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does anybody have a major problem with hero lagging. It is really annoying. I was wondering if rooting the hero can fix this problem. If not do you guys think the 2.1 update will fix it.
What ROM are you running? What apps do you normally have running in the background? Are you using a Task Killer that automatically kills apps on a set time frame? Have you tried doing a factory reset/wipe to see if it makes a difference? And finally, where do you see the lag the most? Is it in a particular application, or are you judging the "lagginess" based on moving back and forth from your home screens in SenseUI?
Answering ALL of these questions will help us understand what you're seeing a little better. Your question is a little vague, and your answers will probably help you get some more support from folks on here.
Thanks!
My phone was laggy too. I rooted it and put the fresh rom on it and I saw a big improvement in overall performance. Still not as fast as my old iphone 3gs, but I would never go back. I also don't use task manager anymore. It always runs in the background and drains your battery faster.
I was having the same issue.. and I narrowed it down to Handcent(SMS) of all things..
phone was fast until I installed it.. then it ran like a dog.... then I uninstalled handcent and speed it actually usable now..
I would like to see confirmation of this from others as well..
tyrnight said:
I was having the same issue.. and I narrowed it down to Handcent(SMS) of all things..
phone was fast until I installed it.. then it ran like a dog.... then I uninstalled handcent and speed it actually usable now..
I would like to see confirmation of this from others as well..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah handcent killed me, made the phone not just a dog, but a wounded dog born with 2 legs. 10x worse than the stock hero app, which is bad.
I'm running handcent, but I haven't noticed any specific slowdowns from it. It can take a while to load the main handcent screen when you have lots and lots of texts in there, but I usually clear them out when I get over 100 or so anyway.
Check to see that you have the most recent version of Handcent. I think I read that there was a performance bug related to their special "with Christmas animations" holiday release (that has since been fixed).
Also, remember to clear the boot-cache directory and reboot after upgrading apps ('rm -r /data/boot-cache/*'; reboot). The Hero has problems with caching apps after upgrades (so you aren't actually running the upgrade version). I have no idea if this was fixed in the newer ROMS. I'm running Fresh and still do it, as it only takes a sec (if you have the android-sdk and root set up).
Turning off HandCent popup notifications resulted in a substantial performance increase for me. Which is good, as I really like the features HC adds (such as voice-to-text).
I had the latest version and it was always cleared out sms wise. and I never used popup notifications.. they were annoying.. and I just got a fresh replacement of the Hero (warrantee) and its still on stock rom and Handcent still killed it.. in one day..
i have not rooted, pure stock phone. only app i think runs in background is email and loopt
I notice the lag from everything to sense UI to the clock taking 2-3 secs to update to my contacts scrolling, to text message lag, to calling even lags. like anything and everything can lag.
It all has to do with this bug in Android 1.5:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3453
I'm running AOSP 1.6 on my Hero right now and it is ridiculously fast.
So yes, I think that the 2.1 update (which hopefully will come out soon) is going to fix these issues for us.
on your location settings turn off "network location" then reboot..your lag will be gone...and make sure you have a task manager installed too and end your apps so they take over your processor
Task managers are a waste of time.
Sawawa said:
Task managers are a waste of time.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with this statement.
Sawawa said:
It all has to do with this bug in Android 1.5:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3453
I'm running AOSP 1.6 on my Hero right now and it is ridiculously fast.
So yes, I think that the 2.1 update (which hopefully will come out soon) is going to fix these issues for us.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is very true. I was running the 2.1 build from here the last few days (thought I had to revert due to missing some texts and voicemail) and it's much speedier. It uses the HTC keyboard, but it's much faster in its response, almost instantaneous. The location bug really does suck up a lot of CPU time.
Also, maybe its just me, but I think it's important to remember the kind of device we're using, the hardware involved, and what you're asking it to do. It's not like you're walking around with a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM in your pocket, but it seems a lot of people think it should respond as if that's what it has. It's a phone, yes, and it should be able to do phone stuff quickly if possible, but look at all it can and is doing. If you need absolute speed, get a dumb phone that can't browse the web, play games, or do just about anything. It'll run just fine.
handcent never made my phone lag. The only thing that made my phone lag was HTC's battery widget. Damn thing slowed my phone down so I uninstalled it and phone is running back fast again. I still use task manager because I do notice once to many apps are open it lags. Don't care what anyone says it happens on my phone. I do have a lot of applications on ignore though.
