Database Info

Music Player issue

Does anybody else have a problem with their phone "stuttering" when they switch songs on their Captivate. I mean, sometimes it's okay because it just happens at the beginning of the song, but other times it continues for half the song, and it's really frustrating me. I can't seem to find any other threads with people having this problem, so.... any suggestions? also, if it helps, I'm using stock JH7 with the one click lag fix available on the market... I have messed with all of the options a while back, but I never set any to "set on boot" also, I am using setCPU as "conservative" but I tried it on "performance" and still had the same problem.
Any suggestions are welcome.

I used to get this a lot and I will say that what you have running in background can make this happen more. But, I'd recommend getting rid of the one click lag fix and upgrading to the voodoo lag fix. Besides helping with music studders, voodoo has made my phone so much snappier!
edit: also you might try a different music program. Try searching for android stock music player, or doubletwist in the market. I use btunes but it isn't free.

InsaneJester17 said:
I used to get this a lot and I will say that what you have running in background can make this happen more. But, I'd recommend getting rid of the one click lag fix and upgrading to the voodoo lag fix. Besides helping with music studders, voodoo has made my phone so much snappier!
edit: also you might try a different music program. Try searching for android stock music player, or doubletwist in the market. I use btunes but it isn't free.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was using Voodoo before, and it seemed to make the stuttering worse... but I think I might just wait until 2.2 and see if Voodoo is available for it. Also, I totally forgot about what was running in the background. I forgot that the browser doesn't close without the aid of a task manager (SO FRUSTRATING.) and I prefer stock over the alternatives... Call me old fashioned.
But using ATK to kill the browser worked miracles for my music performance!

Multitasking is a joke on the One X!

What in the world did HTC do to Android ICS mulitasking!? Apps seem to be completely removed from cache every single time they're closed for ~30 seconds. They also no longer re-open in the same state that you left them! If I leave the browser, it needs to reload the web page. If I leave a game, I need to start from the beginning. If I pause and exit Slacker radio for a minute, the app closes and I can't even resume my music with the headphones button! I need to re-open the app and start playing all over again.
With my old Galaxy Nexus I never had ANY of these issues and multitasking was clearly the best of any smartphone on the market. HTC has completely crippled this device and it's becoming more and more frustrating (push email notifications & sms notifications are a whole other mess). It seems HTC has created Sense to focus more on preserving battery than focusing on creating a good user experience. The first few days with the phone were great but as more and more of these "instances" pop up, this phone is beginning to seem less and less powerful and intuitive.

NextNexus said:
What in the world did HTC do to Android ICS mulitasking!? Apps seem to be completely removed from cache every single time they're closed for ~30 seconds. They also no longer re-open in the same state that you left them! If I leave the browser, it needs to reload the web page. If I leave a game, I need to start from the beginning. If I pause and exit Slacker radio for a minute, the app closes and I can't even resume my music with the headphones button! I need to re-open the app and start playing all over again.
With my old Galaxy Nexus I never had ANY of these issues and multitasking was clearly the best of any smartphone on the market. HTC has completely crippled this device and it's becoming more and more frustrating (push email notifications & sms notifications are a whole other mess). It seems HTC has created Sense to focus more on preserving battery than focusing on creating a good user experience. The first few days with the phone were great but as more and more of these "instances" pop up, this phone is beginning to seem less and less powerful and intuitive.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree, they're using very aggressive memory management.
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

mobilehavoc said:
I agree, they're using very aggressive memory management.
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So much so that multitasking seemed significantly more advanced on my iPhone 4S. This is supposed to be Android's strong suit!

Ya its not even like saved state. Its just a new icon for your previously opened apps.
This is one area where I wish I still had my gnex. HOwever everything else is better on this phone.

With root available, you can probably tweak this a bit with the likes of auto killer, or a similar min free tweaking app.

Music works fine, hell it even remember my last song and position played after a reboot, using htc music.

I made two videos of the problem:
If I just tried to copy and paste these links and make this post on my one x it would have never worked, would have kept reloading the page and forget everything I typed. Lol.

demarton said:
Music works fine, hell it even remember my last song and position played after a reboot, using htc music.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HTC Music is an HTC developed app so it's possible they tweaked their own app to work well. I listen to most of my music online and prefer Slacker radio which has been nothing short of a disaster with this device b/c of the multitasking issues.

demarton said:
Music works fine, hell it even remember my last song and position played after a reboot, using htc music.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does streaming google music play(app) work in the background ( while using navigation or a browser ) ?

With auto killer, i just tested, and i can keep 3 apps running in the memory. Try it out.
edit* scratch that, i tryed after a few minutes of inactivity, reloads.

