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The thread of Known Issues

This forum seems to be really negative. And it scares people away. I don't want to start a thread that says "OMG, I love this phone so much" because nobody wants to read that and, well I don't love a phone that much. So I figure why not have a thread that has all the known issues? So people can have a better idea of what to expect.
Well, to start off, I want to say there is no perfect phone in this market. Every phone has issues. Anyway, you will use it for only 18 months and then throw it away. So don't act like you are making a life decision.
1. hardware related
(1) Random shut down.
Possibility: 1/5. Reported by some users. I personally never have this issue.
Solution: exchange for a new one.
(2) Poor battery life.
Possibility: 5/5. Don't have high hopes on battery because it is a huge smart phone. But don't freak out if it only lasts for 5 hours in the first day. It will get better (much better) after several cycles.
Solution: There are tricks all over the internet.
(3) Soft key backlighting isn’t tied to screen timeout
Possibility: 5/5. Soft key backlight time is about 2s. It can't be changed, no matter what the screen timeout is.
Solution: none.
2. software related
(1) Performance Lag.
Possibility: 4/5. As powerful as this phone is, you will feel sluggish once in a while. For example, transition delay, touch response delay. Most annoying: phone freezes when installing apps from the market.
Solution: by using Launch Pro or ADW, you can have a better and smoother experience. But the phone still freezes when installing apps. All you can do is to wait for the installation to finish. Things might get better after the 2.2 update. But there is no official date for Froyo in the US market yet, so I can't say that's a solution.
(2) GPS
Possibility: 4.5/5. Seems like lot of users have this problem. Few users claim theirs are fine.
Solution: None. Samsung promises a fix by the end of Sept.
(3) Sideload apps
Possibility: 5/5. You can't install out-of-market apps.
Solution: You can root. If you don't want to ruin your warranty (I don't), you can use Sideload Wonder Machine. I used it for Genie Widget and Angry Bird. Both worked fine.
(4) Calendar
Possibility: 5/5. When adding an event, the default calendar is the locally "My calendar". And it won't get synced to your online calendar. You have to manually change it to your gmail calendar EVERY TIME.
Solution: none.
(5) Browser brightness setting
Possibility: 5/5. There is a separate brightness setting for browser. It could be annoying when the screen has different level of brightness.
Solution: none.
(6) Music player
Possibility: 4/5. Stock music player doesn't recognize playlist. You might be frustrated to find an alternative one. you may have to pay for a music player.
Solution: I want to say none. You can always find one in the market. But it was not a pleasant experience for me.
(7) status bar trick
Possibility: 2.5/5. You can slide on your status bar to change the brightness. It could be a welcome trick or annoying feature. Screen brightness is so important to your precious battery life, sometimes you don't want to accidentally slide on your status bar.
Solution: none. You can love it or hate it.
I just want to list all the issues that you'll have. Potential buyers can make their own judgement. Please reply if you can think of any other problems. But please don't say things like "you can always root" or "flash your rom", or "there is an fix coming soon".
[update] A lot of the items I listed were not defective issues. But they could be complaints. They could be something you don't like and you can't find a way to change. And i don't care if it's from AT&T or from Samsung or from Google. As long as it might be a problem, I am listing it here.

Calendar:
Does not recognize phone numbers or URLs in any part of calendar event (no click to call or launch web page)
Contacts:
Looking up GAL contact (global address list) only available from compose email screen, and only returns email, not phone number.
Email:
No control over which folders sync (Exchange); No select all option; other minor issues