Try disabling Location services.
thef0x said:
I agree with this statement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used to wholeheartedly disagree with this statement, until I read a kickass article explaining how Android actively manages memory.
Now, I also agree with this statement 100%. I don't even use my paid task manager app anymore. :/
Since no one replied to this message in the official CM 5.0 thread. I have decided to create a new thread and hope to find a solution to this problem.
My alarm clock would stop working randomly ever since I flashed to CM 5.0, from Beta 4 to 5..2, the problem persists. If i set an alarm that is about one hour from now, it would go off. But the real alarm I need which is supposed to go off at 8 am in the morning never goes off. Anyone had similar problems? I read Cyanogen's warning about the alarm clock problem. But seems he's just trying to remind you to reset your alarm after flashing to CM. Unluckily, I've reset my alarm numerous times and it never goes off in the morning.
Anyone can give me a hand? Thanks in advance! Overall, CM is a great ROM which gives me the option to use open vpn, which is vital for me since I'm living in China behind the GFW.
Are you by chance using any taskillers?
I do use a task-killer program. But I always keep the clock app on while i'm sleeping to try to make sure the alarm goes off on time. But it never does in the morning.
Don't use task killers on the N1, there really is no need.
cyanogen said:
Don't use task killers on the N1, there really is no need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wouldn't say that's accurate... The phone does slow down noticeably when you have 20-30+ things open
Sometimes a lot of them are running as well (using TasKiller, a lot of Yellow, including Camera, Gmail etc even when not in use and no emails being downloaded). This probably affects battery life as well.
Paul22000 said:
I wouldn't say that's accurate... The phone does slow down noticeably when you have 20-30+ things open
Sometimes a lot of them are running as well (using TasKiller, a lot of Yellow, including Camera, Gmail etc even when not in use and no emails being downloaded). This probably affects battery life as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you have any evidence to back this up? Yes this was a problem on older devices because many things would be fighting over the tiny amount of RAM.
You'll see lots of processes running but that's just the way Android works. Since it doesn't really benefit from simple caching like a normal linux system would, it just keeps everything running and kills unused stuff when memory is low. Most of the things you see running are either paused and using no CPU, or are services that would be periodically launched anyway.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#lcycles
Keeping these processes alive should actually be saving you battery rather than using it. It's more expensive to launch and restore the state of an application or service after being killed than it is to simply resume one that's been paused.
cyanogen said:
Do you have any evidence to back this up? Yes this was a problem on older devices because many things would be fighting over the tiny amount of RAM.
You'll see lots of processes running but that's just the way Android works. Since it doesn't really benefit from simple caching like a normal linux system would, it just keeps everything running and kills unused stuff when memory is low. Most of the things you see running are either paused and using no CPU, or are services that would be periodically launched anyway.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#lcycles
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. The phone gets slow when TasKiller shows 30 things in it. I click close all, and it's faster. Do you know my personal experiences more than I do?
Paul22000 said:
Yes. The phone gets slow when TasKiller shows 30 things in it. I click close all, and it's faster. Do you know my personal experiences more than I do?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think there is likely one or two specific misbehaving applications that are giving you trouble, rather than the way the system works as a whole, thats all.
I think what Cyanogen is saying is that android does not handle running processes the way other os's do They have a lifecycle that is non-obvious to someone just looking at a process list. If you insist on killing tasks outside of the activity/service lifecycle they you _will_ get service failures (like the alarm clock) its up to you what you value more.
I have not installed any sort of task manager (outside what's in astro but I don't use it) and never see any noticeable slow down.
Anyway - back on topic.
Yes I have the same issue, never had it before.
Since flashine 5.0.2 my alarm doesn't work in the morning.
The linux kernel keeps a buffer cache of recently used files in RAM. So whenever an application wants to access something on the flash, instead of going to the flash file system, it can just get it from the file buffer cache in RAM, a significant speed increase.
If the RAM is currently being taken up by unused android apps, then that leaves less room for the buffer cache, so in theory, by killing off unused android apps more quickly, that will allow the linux kernel to allocate more space for the buffer cache and thus speeding up the system.