I believe the reason they are using such aggressive memory management is because on the One X International Version Sense would constantly crash and you would see the "loading" screen.
Frankly I dont know which is more annoying...

dharani1234 said:
Does the music play in the background ( while using navigation or a browser ) ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Music works in the background for me while it's playing (even Slacker). But if I pause the music for a minute to go do something, it's impossible for me to begin playing from where I left off and I have to re-open the app and start playing a song from the beginning. It's very annoying.

spyz88 said:
I believe the reason they are using such aggressive memory management is because on the One X International Version Sense would constantly crash and you would see the "loading" screen.
Frankly I dont know which is more annoying...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh it still does that also, but it isn't a crash, it happens when you go back to the home screen, you just see "loading"
I am just hoping the phone is still fast and has good battery life once/if this is fixed.

wrxdrunkie said:
I made two videos of the problem:
If I just tried to copy and paste these links and make this post on my one x it would have never worked, would have kept reloading the page and forget everything I typed. Lol.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for portraying what I mean...but your issue is even WORSE than mine. If I switch back to an app THAT quickly it won't reload like that. For me, it has to be around 30 seconds.

Lets hope we get root soon. I'm sure some custom roms will cure this issue
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Bigjim1488 said:
Lets hope we get root soon. I'm sure some custom roms will cure this issue
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Root is already possible since yesterday. Custom ROM is not possible until we get bootloader unlocked.

i'm guessing that's why my simiclock doesn't update after i don't touch my phone for a long period of time (overnight)

In the developer settings, there is an option to set the limit of background processes. The default is set to "standard limit." Does anyone know what this limit is, or if changing it to 4 processes might actually help?
Edit: just tried and it clearly does not help.
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Try going to settings developer opinions and look under apps and make sure those settings are to your liking. It has a setting for turning off apps right away and how many apps can run in the background.
Edit: I keep on going in and out of apps trying this but unless I'm out for like 5 min its not making me start over Pandora. Try clicking and unclicking apps close right away.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

The issue definitely needs addressing, and I'm sure it's not a "what was HTC thinking" situation so much as a bug that they'll fix.
I've noticed the issue myself, but it hasn't annoyed me to the point of complaining. Maybe it's better on my phone. It'll almost certainly depend on what background services you have running. By that, I mean GMail, Email, Twitter/Facebook updates, playing music. Also, some apps seem to handle multitasking pretty well. NFS Hot Pursuit was obviously coded to accommodate Android multitasking, as I can quit it, check my email/twitter, maybe browse a website, and when I go back to NFS, it's on the pause screen and I can pick up the race where I left off.
Different processes receive different priorities as far as Android memory management go. If you're playing music (in HTC Music, Play Music, PowerAmp, etc,) then Android recognizes that this app is actively doing something, even if you consecutively load up every other app on your phone. You can go back to the music app and it won't have to reload anything. That's just an example. Other apps can do this too, as long as the programmers coded it right. I'm guessing NFS Hot Pursuit does this as I've never had a problem with it.
Of course, none of that excuses the poor multitasking, since the gnex seems much better at it. (And I'm assuming you people who have tried both have been running virtually identical apps on each phone.)
I don't know a ton about memory management and multitasking in Android, so I could only speculate as to where the problem really lies. Could be that Sense takes up too much memory (surprise surprise!), could be that HTC made the memory management too agressive, could be weird other things that I don't even know about, such as some sort of time-out for background apps.
I'm going to do some playing around and let you know if I can find any ways to improve it easily.

How bad is multitasking issue?

Hello,
I'm considering purchasing One X but after reading so many posts about multitasking issues I have serious doubts. I can not really check this since it takes time to see the issue but how if I don't use Sense (use alternative launcher like GoLauncher, will I still have this issue or Sense is bigger then just laucher itself.

artisticcheese said:
Hello,
I'm considering purchasing One X but after reading so many posts about multitasking issues I have serious doubts. I can not really check this since it takes time to see the issue but how if I don't use Sense (use alternative launcher like GoLauncher, will I still have this issue or Sense is bigger then just laucher itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sense is bigger than the launcher. Sense affects a lot of the core phone's features can can't be removed with just a launcher. In this particular case, Sense affects memory management, as well as the actual multitasking app itself.
Let's put it this way. If you're playing a game like say... Radiant Defense (awesome game, btw) that takes a while to complete a level and you get a text message... switching to the messaging app will actually cause the game to close. Now you can use the "multitasking" app to go back to the game, but the game will reload. It will not leave off where you left it.
If that sounds like something that would bother you a lot... I'd avoid the phone. HTC has even said that this is a core Sense 4 FEATURE, not a defect. So they won't be fixing it.

