[Q] Stock launcher frequently crashes - Nexus S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey guys,
I'm not exactly sure on how I should look this up, so I'm sorry if this isn't new.
It's been a while now, actually, nearly since I got the NS, or since I loaded it with apps. I'm running stock everything, 4.1.1.
My problem is: I get frequent crashes of my (stock) launcher, when using an app and tap on the home button. It's more noticeable on a screen that has widgets, because they take a while to appear and to load the content again. But no error windows, just like if the process shuts down when I'm using an app.
I'm almost sure it's a memory management problem, in fact, I don't even know how NS runs JB so well. In this case, I guess there isn't much to do.
Is this a frequent issue? Do you recommend anything? Any alternative launcher that performs as well as the stock and consumes less ram? Any settings that would improve the memory management?
Thanks in advance,

Felipe Ambrosio said:
Hey guys,
I'm not exactly sure on how I should look this up, so I'm sorry if this isn't new.
It's been a while now, actually, nearly since I got the NS, or since I loaded it with apps. I'm running stock everything, 4.1.1.
My problem is: I get frequent crashes of my (stock) launcher, when using an app and tap on the home button. It's more noticeable on a screen that has widgets, because they take a while to appear and to load the content again. But no error windows, just like if the process shuts down when I'm using an app.
I'm almost sure it's a memory management problem, in fact, I don't even know how NS runs JB so well. In this case, I guess there isn't much to do.
Is this a frequent issue? Do you recommend anything? Any alternative launcher that performs as well as the stock and consumes less ram? Any settings that would improve the memory management?
Thanks in advance,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not a crash. It's commonly referred as launcher redraw, and it happens when the launcher is released from the RAM because the RAM is needed for something else. Happens somewhat often with Jellybean on the Nexus S because its meager 512MB of RAM has a hard time coping with user apps + system apps running in the background. Other than making sure as little apps as possible run in the background, there's not much to do.
Most alternative launchers will consume more RAM, so that's not really a solution in itself.

Related

Problems with LauncherPro Plus

Hello guys,
I'm using LauncherPro Plus since a long time now, but since a few days I have some problems with it.
Today I had a lot of FCs in the morning, fixed that (almost) with new memory usage settings.
And very often I get the "Problem while loading widget" error, which is quite annoying. I have to restart LauncherPro or delete the widget and place it again. The new memory usage settings did make it much better, but the problem still exists.
I even had FCs with 102MB free RAM, so it isn't RAM related.
My dalvik heapsize is 26MB, wasn't better with 32MB...
My memory usage settings are:
Memory usage preset:
Medium
Only clicked "Use homescreen caches" on the page
Homescreen cache type: Compressed
Other settings:
Elastic scrolling on, 3D drawer on
My screen configuration:
Can someone help me to fix these things?
Thanks
Fwiw compressed cache caused me bad lag issues the last time I used LPP.
Compressing or decompressing anything will need system resources.
Might be worth a shot.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
Since yesterday evening it's stable again, but before I could use normal instead of compressed.
I have to use compressed, otherwise it gets unstable and I get the "problem loading widget" thing again
But even with my settings it's very smooth.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
I loved LauncherPro and was with it since day one on my phone, but recently it gave me almost the same problems that you have and i tested few other launchers (wich was a bit of a hasle 'cause most of them are crap). I'm currently with GO Launcher Ex and i can confirm it's the ONLY ONE whos been able to keep up with the outstanding performance of LauncherPro.

[Q] phone slowing down after rom install!

So I have had a few roms on my droid 2. liberty 1.5 and the latest fission rom. I notice that after a few weeks of use, the phone starts lagging. I clear cache as much as I can and I always delete tasks that are running that are not being used anymore. Any ideas on what the problem may be? I have clockwork installed and I clear cache from there. Also from titanium backup. Any suggestions?
I am currently running Fission 2.5.7 overclocked to 1.2ghz.
Thank you!
I would recommend downloading the latest fission rom manager application from teamdefuse's website and then installing it on your phone, from there you can download a newer version of fission (fission 2.6.1) and that should speed up your phone. Also task managers can often slow your phone down. I try and make it a priority to not have a lot of un-needed apps installed and just occasionally look through my app drawer and clean it up. Also if you open up the app "spare-parts" (which should be installed by default on fission) you can look at which apps are using up the most memory and battery life.
If you download the app quadrant standards you can run a quick test and it will show a bunch of information about your system and how fast your phone is compared to other phones and other roms.
Other little things that help are using a faster web browser like opera mini, dolphin browser, or dolphin browser mini.
Another thing that helps is removing widgets from your homescreen, I only use one widget on my whole launcher, ClockrEvolution (I'm really minimalist lol).
Overclocking can also use up your battery life and on the DROID 2 overclocking won't really help that much because you can't go that high, if you could go to 1.5 stably that would be a different story
Note: If you think this post is helpful please click on the thanks button at the bottom
ljbaumer is correct about the task managers.
Android has a built in automatic task killer that works far better than any one you can get on the market. It will kill apps only when more memory is needed. Android was made to put as many apps in its memory as possible to make your apps load faster. When you kill all your tasks, Android will instantly start loading them back in the memory, which actually slows your phone down and eats up battery life because your making it work harder.
The only reason I keep a task manager on my phone is to kill any app that may freeze or start acting funny. I never kill all tasks on my phone.
Thank you all for your replies. Took them both into consideration and now I have less lag and jitter!
Thanks!
nice! just click the thanks button at the bottom of our posts