Am I way off here?
Dave
cyanogen said:
Do you have any evidence to back this up? Yes this was a problem on older devices because many things would be fighting over the tiny amount of RAM.
You'll see lots of processes running but that's just the way Android works. Since it doesn't really benefit from simple caching like a normal linux system would, it just keeps everything running and kills unused stuff when memory is low. Most of the things you see running are either paused and using no CPU, or are services that would be periodically launched anyway.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html#lcycles
Keeping these processes alive should actually be saving you battery rather than using it. It's more expensive to launch and restore the state of an application or service after being killed than it is to simply resume one that's been paused.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would have to agree with Cyanogen on this one. When I first got my N1, I looked towards task killers to help alleviate slowdown, but in the end, I think it's just the placebo effect in a way; you did something to try to solve the problem, and so therefore you perceive a difference.
In other words, task killers aren't needed on this beast of a phone. As for battery life (if that's an issue), look into SetCpu.
Thanks for the reply Cyanogen. I think not using task-killer, or at least not killing the clock app got my alarm working this morning. But I use task-killer not for the purpose of saving ram, but for using less data. Some programs such as facebook or a twitter client would try to connect to the internet every once in a while. I'm on a low data limit plan in China. So I don't want those programs to eat up all my data. When I'm on wifi at home, I don't worry about that. Thanks again.
Same problem. Don't use taskkillers, flashed last CM last night and didn't wake up on time this morning - alarm didn't work, thought I checked that clock icon was on place on notification bar
amwayorlando said:
But I use task-killer not for the purpose of saving ram, but for using less data. Some programs such as facebook or a twitter client would try to connect to the internet every once in a while. I'm on a low data limit plan in China. So I don't want those programs to eat up all my data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you thought about using something like APNDroid or Toggle Data, to just switch off the cell data when you don't want to use it?
Or, Modify the behavior of the applications you don't want using data?
I have my facebook and twitter for example set to manual update only (for battery saving purposes) because there's nothing there that is critical important info, and I don't need to be notified.
Nice thread though, I'm pretty sure I try to keep people informed that task-killers aren't needed and cause issues, everywhere where it comes up. I find humor that people will still argue, even with a developer, this fact. I've had 150+ hours uptime with no slowdown (and 30 apps running) on the stock rom (without highmem support).
bofslime said:
Or, Modify the behavior of the applications you don't want using data?
I have my facebook and twitter for example set to manual update only (for battery saving purposes) because there's nothing there that is critical important info, and I don't need to be notified.
Nice thread though, I'm pretty sure I try to keep people informed that task-killers aren't needed and cause issues, everywhere where it comes up. I find humor that people will still argue, even with a developer, this fact. I've had 150+ hours uptime with no slowdown (and 30 apps running) on the stock rom (without highmem support).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then please inform us of a thread that can verify what you all are saying. Not in an argumentative tone, my linpack score drastically improves after 16 hours of uptime, and a task-killer.
Rom:CM 5.0.2 -OC Kernel
wesbalmer said:
Then please inform us of a thread that can verify what you all are saying. Not in an argumentative tone, my linpack score drastically improves after 16 hours of uptime, and a task-killer.
Rom:CM 5.0.2 -OC Kernel
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This has basically been discussed into the ground. In my eye's, its a fight vs what I like to call "Windows XP mentality", and that there was benefit on phones like the G1. With the copious amounts of memory on the N1 and droid, they cause way more harm, and immeasurable good (if any).
Summary thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=627836
I've linked to quotes from others.
Threads/posts of interest: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5494890#post5494890
And: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5298630#post5298630
Well, this discussion is very interesting, but lets return to our problem with non-working alarm.
I've got two HTC Evo's. One lasts for 24+ hours on a single charge, the other lasts 3-4 hours tops. They are both have been running Fresh 0.3 until yesterday. I upgraded one to 0.5 and the other will remain at 0.3 until today. The one still running 0.3 has terrible battery life. I've been running system panel on both and saw that Android.process.acore has kept the CPU ramped up for hours on end, the battery is always 40C+ and when I checked on it this morning it had been streaming 200kbps of data nonstop through the night. There are no market apps installed on this phone except for Advanced Task Killer, GScript Lite, and System Panel. There are no apps installed from untrusted sources.