mwxiao said:
Well, to start off, I want to say there is no perfect phone in this market. Every phone has issues. Anyway, you will use it for only 18 months and then throw it away. So don't act like you are making a life decision.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. Most new phones especially complicated ones have issues. But it would be nice for it to work as advertised.
We don't really know yet if some of these are software or hardware. The GPS issue for one looks like software but may turn out to be hardware. Too soon to tell. Let's hope they have a real fix for it because even though it is not critical, it is a useful multi-purpose tool that many of us rely on daily. I expect it to work. I am patiently waiting for the promised fix but if it doesn't prove reliable, I have to find a different phone.
Random shut downs. I returned one Captivate because of this. Again, hard to tell if its hardware or software but I am assuming hardware and returned mine.
Poor battery life. Not as much an issue as it is a relative expectation. Seems a lot of the faster Android devices and even the IP4 run out of juice pretty quickly. My BB 9700 will last twice as long but maybe that's because the screen is half the size, half the resolution and half the brightness.
Also, a handful of Captivates have a problem getting into recovery/download via the three button method. Only a handful as of now.
As for the software issues... well, let's hope we get plenty of good ROMs from Samsung and plenty of modded ROMs from the smart folks around here!

mwxiao said:
This forum seems to be really negative. And it scares people away. I don't want to start a thread that says "OMG, I love this phone so much" because nobody wants to read that and, well I don't love a phone that much. So I figure why not have a thread that has all the known issues? So people can have a better idea of what to expect.
Well, to start off, I want to say there is no perfect phone in this market. Every phone has issues. Anyway, you will use it for only 18 months and then throw it away. So don't act like you are making a life decision.
1. hardware related
(1) Random shut down.
Possibility: 1/5. Reported by some users. I personally never have this issue.
Solution: exchange for a new one.
(2) Poor battery life.
Possibility: 5/5. Don't have high hopes on battery because it is a huge smart phone. But don't freak out if it only lasts for 5 hours in the first day. It will get better (much better) after several cycles.
Solution: There are tricks all over the internet.
(3) Soft key backlighting isn’t tied to screen timeout
Possibility: 5/5. Soft key backlight time is about 2s. It can't be changed, no matter what the screen timeout is.
Solution: none.
2. software related
(1) Performance Lag.
Possibility: 4/5. As powerful as this phone is, you will feel sluggish once in a while. For example, transition delay, touch response delay. Most annoying: phone freezes when installing apps from the market.
Solution: by using Launch Pro or ADW, you can have a better and smoother experience. But the phone still freezes when installing apps. All you can do is to wait for the installation to finish. Things might get better after the 2.2 update. But there is no official date for Froyo in the US market yet, so I can't say that's a solution.
(2) GPS
Possibility: 4.5/5. Seems like lot of users have this problem. Few users claim theirs are fine.
Solution: None. Samsung promises a fix by the end of Sept.
(3) Sideload apps
Possibility: 5/5. You can't install out-of-market apps.
Solution: You can root. If you don't want to ruin your warranty (I don't), you can use Sideload Wonder Machine. I used it for Genie Widget and Angry Bird. Both worked fine.
(4) Calendar
Possibility: 5/5. When adding an event, the default calendar is the locally "My calendar". And it won't get synced to your online calendar. You have to manually change it to your gmail calendar EVERY TIME.
Solution: none.
(5) Browser brightness setting
Possibility: 5/5. There is a separate brightness setting for browser. It could be annoying when the screen has different level of brightness.
Solution: none.
(6) Music player
Possibility: 4/5. Stock music player doesn't recognize playlist. You might be frustrated to find an alternative one. you may have to pay for a music player.
Solution: I want to say none. You can always find one in the market. But it was not a pleasant experience for me.
(7) status bar trick
Possibility: 2.5/5. You can slide on your status bar to change the brightness. It could be a welcome trick or annoying feature. Screen brightness is so important to your precious battery life, sometimes you don't want to accidentally slide on your status bar.
Solution: none. You can love it or hate it.
I just want to list all the issues that you'll have. Potential buyers can make their own judgement. Please reply if you can think of any other problems. But please don't say things like "you can always root" or "flash your rom", or "there is an fix coming soon".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok well I want to address these one at a time
1) random shutdowns - true, seems very hit or miss on who it affects and how often.
2) poor battery life - I have to strongly disagree with this. almost everyone seems capable of eeking at least a day out of their battery even with heavy usage. if you aren't getting at least a day, either the battery or unit is defective in some astounding way or you're using GPS while streaming videos for 7 hours a day.
3) soft key timeout - this isn't an "issue." if the iPhone 4's antenna thing is a "total non-issue," so is this. it may not be the most sensible decision to have them on different timers (it would be preferred that we could manually set this), but this isn't an "issue," this is just personal preference. I personally don't mind it at all since I rarely press them when I'm using my screen, and if you truly use this phone, it isn't hard to remember where they are
1) performance lag - true, but I'm kind of willing to believe a lot of this will be fixed when froyo is released. to me, it's pretty obvious samsung is working on this since the JH2/JH3 builds are way faster than JF6 without any modifications.
2) GPS - definitely an issue I can agree with. Samsung should have been on this faster (even the Fascinate users are claiming issues already). they should have rolled out of a fix by now considering how many phones they have out there in the world.
3) sideloading apps - seriously? this isn't Samsung, this is AT&T. If you've got an android phone on AT&T, this is what you're going to have to live with without personal modification. don't like it? stop being on AT&T
4) Calendar - can't comment, don't use
5) Browser Brightness - again, a non-issue. you can use the slider bar to change it on the fly (which is a massive improvement over other android phones IMO) or set it to whatever you'd like
6) Music Player - can't comment, replaced with stock 2.1-update1 music player for personal preference
7) status bar trick - I don't see how this is even considered an issue. if you're manually setting your brightness, does it make more sense to do this or go into settings, sounds and display, brightness, and adjusting it there to change it right back moments later? no. I personally think this was a brilliant move on samsung's part. I keep my screen on the lowest brightness almost always, and then I realize I need to turn it up because the sun is too bright, so I can just fix it instantly by pulling it down, turning it up, and then turn it down when I'm done. if you're doing automatic brightness, this "trick" doesn't even work
edit: I'm just saying that if you're going to bash the phone for these issues, let's agree what is actually an issue and what is just user-preference related