[Q] Is anyone getting operating lag?

The OS seems to be lagging. It could be the hardware or maybe its the infancy stages of Honeycomb, but not a single thing on the TF is smooth.
-Switching home screens lags
-Playing Angry Birds lags
-Window animations lag
[Q] Is anyone else getting these problems?
It kind of hinders the experience, and for industry leading specs, the performance is quite poor.
The only lag I've noticed so far is with the keyboard input on web pages.
denverseven said:
The OS seems to be lagging. It could be the hardware or maybe its the infancy stages of Honeycomb, but not a single thing on the TF is smooth.
-Switching home screens lags
-Playing Angry Birds lags
-Window animations lag
[Q] Is anyone else getting these problems?
It kind of hinders the experience, and for industry leading specs, the performance is quite poor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you tried using Advance Task Killer to kill background running apps or processes? This helps me when I experienced any lags.
I have never experienced lag on Angry Birds, but then again you may be running more apps than me.
denverseven said:
The OS seems to be lagging. It could be the hardware or maybe its the infancy stages of Honeycomb, but not a single thing on the TF is smooth.
-Switching home screens lags
-Playing Angry Birds lags
-Window animations lag
[Q] Is anyone else getting these problems?
It kind of hinders the experience, and for industry leading specs, the performance is quite poor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I experienced this a few days after I got my tablet. It ended up being an app/widget I had installed off of the market called weather3d. As soon as I tracked the problem down and uninstalled the app, it was smooth again. Kind of scary how much a wonky/non honeycomb tested app can destroy the performance of your device.
jimbob1971 said:
I have never experienced lag on Angry Birds, but then again you may be running more apps than me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I checked out my memory usage, at the moment the tablet is telling me I am using 157 mb and have 353 mb of Ram left.
evensen007 said:
I experienced this a few days after I got my tablet. It ended up being an app/widget I had installed off of the market called weather3d. As soon as I tracked the problem down and uninstalled the app, it was smooth again. Kind of scary how much a wonky/non honeycomb tested app can destroy the performance of your device.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, it was lagging out of the box. I was showing it off to my sister and she's like "what are you trying to show me, the sketchy transitions?"
Maybe its all the widgets? I have all the stock ones including calendar, youtube, android market, and browser widgets
Mine is laggy too especially during home screen transitions using the HC launcher. It is noticeable especially if you are coming from an iPad. I have read that 3.1 fixes these problems and transitions are silky smooth with no lag. I'm currently using Launcher Pro with 1 home screen since I don't use widgets and I like to keep all my apps on one screen. This seems to save on RAM and makes app switching smoother.
denverseven said:
Unfortunately, it was lagging out of the box. I was showing it off to my sister and she's like "what are you trying to show me, the sketchy transitions?"
Maybe its all the widgets? I have all the stock ones including calendar, youtube, android market, and browser widgets
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have all of the stock widgets and then some. Runs as fast as any other tab I've seen including if ad. I'm also running the newer firmware 8.2.3.9.
evensen007 said:
I have all of the stock widgets and then some. Runs as fast as any other tab I've seen including if ad. I'm also running the newer firmware 8.2.3.9.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How much RAM is everyone getting. My tablet is reading out 185 mb being used and 380 mb free, so a total of 565 mb.
