is there any way to get rid of it, or at least reduce it?

Install smart droid, further debloat, run greenify and boeffla, custom launcher and its quick, no lag

Even the s5 can't run without lag using Touchwiz.
Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

jennifercolemanme said:
Is there any way to get rid of it, or at least reduce it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes there is, activate Developer Options by tapping on the Build Number in About Phone. In there are 3 settings for animations. The 1st thing I do on every rom is decrease them to 25%. On CM11 and temaseks builds you have a slider which allows you to fine tune the settings instead of the picker which you find on other roms.
My personal experience is that OmniRom is just snappier than any of the others, even when I have a whole bunch of apps open, incoming calls get displayed almost instantly, the dialer and contacts open almost instantly. In my case of course. Everyone has their favourite rom/kernel combination. I have also had great success using Yank555's kernel with the default settings (which include a slight overclock with no noticeable battery drain.

So my temporarily solution is to completely disable the animations in developer settings.
It's a good solution, for now.
My combo right now is stock Samsung 4.3 debloated (many useless apps freezed. Other apps freezed also using Titanium Backup) with Boeffla kernel.
It gets annoying when animations aren't smooth and consistent, but I guess it's expected when Touchwiz is on top and just 1GB RAM.
Taking about RAM, this phone has almost no multitasking also! It's impossible to keep one Chrome or Internet tab open in the background while you do something else. When you go back to the Internet app it has to reload again.
And no custom rom can fix this either. I spent one week with AOSP Vanir rom and didn't had multitasking there either.
What I'm trying to say is that this phone has turned old faster than it should have, precisely because of a bad 4.3 update by Samsung and also just 1GB RAM.
And talking about speed and lag again, trust me, I've tied all the good roms available. It won't matter if you install a custom kernel. If you overclock the phone then battery will last even less than before, and it doesn't make a huge difference in speed animation and fluidity.
I'm sure AOSP roms like CM11 and others do work faster and more fluid in newest phones like G2, SGS4, HTC One, etc. It's because they have a better processor and 2GB RAM.
In the end I think it's the hardware that's to blame for the lag (and bad 4.3 update by Samsung too).
The phone is great otherwise. I love almost everything about it, like I previously said. Most times I can't believe how good the camera is, the screen is enough for me (no need for 1080P), size and weight is perfect, etc.
I would have preferred to own the US SGS3 model with it's 2GB RAM than the EU model. In the long run I think it's better.
But anyway, the lag is not huge, just annoying. And I only notice it when opening and closing apps.

Try entering development settings and change the animator duration scale to 0.5 the transition animation scale to 0.5 and the window animation scale to 0.5
It will make anything faster
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Free mobile app

AlmoGS said:
Try entering development settings and change the animator duration scale to 0.5 the transition animation scale to 0.5 and the window animation scale to 0.5
It will make anything faster
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't understand it.
It doesn't matter the scale animation (just tried with 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 again), there's still frame drops everywhere.
It doesn't make anything "faster". It's even more annoying watching the frame drops at 0.25.
It's not a solution. There is NO solution to the animation frame drops, not even on custom roms...
Only "solution" is to turn animation scale completely to 0.

I have sgs3 intl and I had a lot of lags and frame drops and I switched to CM 11 nightly and it's became faster and no frame drop and it's like new.
What Android version do you use?
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Free mobile app

if you want to have the same camera quality, i suggest you archidroid 1.7.16.
faster rom i ever tried

What lag? My S3 is smmmmoooooooth on CM11
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

Sensamic said:
You don't understand it.
It doesn't matter the scale animation (just tried with 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 again), there's still frame drops everywhere.
It doesn't make anything "faster". It's even more annoying watching the frame drops at 0.25.
It's not a solution. There is NO solution to the animation frame drops, not even on custom roms...
Only "solution" is to turn animation scale completely to 0.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright,my last bet will be to go on Archidroid stock based ROM,use it's own boeffla preset setting and turn animations to 1.5x. Animations will be smooth all around,only custom launcher is needed,because when opening or closing apps on touchwiz,it's still stuttery. I'm still using touchwiz launcher,though (lovely animations all around!).
I noticed 1.0x is the worst speed for animations on stock ROMs. I mean,with 1.0x,I notice some fps drops much more when opening a new windows with animations. Like it's too fast for CPU to tune right time for speed and animation and that makes it laggy. So it's all about wrong timing,as 0.5x also feels much more smoother,it's noticeable.
But the 1.5x setting compensates that. No more stuttery animations at all and it feels pretty beautiful. This was my last solution for stock touchwiz ROM,and I'm pretty happy. Try it yourself.
EDIT: Btw,if you also want to keep touchwiz,try xposed app settings,find there touchwiz launcher and tick the checkbox for "resident" option. That way it will keep the launcher in memory hardly,so when you will go back to launcher , shadows under the icons won't redraw and thus stuttery animations will be reduced and will happen much more rare.

On multitasking, try maximising your swap. Never have problems going from Chrome, email, FB etc. Also try removing apps 'receiver' settings, so they don't open on unlock, wifi connect etc..
Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

There have been a select FEW roms that solved most of the issues you talking about, but they mostly old and the developers have moved on. The truth is, AOSP kitkat isnt optimized for our phones and you most likely wont find a stock based ROM that doesn't lag. I think the main culprit is Jellybean + Samsung together. I don't ever recall ICS having frame drops or lagging really. Samsung did a crappy job optimizing jellybean for our phone. Jellybean is hardware intensive, more than ICS and Kitkat. Seems like it was a temp solution while Google worked on KitKat and now our phone is unfortunately stuck there.
Do yourself a favor and don't get a Samsung if you want proper performance.