Anyone know what Android.process.acore does exactly, and why it would be streaming data all night long? System and System Processes also have much higher CPU utilization on this phone as well. I've tried reinstalling Fresh, rebooting the phone, killing absolutely every task ATK will let me, etc and nothing seems to stop the flow of current. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
This happened with the stock software as well. One phone always lasted longer than the other. However, I'll let you know if Fresh 0.5 changes anything.
Thanks everyone.
I upgraded 2 days ago. My phone was always stock. Yesterday I took lots of video, like 15 mins or more, and battery, and GPS, and Google sky. A friend of mine invited me to his boat and we were on the river for almost an hour. The battery was still on the green side. I definitely noticed some battery improvement after the software upgrade. When I watched the video on the computer I learned the hard way that there are not vertical HDTVs.
Streaming data all night?
We may just have the first Android Trojan lol.
Sent from my Evo 4G
ejittles I think what you're seeing is a sync-loop, likely with facebook or exchange. This was supposedly one of the things addressed in the recent OTA update.
Try removing and re-adding any accounts you're synced with, disabling background data, etc.
scriptx said:
ejittles I think what you're seeing is a sync-loop, likely with facebook or exchange. This was supposedly one of the things addressed in the recent OTA update.
Try removing and re-adding any accounts you're synced with, disabling background data, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Brilliant Scriptx, I'll bet that is exactly what it is. I'm guessing its the exchange server. I will give that a try when I get access to that phone tonight. Will keep you posted. Thanks a ton.
HELLO
scriptx said:
ejittles I think what you're seeing is a sync-loop, likely with facebook or exchange. This was supposedly one of the things addressed in the recent OTA update.
Try removing and re-adding any accounts you're synced with, disabling background data, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im with Him i also use shortcuts to turn on and off the internet (mobile) and i also use airplane mode when i don't what any one to call me my battery lasted MORE than 19hr and 31 min and i was using it downloding app, giving files, i saw some videos well you know the thing that you do when you brag about your phone. i am in the ARMY, so alot of people were looking at my iphonekiller (EVO) and wile some friends with evo battery already gone.... mine lasted 19:31 y lasted 24 before some sleep XD ( i have no ATK not needed for battery life)
Do you have a lot of contacts? On my Evo I have my personal gmail which only has a few hundred. On my Hero I have my developer account linked up which has thousands. During sync it isn't uncommon to see:
Code:
SyncManager(): canceling and rescheduling sync because it ran too long.
It will do this over and over and over again non-stop until it finally goes through. Secondly as was already mentioned is something like Facebook/Twitter/Friendstream. I personally only have twitter setup (and I use the official Twitter app for that) but again while testing on the Hero I found that the way Friendstream (and possibly facebook overall, and peep too but I'm not sure) gets updates is it checks the current status on EVERY SINGLE contact of yours. This of course is a huge battery drain.
The reason that I make the comparison with the Hero by the way is the software is basically identical. They are definitely forked off the same branch at HTC. So any problems on the Hero are likely the same on the Evo. The reason I don't have answers for you from the Evo side is because I use it as my personal phone and I don't have much on it.
You may also want to see this post: http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
There is a chance that your phone keeps killing off background processes while they are trying to do stuff, so then they turn around and run again, then get killed again, and again. Automated task killers are the devil. The only way I recommend using a task killer is the same way you would use task manager or top in linux. Just to kill off the random zombie process that may be causing you issues.
flipzmode said:
You may also want to see this post: http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
There is a chance that your phone keeps killing off background processes while they are trying to do stuff, so then they turn around and run again, then get killed again, and again. Automated task killers are the devil. The only way I recommend using a task killer is the same way you would use task manager or top in linux. Just to kill off the random zombie process that may be causing you issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Flipz,
First of all thanks for the great work on Fresh Evo. Secondly, I only use ATK at startup to kill any processes that are set to start on boot that I don't care about. It's not set to autokill or to start automatically. I kill ATK when I kill everything else.
I think it has to be friendstream because I only have a handful of facebook contacts and the other phone has over 300 facebook contacts to deal with. Thanks for pointing me in this direction. I'll have facebook turned off on that phone and see if that makes the difference.