Kaik541 said:
edit: I'm just saying that if you're going to bash the phone for these issues, let's agree what is actually an issue and what is just user-preference related
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree - separate bugs that affect 90% of the phones from other variables.
My phone has never rebooted or shutdown on its own, and it is not something 90% of the people are complaining about - unlike GPS.
Battery life is subjective and based on usage. Compared to my iPhone it is about the same. BB - definitely better, but as mentioned the screen is smaller, and BB controls the sync settings - so not a fair compare.
Music player has a workaround for playlists - move music to phone, go to recently added playlist, select all, create new playlist. Not ideal, but a different way to do things. There are free music players too.
Some things - like the soft key lights - are sort of a gray area - is this a feature implementation or a bug? Probably a feature issue. It is easy for one person's feature request to be another person's bug report.

Kaik541 said:
I'm just saying that if you're going to bash the phone for these issues, let's agree what is actually an issue and what is just user-preference related
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I am trying to do, is to list the issues (or complaints if you will) that have been posted. The issues I listed might not necessarily be defective of the phone. They were the things that may raise your eyebrow. I tried my best to be objective.
In terms of user-preference, I won't post it if it is really user-preference. The issues I listed, e.g., status-bar trick, brightness setting, they are NOT configurable. If you like them, great. But if not, sorry there is NO way to change them. That's why I list them as issues. I want to list all the potential issues/complaints so that potential buyers have a better idea what to expect.

mwxiao said:
What I am trying to do, is to list the issues (or complaints if you will) that have been posted. The issues I listed might not necessarily be defective of the phone. They were the things that may raise your eyebrow. I tried my best to be objective.
In terms of user-preference, I won't post it if it is really user-preference. The issues I listed, e.g., status-bar trick, brightness setting, they are NOT configurable. If you like them, great. But if not, sorry there is NO way to change them. That's why I list them as issues. I want to list all the potential issues/complaints so that potential buyers have a better idea what to expect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, i got you. But some of these issue/complaints are from a vocal minority and I would say they unfairly describe the captivate - especially things like battery life and random shutdowns. Battery life depends on what you do and where you are located. Reboots are probably a hardware issue involving a small group.
IMHO if you are going to mention hardware issues that affect an uncounted minority, then you have to add all the weird stuff people have returned phones for - speaker not working, screen pixel out, volume switch, etc.

alphadog00 said:
IMHO if you are going to mention hardware issues that affect an uncounted minority, then you have to add all the weird stuff people have returned phones for - speaker not working, screen pixel out, volume switch, etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if there was a loooong thread about screen pixel or speaker, I would have listed them already. Unfortunately, I only see several threads about random shutdown. I did list it as low possibility though, meaning it only happens for a very small percentage of users.