Personally don't think this really warrants a new thread, you probably should have just asked in the ongoing discussion on this.
Haven't tried an alternate launcher yet, so I can't comment on that. But as to the basic question of "how bad" the issue is, I think it depends greatly on how you use your phone, and what you expect from it. Obviously, HTC expects most people to be okay with it, or they wouldn't have tweaked it this way. Only had the phone for a few days, but so far the memory management doesn't seem much different from how the HTC Flyer does it, and I've been fine with that (having owned it since June 2011).

Like posted above, Sense is more than just a launcher. The multi-task changes are likely deep in the kernel.
To me, it is not a big deal. I don't like anything running in the background anyway. And for that matter, the number 1 app in the past a typical Android user uses is Auto Task killer which serves the exact same purpose as the new Sense 4.0. I suspect a lot of those Auto Tasker kill users now also the ones who complain about HTC's feature.
Either way, the biggest problem is with Android itself. There isn't any uniform way to inform OS that an app requires to remain running in background (unless you created a service) can be kept that way. And there is no way for an app that doesn't do anything in the background to be suspended without using any system resources. For later, both iOS and WP7 have much better implementation.
For many years now, I use Google Listen as my podcast player everyday. It works in most times while in the background but a lot of occasions, this app will be closed by OS while I'm listening to the podcast. This behavior is the same on couple different Android phones (samsung and now HTC One X). So, if google's own app can't even stay alive in background in various Android phones, it speaks volume that multi-tasking is a over-hyped feature. What HTC did is not necessary bad to everyone. For example, my Samsung phones (SGS, SGS2 and GTab 10.1) doesn't auto kill bakcground tasks (still kills my GListen) but they all lags badly from time to time.
For what it worth, I can use Google Listen in the background while running Google Nav app in the fore ground for a few hours without problem (other than occasionally Listen get closed for no reason).

I have had mine for 2 weeks and only knew about a "problem" from reading these threads.
In all in how you use it. First reply answered it best

ricktat said:
I have had mine for 2 weeks and only knew about a "problem" from reading these threads.
In all in how you use it. First reply answered it best
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. The only app I use for streaming in the background is subsonic, which functions just fine.
Also I have the very very slight annoyance that games have to completely reload if you exit them and don't switch back very very quickly. So if I get a phone call and go right back to game it's fine, but if I go web browse or something else and go back the game has to reload. This is mitigated somewhat by the raw speed of the phone, as game loading doesn't take very long (unless the game is a ****ty port like PvZ).

To avoid confusion, lets just keep this conversation with the ongoing one here. Thanks.
Thread closed.

2.21.401.10 and still multitasking issue?

So, I've heard the new update 2.21.401.10 still has the well known limited multitasking issues (see YT videos for One X, it's the same for us: http://www.youtube.com/results?sear...0.0.0.119.352.3j1.4.0...0.0...1ac.R68YKWQ8QnE )?? Is it true? How can we persuade HTC to keep standard Android multitasking?
I've also heard the audio issues (crackles, trashed sounds, some micro-stutters sound-related. You can easily notice this with games, f.e. Pinball Arcade or Mame4Droid etc. Won't hear these problems on GS2 and other Android phones) are still there too, so the audio driver is still the same.
Should I go back to GS2? Multitasking problem is very important for me...

I don't have issues with sound now, never have. A lot of games ether aren't compatible completely (gta 3), and others are just trash audio. If you want to test audio run a GOOD mp3 file, if it crackles its your phone....
Sent from my HTC One S running Axiom S

the multitasking of the one X and S isnt' bugged, it is in this way for a choice of HTC. Basically the system doesn't left completly open apps but it freeze them which is almost the same of restart the app from zero more or less. This is because HTC want to keep some resources free to have a more fluid sense experience.
Anyway if you have an unlocked device you can flash this script http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=27318828#post27318828 that should give you real multitasking and leave the cool HTC interface ( the task manager ) to swith from an app to another. I would try it but I don't want to unlock my device at the moment.