That particular phone is only set to receive email via exchange while mine syncs all of my work stuff via exchange so I don't think that is the problem. That just makes me suspect friendstream even more.
*EDIT* Also, I hope that ATK sends a sigterm to these processes and not a sigkill? Or is that not an option w/ the VM? I'm not too familiar with the internals on android atm. Haven't had time to play with anything due to work.
ejittles said:
I only use ATK at startup to kill any processes that are set to start on boot that I don't care about.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do yourself a favor and go grab Autostarts (autostarts not autostart) from the market instead. It will be the best $0.85 you've ever spent on an app. It lets you control every single onEvent trigger in Android, preventing the applications from starting in the first place.
flipzmode said:
Do yourself a favor and go grab Autostarts (autostarts not autostart) from the market instead. It will be the best $0.85 you've ever spent on an app. It lets you control every single onEvent trigger in Android, preventing the applications from starting in the first place.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
haha did you do that conversion for me from EUR to $ or is there a way to set a currency in the market app? Downloading it now. Thank you sir! The Evo has a great community here on XDA and I look forward to contributing when things settle down at work in the next few months.
ejittles said:
haha did you do that conversion for me from EUR to $ or is there a way to set a currency in the market app? Downloading it now. Thank you sir! The Evo has a great community here on XDA and I look forward to contributing when things settle down at work in the next few months.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm just smart. haha j/p. When you actually click on buy in the app it will show you the USD price. That's where I grabbed it from. I did buy it for my Hero over 6 months ago just so I could deconstruct it though and I knew it was under $1. lol
Fresh 0.5.3 and the disabling of friendstream has the second phone performing great. Battery lasts 24+ hours now. I suspect it was friendstream. Thanks for the help.
I had this exact same issue and with system panel's help I was able to determine that Facebook for Sense was causing the problem. I turned off FB's auto-update and the problem went away completely. After the OTA, I am able to turn auto-update back on without issue.
Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.
robnil said:
Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't used it in a while, but "spare parts" in the marketplace tells you which apps are consuming your processor IIRC. This will obviously give you a temporary hit to your ability to load and run processes but will let you know more details about your phone that you don't already have and the battery use section of settings obviously only talks about what is using your battery but that isn't going to tell you the whole picture.
I am also someone who says you shouldn't use ATK, at least the way you do, but I have it installed and use it a bit differently. What I try to do is kill all tasks after I've used the marketplace or before I do anything intensive (gaming, GPS tracking) and I kill all apps including ATK. ATK will consume processor, battery and will free up memory which then Android uses to open more tasks you don't need (using processor and battery in the process -> repeat cycle). If you need to free up memory 1-5 times a day I think my way will save maybe 15-30% of your battery over a 24 hour period while costing you less than a minute of hassle (too much for some, sure). Again, I only kill after marketplace (because everything opens to check for updates, AFAIK) and before something that will use heavy memory and processor.
robnil said:
Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forgot the first part of your question, forgive me. I believe, the reason for more apps causing more lag is at least 2 fold. There are more apps that can be opened when you have free memory (in the vicious cycle I described above). There is also something that might be a bit unique to our phone, and I've only recently read this, it's a bit of speculation so I'm not trying to pass it off as fact but I think it's likely to be knowledgeable on the issue, even if not completely correct. Samsung's internal storage method is an SD card, that allows extra apps to be written to the internal storage but comes with a trade off of lag due to a potential combination of:
slow random-access
bad partition
I think I'm missing an important reason, I'll try to look and edit.
When I initially got my SGS I loaded it with a heap of apps and suddenly noticed the lag and quick battery drain. Problem was I couldn't track down the culprit.
I recently reset my device and was a bit more organized with what I installed. One of the things I started doing was checking what services were being used in the process which you can find under the manage apps part of the system.
So while you can load apps and they may/may not be killed by android or a task killer, the services will always be running - taking up memory, sometimes cpu, network. Things like weather checking, news checking, even email sync are some examples. These services plus any apps you run are I think what starts the lag. You need to be aware of which apps are also run as services.
Yes, there are some bad apps (last Facebook version was found to be a heavy drain) but I think they tend to add up with all the other services running.
As for 'Aggressive' depends on the app killer but my understanding (with the one I use), is that there is a memory limit before the app is killed. Once the limit is reached on aggressive, it doesn't take much before memory is cleared.