I know the tablet is supposed to have 1 gb of RAM.
Turn the Live Wallpaper off.
denverseven said:
How much RAM is everyone getting. My tablet is reading out 185 mb being used and 380 mb free, so a total of 565 mb.
I know the tablet is supposed to have 1 gb of RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's shared memory (with video)
atxer said:
Turn the Live Wallpaper off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't have live wallpaper. Plus, if I did, isn't it supposed to handle it?
I was getting lag with the default launcher, right now using VTL Launcher and its much better. I am getting lag with the browser (default) but with the debug tweak pages are loading much faster then before but theres times when it does lag. Was getting lag with the asus keyboard and just the android one and its much better.
Like any techsupport would ask:
what have u loaded on-the-job tablet? And don't say nothing because everyone loads at least one thing on a new tablet.
Have u tried to remove all installed apps (and Flash-bet u installed that)?
Have u rooted it yet?
Have u tried to root it yet?
Have u attempted/completed any firmware upgrades?
Are u using a dock?
Have u tried it without the dock?
Have u tried a hard reboot (hold power button for 12-15 secs?
i get panel transition lags when i set some live wallpapers
stock, no root, with latest firmware
If u want no lag and and want to use as many widgets with out system lagging do this
1 download ADW ex in market
2 go to adw setting and go to general behavior,animations and effects, transition effect and select *Curve ( I've tryed all pf them and some reason curve has the best fluid swiping)
4 make sure wallpaper scrolling is disabled
5 set desktop bounce to 15
6 set scrolling to 230
This is my way of a lag free life.
Also turn off alm the gestures there not needed
Ill do a video of before and after soon
You are correct...that really made my home screens fly!
unknown_owner said:
Like any techsupport would ask:
what have u loaded on-the-job tablet? And don't say nothing because everyone loads at least one thing on a new tablet.
Have u tried to remove all installed apps (and Flash-bet u installed that)?
Have u rooted it yet?
Have u tried to root it yet?
Have u attempted/completed any firmware upgrades?
Are u using a dock?
Have u tried it without the dock?
Have u tried a hard reboot (hold power button for 12-15 secs?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
-First thing out of the box: lag from scrolling. Then got flash, still lagging
-then got Angry Birds
-then got other android apps
-Not rooted, haven't tried
-just got notice of available firmware update today, will do after battery charges past 50
-No dock
-hard reboot did help a touch
I think I will try to restore it factory settings first, then runnig the firware upgrade, then getting flash. Will post results
Good News! I restored the tablet to factory settings and actually restored it from backup after that. Here is what I have noticed:
-The tablet is working much faster now, with no appreciable lag. Still some tiny amounts here and there but totally forgivable
-The preloaded music (4 songs) was gone. I think this means that before the ship the tablet they preload it with random software. So now its all gone, and whatever was causing the slow down before is gone now as well.
-I restored from back up so I have all my apps back as well as flash and it works perfect
-Also, the Asus keyboard no longer lags! Which is great because I like it better than the Android one. So if anyone wants to use the Asus keyboard without lag, just reset your tablet to factory settings.
Thanks for all the help everyone, I will still try Cowballz69 idea to speed it up even more