none of the scripts work. wait till developers will fix it on kernel level. no other solutions here.
HTC One S via XDA

hexaae said:
So, I've heard the new update 2.21.401.10 still has the well known limited multitasking issues (see YT videos for One X, it's the same for us: )?? Is it true? How can we persuade HTC to keep standard Android multitasking?
I've also heard the audio issues (crackles, trashed sounds, some micro-stutters sound-related. You can easily notice this with games, f.e. Pinball Arcade or Mame4Droid etc. Won't hear these problems on GS2 and other Android phones) are still there too, so the audio driver is still the same.
Should I go back to GS2? Multitasking problem is very important for me...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with hexaae. It's worth nothing having a super-fluid UI if it means killing your opened browser when you try to live it in background. You just can't browse between browser and email: how is this supposed to be called multitasking??
I really believe this choice of HTC's is senseless... On a smartphone with 1GB of RAM...
Edit1: by the way, what is the "background processes limit" option in "development options" supposed to do? Possible values are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, default.
Edit2: would it be an idea to make a poll and see how many people would be interested in this?

mannequin said:
none of the scripts work. wait till developers will fix it on kernel level. no other solutions here.
HTC One S via XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
why do you say that it doesn't work? On the thread some guys has reported that it works!

light_n_roses said:
why do you say that it doesn't work? On the thread some guys has reported that it works!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It worked for me, problem was the battery started draining like crazy. Which got me thinking, the reason HTC did this was battery life. Nothing else. Sense was still just as smooth for me, but apps would multi task like I used to, but my battery would last less than half as long. So I went back to stock and am getting decent battle life again.
Sent from my H1S using XDA Premium.

MadJoe said:
It worked for me, problem was the battery started draining like crazy. Which got me thinking, the reason HTC did this was battery life. Nothing else. Sense was still just as smooth for me, but apps would multi task like I used to, but my battery would last less than half as long. So I went back to stock and am getting decent battle life again.
Sent from my H1S using XDA Premium.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well this is quite natural, you should manually clear everything once that you put the phone on stand-by ( and here the cool HTC task manager interface lack of a " close all" button ) or if you don't want to do this you can put task killer widget on the home that kill everything by a tap. Anyway this would kill also the background process not started by you which is not good so HTC should really put a "close everything" button on task manager interface so we can kill just recent apps opened by the user and not from the system.
Sent from my HTC One S using xda app-developers app

it works for about "10 minutes". all script "fixes" are nothing more than a placebo.

mannequin said:
it works for about "10 minutes". all script "fixes" are nothing more than a placebo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is not true. Yes, the multitasking is not stock quality... but the scripts do have a noticeable effect that improves performance (assuming you have enough free memory).

mannequin said:
it works for about "10 minutes". all script "fixes" are nothing more than a placebo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
this shouldn't be a script ment to improove performance, this should be something that it works or not, an off/on ...

light_n_roses said:
Well this is quite natural, you should manually clear everything once that you put the phone on stand-by ( and here the cool HTC task manager interface lack of a " close all" button ) or if you don't want to do this you can put task killer widget on the home that kill everything by a tap. Anyway this would kill also the background process not started by you which is not good so HTC should really put a "close everything" button on task manager interface so we can kill just recent apps opened by the user and not from the system.
Sent from my HTC One S using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It lacks the close all option because it is not needed. You dont have to close any apps unless they are something that need to be operating all the time like music player when it is playing songs or navigator and stuff like that. There is no difference for your batterylife whether you clear the "recent apps" list or not. And its called "recent apps" for a reason because it means that it has nothing to do with the fact is that application actually running or not. It has always being like that in android. It just makes it easier to jump between apps.
Using task killers and such only increases battery usage since the app it has closed needs to be loaded again when you use it the next time instead of it being just unfreezed from the memory.
HTC has set the automatic killer which kills apps on the background when running out of memory way too aggressive when you compare that to how it works on vanilla ICS or even older HTC phones running android 2.2 or 2.3.
However the latest update made multitask way better for One S. And Iam talking about the one which updatet android version to 4.0.4. Now you can jump between many apps without the fear of them closing immediately so Iam very happy with that now and it works as its should be.

Paqu1 said:
However the latest update made multitask way better for One S. And Iam talking about the one which updatet android version to 4.0.4. Now you can jump between many apps without the fear of them closing immediately so Iam very happy with that now and it works as its should be.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've read comments by users who installed latest update and still have the limited multitasking issue (I'm waiting for the OTA update in Italy). Are you saying instead this has been "fixed"...?

Moved To Q&A​
Please post all questions in the Q&A section​

hexaae said:
I've read comments by users who installed latest update and still have the limited multitasking issue (I'm waiting for the OTA update in Italy). Are you saying instead this has been "fixed"...?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well its working fine for me. I can now jump between 4-6 fairly light programs and 2-3 heavier ones without the previous app always closing like before the update.