One thing to install is SeePU as this gives an indication of CPU, memory and network on the top menu bar. This also helps when the system lags (usually CPU is high and memory is low) and helps to know when to clean (or what threshold to set).
Hope this helps.
My background with android is long and rocky.
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I had a Samsung Galaxy S, then a S2.
I can remember a Google Nexus phone in there somewhere.
Then at some point I switched over to Windows Mobile for many years.
A couple of hears ago I came back to android with a Samsung Galaxy S8+ and I hated it.
Recently I upgraded to a OnePlus 6T McLaren and here I am.
I had been expecting to see android happily use up 7, 8 or even 9GB of ram before the background task manager would begin to kill tasks.
Except that I seldom saw android use much more than 5GB of ram.
And worse, background tasks were being killed on a regular basis.
Widgets would stop working overnight, or even in just a few hours.
Spotify would close while a playing a playlist.
A quick search on XDA reveals that many users believe that Android will just use up as much ram as your phone has.
However, that is simply not true.
And so, I began my quest to have Android use as much ram as the phone could provide.
In my case, 10GB.
- I understand that there is an inherent trade-off between keeping background apps running and battery usage. I can live with extra battery usage in exchange for keeping my widgets running or Spotify running for an entire playlist.
- I realized very quickly that in order to achieve the results that I was looking for that the phone would have to be rooted. So rooting was one of the first things that I did.
Step 1.
I started with the basic stuff that a quick google search would provide;
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Saver (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Adaptive Battery (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> widget app (don’t optimize)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Spotify (don’t optimize)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Advanced Optimization -> Deep Optimization (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Advanced Optimization -> Sleep standby optimization (off)
- Settings -> Apps -> Widget app -> Battery -> Background Restriction (app can use battery in background)
- Settings -> Apps -> Spotify -> Battery -> Background Restriction (app can use battery in background)
This helped but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
Step 2.
I supposed that my specific background tasks that I wanted to keep running were being killed because of the many other apps that were running in the background.
I searched for and found Tomatot DeBloater scripts for the Oneplus 6.
Excellent! Just what I was looking for.
I chose the Tomatot-Debloater-OOS-Light-2.3.zip and installed it.
This helped some more but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
Step 3.
I realised that there were still some apps running in the background that I didn’t use or want.
So I used Titanium Backup to freeze the following apps;
- Calendar
- Calendar Storage 9
- Contacts (O+)(I replaced with google contacts)
- Dashboard
- Drive
- Face Unlock
- Gboard
- Gmail
- Google
- Google partner setup 9
- Google play music 8
- McLaren AR
- Messaging (O+)(replaced with google messaging)
- OK google enrollment 9
- Oneplus system 1
- Youtube
Perfect! These apps were no longer competing for phone resources with the apps that I wanted to run.
This helped some more but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
This did make the phone feel faster and smoother.
The phone is much more responsive and fluid to my input.
This made me realize that the apps were being closed not due to a lack of phone resources, but a background task manager being aggressive.
Presumably for battery saving purposes.
I changed my focus to adjusting that background task manager.
Step 4.
Enable the recent screen ‘LOCK’ on the widget app and Spotify.
This didn’t do anything for me.
Everything that I’ve read on it says that it just stops the task from being killed when you click on kill all tasks.
The lock doesn’t lock the task from being killed by the background task manager.
Step 5.
Further google searching led me to believe that the OEM kernel was limiting background tasks.
I choose ElementalX-OP-3.09 and the EX Kernel Manager.
I had to read a lot of google university material to make any sense of the settings in here.
I’m not sure that I fully understand even now.
Eventually, I ended up with the following settings;
Memory
- Adaptive Low Memory Killer (disabled)
- dirty ratio (20)
- dirty background ratio (5)
- min free kbytes (12398)
- vfs cache pressure (100)
Memory -> Low Memory Killer
- apply on boot
- Foreground app (72mb)
- Visible apps (90mb)
- Secondary server (108mb)
- Hidden apps (200mb)
- Content Providers (587mb)
- Empty apps (783mb)
This helped a lot.
This almost made the phone usable to the state that I wanted.
But the widget and Spotify would still stop running overnight and by morning the apps would have to be reopened to get them to run again.