[Q] [ICS] Lag opening Phone app when it is not in memory

Hi guys,
Since the AOSP ICS builds I noticed that when the Phone app is not in memory it opens very slow. The next time you open it is almost instant. I thought that it would be fixed in the OTA, and even if it is a little faster it is still quite frustrating sometimes. Tried many roms/kernels and even if in some configurations it open faster, it is still slow.
Since I dont use the Phone that much, almost every time that I use it it is not in the memory and it is slow. Anyone has an idea to fix it, like a hack to make it persistent in the memory?
Thanks.
Bump. Is there a way to keep it in memory ? Maybe giving it a special permission like the launcher will help. I will take a look...
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium
This is my only problem with ICS - I've tried a few memory management programs to see if I could keep the dialer, or contacts, persistent in memory, but nothing works. When I launch the dialer, the application 'Contacts' ('com.android.contacts', which seems to be the new ICS 'People' app) is shown as an 'active application' in my 'SystemPanel' app off the Market, and as long as that stays as an active app then the dialer usually re-launches straight away when pressed the next time, sometimes with only a small bit of lag if the screen has been of for a minute or two. When the 'contacts' app is shut down by the system, I guess when you open other apps up that need memory, the dialer lags again.
All the time, the process 'Phone' ('com.android.phone') seem to be sitting there as an 'Internal System Process' and seems to be persistent, but that alone doesn't make the dialer launch quickly, the 'contacts' app needs to be active as well.
My observations, but I am not a techie.
actually i recently read a thread here on XDA that addressed this issue. it involved a command on the terminal that allowed you to prioritize certain apps. too bad i can't seem to find that thread anymore!
found it! it involves using the Renice command. you can run it as an init.d script
or demo it out using the prioritzer apk (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1224125) kind thanks to this developer for creating the app. it works great!
all i did, was set the phone and contact app to -20 priority. it loads MUCH faster... try it and report back.
here are more links related to renice
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1271637#17746874
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1401858
Great, thanks for coming back on this, this sounds interesting - I'm not rooted at the moment, I will look into doing this as I think it would be worth it just to sort out this problem, as well as the other benefits. I will report back with my results!
I decided not to root in order to fix this, I've gone a different way with the dialer - exDialer has a polished looking ICS theme and I installed that to see how it would work, and it works great. It opens up consistently quicker, maybe due to the 'Keep in Memory' option that it has. I haven't had one laggy episode with it yet. Most other third party dialers don't look so good but this has a great ICS look, has smart dial, and a great call history function, and it's free (or you can donate as I did). Worth a look for anyone having similar problems.
I would still go back to the stock dialer if it worked properly, maybe a future update will solve this without having to root.
Hi guys,
an old thread, but i would like to now if there is something new about the "bug" that the Phone app opens slow if it is not in memory.
I'm new to the nexus s and running the newest skank Version.
On my Desire S the phone app opens much faster .
Cheers
EbiEre said:
Hi guys,
an old thread, but i would like to now if there is something new about the "bug" that the Phone app opens slow if it is not in memory.
I'm new to the nexus s and running the newest skank Version.
On my Desire S the phone app opens much faster .
Cheers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One thing to keep in mind is that the Desire S has more RAM.
Mine opens up instantly however. Have you rebooted after installing the rom?
I remember on GB it was instant! On ICS it is indeed very slow. Hopefully JB fixes it...
rasengan82 said:
I remember on GB it was instant! On ICS it is indeed very slow. Hopefully JB fixes it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's funny because mine doesn't even take a second. :silly:
Same here if not in memory, i can easily notice certain lag on ics roms on my phone, when opening certain apps.
Yeah i did.
Hm Sounds like i have to live with it, or does someone have an alternative way to Set the priority for apps. The one mentioned earlier does Not work for me.
Gesendet von meinem Nexus S mit Tapatalk 2
Thanks for the suggestion to try exDialer. The phone lag was really irritating me and this did the trick. With ics dark theme, it's a perfect complement to bugles beast. Hopefully this will be fixed in 4.1, but till then ...
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda app-developers app

Homescreen redraws often

Hi,
I've read a bit about the S6 having RAM issues, but I'm not sure, if that's the reason for my trouble.
When going back to the homescreen after having used an app (doesn't really matter which app), the phone lags a bit and after a second or two the homescreen comes up empty as it takes a couple of seconds for it to reload the icons and one widget that I use..
If I clear all my apps from the recent list, I can go maybe half an hour to an hour before it starts doing it again. It clearly speeds up right after I've done that.
I looks like my RAM usage varies quite quickly between 58% and 91%. Sometimes it shows that Google Play Services uses almost 600 MB as does Snapchat(!) and my browser (even though only one tab is open).
Do I need to return my phone or is this only a software problem? Does using another launcher even help anything here?
Hope you guys can help me!
Thanks in advance!
I'd use smart manager to clear all, and then clear data in application settings for Touchwiz home (This might lose all your home pages/icons/widget etc not sure. I'd then reboot the phone.
If it's still doing it after that, try Nova launcher or similar. I get not lag but the odd tiny redraw every now and again.
Ok, thanks for the tip.
I've gone over to using Google Now Launcher for a bit, and it seems to behave much better and more smooth. Unfortunately I can't use the stock clock/weather widget outside the TW Launcher.
I really hope Samsung addresses this in the next update. I was under the impression that this should have been fixed in the present release.
cawith said:
Ok, thanks for the tip.
I've gone over to using Google Now Launcher for a bit, and it seems to behave much better and more smooth. Unfortunately I can't use the stock clock/weather widget outside the TW Launcher.
I really hope Samsung addresses this in the next update. I was under the impression that this should have been fixed in the present release.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that's a real pain. I use HD widgets while waiting on Samsung launcher to be improved. You have to pay but it's pretty good with good weather.
Jonathan-H said:
Yeah that's a real pain. I use HD widgets while waiting on Samsung launcher to be improved. You have to pay but it's pretty good with good weather.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, actually used HD widgets as well on the Google Launcher.
For info, I exchanged my device for a new one due to the home button being loose and making the clicking noise. My new device seems not to have the memory problem like my original device, or at least far from as much/often. So must have been faulty somehow. I have exactly the same apps installed...

Categories

Resources