Would there be any merit to posting some of the individual issues as their own thread with a yes/no poll, so that we can see relative numbers about how many people are being affected by a particular problem. Granted, it wouldn't be "scientific data" as the typical poster to those threads would probably be users looking for the info or having the problem, but still...
FWIW, I have a Captivate that is going back today due to the randon shut down problem. Funny enough, the GPS works perfectly.

[Q] Touchwiz 3 launcher

Hi all,
I notice that when sliding through the app drawer of TW3, the finger tends to move some distance before the page starts following the finger. This is especially obvious when then page is stationary and the finger has to move some distance before the app drawer page stutters and starts moving.
After reading most if not all of the discussions in this forum, I understand that our phone sustain certain level of lag in that situation, probably due to the touch mechanism itself or inefficiency in the processor or what not. But I do have an interesting observation: whenever my phone sustains a fresh reboot, it is that time that the app drawer is perfectly lagless and follows even the tiniest movement of my fingers. This snappy phenomena only lasts until I put the phone to standby, i.e. locking the phone. Thereafter it goes back to the condition as mentioned earlier on.
My question is, there's no doubt i9003 has the capability to be lag free in the context of this discussion, but it seems pretty apparent that something is inhibiting the phone from being as smooth as when it first rebooted. Could it be the priority the TW launcher is assigned with, or does the processor clock speed matter in this situation?
P.S. When testing, I made sure that no applications are opened after the fresh reboot, so issues like insufficient memory etc should not be related here.

I noticed the same things, not only when sliding through the app drawer, but also when sliding menus etc. However after a reboot, my phone behaves as always. Maybe you feel it more lagfree because of the high clock speed due to the multiples stuff your phone does on boot. Try to change your governor to performance and see if it behaves like after a fresh reboot. In this way you'll know if your lagfree experience is due to clock speed.
I read a lot of stuff too but nothing was really useful. However I noticed that I feel lags only when the touch of the screen can be interpretated in different ways (for example sliding screens and opening apps), but when touching the screen allows you to do only one thing, like moving things, there are nearly zero lags. For example when you pull down/up your notification bar or when you move a zooomed image in gallery. This make me think that it's more a software problem than a hardware problem and I think that because in some app there are less lags than in others.
I don't know if you read this, but I think it improves the touchscreen, even if the difference is barely noticeable.

TW3 is sludge!

[Q] Governor app that can set profile for "text input active"?