At least the apps would run most of the day without being killed.
Still not the behaviour that I expected from a phone with 10GB of ram.
Ram usage was still not going much over 5.5Gb even if I opened up many apps at once.
Can I ever get ram usage up to the 10Gb that I have?
Step 6.
The last thing that I tried yesterday afternoon was to increase the background task limit in the build.prop.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 (changed it to 60)
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 (changed it to 10000)
Yes, I know that I am on PIE and there isn’t supposed to be any effect.
No, I don’t know yet if this had any effect.
I am hopeful.
The widget app didn’t close last night, but Spotify did.
I am getting closer!
This is the best that I could do on my own without asking for help.
So here I am posting my question and asking for help.
How do I get the apps that I want to run to not be killed by the background task manager?
OR
How do I get the phone to use the 10GB of ram?
I feel that I am missing something.
With any luck, one of you smarter persons will be able to point it out to me.
As an aside from all of these changes the phone feels very smooth and fluid.
Except for apps closing that I don’t want to, this phone is a great experience and a pleasure to use.
Apps that I want to run are staying open much longer then before I started.
It’s now just an overnight issue.
And getting the phone to use over 6Gb of ram.
I would suggest that I am 90% happy with it now.
KERNAL: ElementalX-OP6-3.10
ROM: STOCK OOS 9.0.11
PHONE MODEL: 6013 O+6T McLaren
Tomorrow I may try making this change to the build.prop file;
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true to false
Don't know if it will help or not.
Wow dude, interesting read, i will sign up for notifications from this thread hoping you get your answer because i have the exact same problem but with my work app, throwing it all out of whack and making me a target to big fines (in the $1,000's) and potentially reducing my marketability!
The attached screenies are from before i realized that the app getting killed in the background is what causes the problem (I've left it in the foreground HOURS a few times and it works perfectly!)
UPDATE:
Good news!
I seem to have solved my issue.
Time will tell for sure though.
But this morning and all day today, Spotify and the widget app have been running without closing.
AND I have seen memory usage up to 6.8GB used.
Here are the further steps that I took;
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true (changed it to false)
I didn't really notice much of a change.
But then I noticed that perhaps the limit of 60 tasks was not high enough.
I seem to have that many apps open and limiting to just 60 may be an issue.
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=60 (changed it to 120)
THIS!
This seemed to have worked for me.
All apps seem to be open and be staying open.
Today I got a message/warning from android telling me that the widget app is consuming the battery in excess but I ignored the warning and android did not close the app or stop the widget from running.
I will keep an eye on the phone for the next few days to confirm that this actually solved my issues.
My next step will be to see what effect if any this has had on my battery usage.
I am curious to see if it's all that bad...
geeksquad2 said:
UPDATE:
Good news!
I seem to have solved my issue.
Time will tell for sure though.
But this morning and all day today, Spotify and the widget app have been running without closing.
AND I have seen memory usage up to 6.8GB used.
Here are the further steps that I took;
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true (changed it to false)
I didn't really notice much of a change.
But then I noticed that perhaps the limit of 60 tasks was not high enough.
I seem to have that many apps open and limiting to just 60 may be an issue.
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=60 (changed it to 120)
THIS!
This seemed to have worked for me.
All apps seem to be open and be staying open.
Today I got a message/warning from android telling me that the widget app is consuming the battery in excess but I ignored the warning and android did not close the app or stop the widget from running.
I will keep an eye on the phone for the next few days to confirm that this actually solved my issues.
My next step will be to see what effect if any this has had on my battery usage.
I am curious to see if it's all that bad...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice find, I checked my build.prop and found this. No wonder my apps are killed
Code:
#ifdef VENDOR_EDIT
#[email protected] modify for app memory
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
#endif/*VENDOR_EDIT*/
EDIT: I see a lot of custom ROM's have "ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=60" to the build prop, I wonder if that going to make a difference
UPDATE:
I am a silly goose.
I broke a cardinal rule while troubleshooting.
I may have had a few too many wobbly pops and made two changes at a time, thus when change was affected, I was unable to determine properly which change caused the affect.
The rule is, "only make one change at a time when testing".
Yes, all of my apps stay open all the time.
I am getting the behaviour that I was looking for.