Paqu1 said:
Well its working fine for me. I can now jump between 4-6 fairly light programs and 2-3 heavier ones without the previous app always closing like before the update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually I still don't know because I do not have the last updated, I'm waiting that it goes online on automatic update.....
Hope you are right!

Paqu1 said:
Well its working fine for me. I can now jump between 4-6 fairly light programs and 2-3 heavier ones without the previous app always closing like before the update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please can you test this?
Open Google in the stock browser and type in something to search (but don't start searching!)... then switch between other apps and finally go back to the browser. Does it still reload and delete your input text?

I'm going to test the script now. Available memory is not an issue for me, as I removed Sense and am running Nova Launcher. My available memory usually sits around +230, ranging from 170-270. Haven't seen it drop below that. As for battery life, as long as you actually use the HTC multitask button and kill the apps that you don't want to go back to, the battery shouldn't really be affected, or at least the only effect will be a result of the apps that you actually want running, so it's a trade off, right? Keep in mind that means not killing the processes that will be automatically restarted by Android (ie using an auto task killer, or some pre Froyo type apps), only user apps that you recently launched and are now killing.

tgtoys said:
As for battery life, as long as you actually use the HTC multitask button and kill the apps that you don't want to go back to, the battery shouldn't really be affected, or at least the only effect will be a result of the apps that you actually want running, so it's a trade off, right? Keep in mind that means not killing the processes that will be automatically restarted by Android (ie using an auto task killer, or some pre Froyo type apps), only user apps that you recently launched and are now killing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh god, didn't I just explained this few post earlier? You dont have to do any of that since it DOESNT have any impact to your battery life. Go ahead and test it if you dont believe me.
hexaae said:
Please can you test this?
Open Google in the stock browser and type in something to search (but don't start searching!)... then switch between other apps and finally go back to the browser. Does it still reload and delete your input text?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I just did what you asked. After doing that with the default browser I was able to jump between Dolphin HD which had two tabs open, youtube app and chrome without any of them closing. And I even went to home screen between them. I think thats pretty good compared how it worked previously. Because then often it was enough if I just jumped to homescreen and then right back the previous app to make it close.

Confirmed.
Official stock ROM, via OTA, ver. 2.31.401.5... and there IS multitasking, finally! Task manager is much more conservative (around 70-80% of cases) with executed apps in the multitasking-history-menu...
Yes, also the browser now won't reload pages if you switch to the mail app for a moment and go back...
~200MB free mem.

Better multitasking?

I'll start off by saying I really do love this tablet, and I use it every day for media consumption and social media....That said, I do understand it only has 2GB of ram, but this thing cannot multitask at all....I've had older android phones with less RAM multitask better....I cannot keep an app like Pandora open if I want to look at twitter or browse the web, and there's something seriously wrong with that...
Anyone have any thoughts on this? I've used stock...Debloated stock...Zipaligned and Deodexed stock.....It doesn't seem to make a difference...2 or 3 apps open at most....It's the one gripe I have this this device..

smokinjoe2122 said:
I'll start off by saying I really do love this tablet, and I use it every day for media consumption and social media....That said, I do understand it only has 2GB of ram, but this thing cannot multitask at all....I've had older android phones with less RAM multitask better....I cannot keep an app like Pandora open if I want to look at twitter or browse the web, and there's something seriously wrong with that...
Anyone have any thoughts on this? I've used stock...Debloated stock...Zipaligned and Deodexed stock.....It doesn't seem to make a difference...2 or 3 apps open at most....It's the one gripe I have this this device..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BOW BEFORE YOUR NEW GOD
https://forum.xda-developers.com/sh.../tweaked-kernel-nvidia-shield-tablet-t3069776
Make sure you flash the dtb also.
WE ARE NOT WORTHY OF BitOBSessiOn's PRESENCE.
But try tweaking the z-ram/LMK settings according to the thread if the kernel alone doesn't work for you.
I also Greenified everything I don't need running all the time, force sync when full charged.

dylanforshillin said:
BOW BEFORE YOUR NEW GOD
https://forum.xda-developers.com/sh.../tweaked-kernel-nvidia-shield-tablet-t3069776
Make sure you flash the dtb also.
WE ARE NOT WORTHY OF BitOBSessiOn's PRESENCE.
But try tweaking the z-ram/LMK settings according to the thread if the kernel alone doesn't work for you.
I also Greenified everything I don't need running all the time, force sync when full charged.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol...Great post...I do use his kernel, which fixes the wake up lag for the tablet...Still getting multitasking issues...Perhaps I'll take your advice and play around with the Z-RAM and LMK settings....

Have you tried using any of the pre-configured LMK settings in KernelAdiutor?