Is there any speed-governor app for the Xoom that can be configured to lock the CPU to 1000MHz whenever the soft input area is active (or better yet, whenever Graffiti input is active), and/or a way to increase the digitizer sample rate?
Historically, Graffiti has been totally unusable on my Xoom. Literally, so low of a sample rate, and so many errors, that I just couldn't use it. I finally got around to unlocking and reflashing my Xoom to CM10 last night, and locking the CPU to 1000MHz makes it work a lot better... but the accuracy is still a cruel joke compared to even my creaky, old Hero overclocked to 711MHz.
It's pretty sad, actually. On the Hero, the digitizer seems to be reporting samples at least 4-16 times as often, and I can get nearly 100% accuracy without even trying. On the Xoom locked to max speed, it seems to do a tiny bit better than my S3 gets with stock, but the sample rate still appears to be absurdly low compared to what it was on the Hero, and feedback seems to lag the actual touch by at least 100-200ms. On the Hero, feedback was literally instant... stroke, and see the pixels turn white INSTANTLY under my fingertip. On the Xoom (locked to max), they start turning white a fraction of a second after I touch the screen, and I can see the last bit of the stroke render a fraction of a second after I lift my finger away. With the stock Xoom rom, it was more like, "draw the character, and see a jagged impression of it sputter into existence about a half-second later... maybe, MAYBE even getting recognized correctly about 70% of the time".
I'm guessing that either the Xoom's digitizer has a limited sample rate, or something in the kernel or driver is limiting the sample rate... but I'm still trying to find a straight answer somewhere about whether/how you can build a custom kernel without losing your ability to run paid Market apps. Or whether it's even necessary to go to that extreme, as opposed to something like a setting that tells Android to increase the sample rate, or not throttle the CPU when an input area is active, or maybe a way to let something like SetCPU identify "soft input area active" as a profile-triggering condition. I'm also pretty sure that the Xoom's kernel (if not recent versions of Android itself) try to treat the existence of a soft input area as an excuse to massively throttle the CPU, on the theory that it's just displaying a picture of a keyboard and waiting for a blunt press. HOWEVER, I'm SURE there HAS to be an equally-official way of defeating that behavior, if only because it would also screw up Android's ability to handle east Asian input methods.

[Q] Battery life horrendous

Hi all
I've tried 2 Surface RT's now, and both have horrendous battery problems. I've tried refreshing them, resetting them, installing all updates, turning off Bluetooth and many of the live tiles, but still the battery lasts at most 24 hours. There's nothing much installed, just a few apps (ebay, Flixster, a book reader), I have two email accounts (Hotmail and an exchange account), and that's about the lot. All updates have been performed, but still, on two separate units, the battery life is so bad that I'm thinking I can't use this as my daily tablet.
I've done the powercfg -energy test, and I get 2 errors - one is that the Nvidia Wave Device driver is preventing the system from sleeping, and the other being for high utilisation (between 18%-30%). If I turn the volume off, the Nvidia driver warning disappears, but the battery life is still poor and I don't know why the volume would need to be off when not in use. I can't find any other apps that rely on this driver (it's a speaker driver as far as I can tell), so I'm well and truly stumped.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this Nvidia driver problem?
Thanks

Do you use any music apps or web pages on the tablet? If music is playing, or even paused, the app may prevent sleep. However, generally speaking, such apps should be suspended when idle for any meaningful period of time.
Even with some third-party Win32 programs running in the background on my Surface RT ("jailbroken" and then installing things like MirandaIM, which don't get suspended automatically) the tablet lasts at least three days if fully charged when I put it to sleep (I don't usually try to push the battery life, so I'm not sure what the max is) and without background network-connected processes it lasts for over a week.

Hi
Thanks for taking the time to reply. No music apps are or have been running. Since wiping it all and starting from scratch just last Thursday I've only used it for emails, web browsing and reading books on a book reader. Just can't understand why I've had such bad battery results with two separate units!

My guess would be along the lines of what GoodDayToDie said, some app you use is probably holding a wakelock on the device.
Can you list out the non-MS apps you're using to see if we might be able to find out if it is one or not?

Morning
The only apps I've installed from the store are ebay, Flixster, Book Bazaar Reader and Facebook.
Maybe I'll try to uninstall these, running the powercfg -energy report after every uninstallation. I'll report back!

tjjpowles said:
Morning
The only apps I've installed from the store are ebay, Flixster, Book Bazaar Reader and Facebook.
Maybe I'll try to uninstall these, running the powercfg -energy report after every uninstallation. I'll report back!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right, all apps listed above removed, ran the powercfg -energy report and still getting the Nvidia driver error, and processor utilisation at over 20%. No apps were running in background, and same results even when volume was off.
Am completely at a loss now!

Have you run Windows Update? Normally it's not even optional (you can disable it if you use the registry, but that's the only way) but the only thing that comes to mind is that your tablet may be missing some required driver update or something... that's very odd though; I haven't heard of any such problem from anybody else.
Given that the nominal runtime of Surface RT when not in sleep mode is 8-12 hours, you're definitely not going to have a good experience if sleep mode isn't working. Technically you *can* shut down the tablet between uses - it boots up very quickly, at least - but that's a pain compared to sleep mode.