However it wasn't necessarily changing the build.prop bgservice_limit from 60 to 120 that did it.
Let me back up a bit.
Earlier I had suggested that locking an app to the recent screen didn't do anything for me, and that in my reading it only locks the app from being killed by you when you try to close it manually.
However in reading up on the oneplus framework-res.apk I found a reference to an oneplus whitelist of apps that will never be killed, and a reference to the recent screen app lock that suggests that oneplus will add a locked app to the whitelist and not kill it.
In the course of a single day, I had inadvertently edited the build.prop and locked the widget app to the recent screen thus breaking the one change at a time rule.
So the next morning and the following days when all apps were staying open I attributed it to changing the build.prop not realizing that it could also have been the app lock.
Last night I realized my mistake.
I unlocked the widget app from the recent screen and went to bed.
When I woke up this morning the widget app was not running for the first time in days.
Also the notifications that I was receiving about the widget app consuming excessive battery have stopped.
It would appear that I was wrong in my earlier observations regarding the app lock mechanism.
It appears to be very useful for keeping apps running all the time.
Did changing the build.prop have any affect on keeping apps open?
Maybe?
I have noticed that my battery life has gone for a complete ****.
I can barely get 24 hours out of the phone.
Worse is that it doesn't matter if the screen is on or not, battery usage remains the same.
i.e. with the screen off and the phone put down, battery life appears to be used at the same rate as when the phone is in use.
I had expected the battery life to be not as good, but I didn't expect it to go to for a **** that badly.
There must be a balance between aggressive app management and acceptable battery life.
The phone didn't display this behaviour until I changed ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true to false.
I think that today I will change ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable= back to true and observe the battery tomorrow.
kantjer said:
Nice find, I checked my build.prop and found this. No wonder my apps are killed
Code:
#ifdef VENDOR_EDIT
#[email protected] modify for app memory
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
#endif/*VENDOR_EDIT*/
EDIT: I see a lot of custom ROM's have "ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=60" to the build prop, I wonder if that going to make a difference
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit= and ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit= are essentially the same thing, except for android versions.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit= is for Android 7: Nougat and below.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit= is for Android 8: Oreo and above.
Someone more knowledgeable than me should chime in here though.
Do you think any of this could have to do with the way the phone keeps disabling push in Gmail? (Every other day I need to set my O365 exchange in Gmail back to push because it automatically changes to the default of checking every 30 mins.)
Any conclusion?
Did you guys manage to solve this issue please by editing the build prop?
Latest smurf kernel rc14b seems to have solved the RAM management issue. I haven't had any apps closing in background since using it.
thank you for the thread!
What did you find in the end?
How did you set this ?
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
So what's the verdict on the buildprop edits? Do they make a difference?
I notice that sometimes my on-going weather notification doesn't update, or gets killed off. I also have an app that controls rotation per app, and that also seems to stop doing it's thing after a while.
Just want to share. If you are rooted with Magisk, try appsystemizer module. System apps don't get killed by oneplus as aggressively. Tried it with accubattery and it works.
I am so glad I stumble across this, I just want to say, changing
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 to 120
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 to 10000
Keep apps in ram for much longer then original! For me the battery life is unaffected, might even be better.
scloss84 said:
I am so glad I stumble across this, I just want to say, changing
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 to 120
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 to 10000
Keep apps in ram for much longer then original! For me the battery life is unaffected, might even be better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also want to solve this issue.
On which OOS Version you are? (i am on 10.3.1)
Does this really work in newer OOS Versions?
I have read elsewhere that those settings dont work on newer versions, sadly, cant find the thread/source.
thx
pOpY
popy2006 said:
Also want to solve this issue.
On which OOS Version you are? (i am on 10.3.1)
Does this really work in newer OOS Versions?
I have read elsewhere that those settings dont work on newer versions, sadly, cant find the thread/source.
thx
pOpY
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm actually Oneplus 6, OOS 9.0.9.
I also read that it doesn't work on Android 10 because magisk doesn't mount /system in Android 10, but there is a magisk module workaround that you can use. And hopefully magisk will update in the near future to fix that. Just google "Android 10 can't edit build.prop" and you'll find heaps of info.
This is what I have in my build.prop file and it seems to help. I have Oreo it works great on my phone I don't know about later versions of Oreo.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=64