GoodDayToDie said:
Have you run Windows Update? Normally it's not even optional (you can disable it if you use the registry, but that's the only way) but the only thing that comes to mind is that your tablet may be missing some required driver update or something... that's very odd though; I haven't heard of any such problem from anybody else.
Given that the nominal runtime of Surface RT when not in sleep mode is 8-12 hours, you're definitely not going to have a good experience if sleep mode isn't working. Technically you *can* shut down the tablet between uses - it boots up very quickly, at least - but that's a pain compared to sleep mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
Yes, I have run all updates, including the firmware update dated early April. I have looked for updates in both the normal 'tablet' mode and also by going into the update section of the desktop. So everything is uptodate, all of my apps from the app store have been uninstalled, but still the Nvidia driver error reports that it won't enter sleep mode and processor utilisation remains high.
As stated in my first post, I currently have two of these tablets to play with, and I have exactly the same issue on both, so I think we can rule out hardware problems, leaving some sort of software glitch. I did see this Nvidia problem on another forum, but the guy who posted it later reported that it simply went away, so that doesn't ger me anywhere.
It seems like a great piece of kit, but it'll be going if I can't resolve the battery issue.

Hi
Although I don't have any battery drainage I have to confirm that I have the same 2 errors despite the fact that I have all the updates. Can anyone else confirm if they have these errors?

That's odd. If you have the same errors but not the same battery drainage, I wonder what is causing my battery drainage and how I could check this out?
It does definitely seem to be linked to my driver error. The same problem has returned - the Nvidia driver error reporting its preventing sleep mode when the volume is on. When volume is off, that error disappears and battery life seems a little better.

Have played around with it some more, but same issue still present on both of the Surface RT's I have - battery drain unbearable. I have to ensure volume is off whenever closing the lid/pressing power button to put it into sleep mode just to try and see sleep mode actually kicking in.
If I had installed lots of third party apps I could understand some battery loss, but given they have both had full wipes, all updates installed and haven't got any apps installed other than pre-loaded ones, I just don't understand how I have the same issue on both machines. Only other thing to try would be removing my email accounts, but then there would be no point at all in keeping it!
Does anyone have any suggestions at all? If not, I think it will be time to see them going.

My only thought is incredibly bad luck and both devices have the same hardware fault.

My surface sips battery. Have never had any issues with battery

cx1 said:
My surface sips battery. Have never had any issues with battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That must be nice, both of mine use so much juice they render themselves useless!
I can't think it's a hardware issue on both, especially as the huge loss of power seems linked to when the volume is on 2 or above and sleep mode is for some reason prevented.
Anyway it seems there may be no solution to whatever software glitch I have, and all of this has very much made me look at the Surface with a huge amount of disgust, so I think I'll go back to my Galaxy Note which just doesn't have such ridiculous issues as these units.

Well no-one else seems to be experiencing these issues so whatever is wrong is something with your devices. I would contact the vendor.

SixSixSevenSeven said:
Well no-one else seems to be experiencing these issues so whatever is wrong is something with your devices. I would contact the vendor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The same hardware fault on two devices when the error report is linked to Nvidia wave device driver error preventing the units from going into sleep mode? Doesn't seem all that likely to me. I still think it's a software error, as this was reported also by somebody on a different forum, but with no clear resolution.
Thanks anyway.

Apart from the error, good practice for saving battery life can also be setting the screen brightness to low. In your Nvidia settings do you have the option to enable and disable power saving?

tjjpowles said:
The same hardware fault on two devices when the error report is linked to Nvidia wave device driver error preventing the units from going into sleep mode? Doesn't seem all that likely to me. I still think it's a software error, as this was reported also by somebody on a different forum, but with no clear resolution.
Thanks anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One could argue that the software error is environmental, as it only seems to be a minority experiencing this issue. There could be a hardware fault though, don't discount just because it is two devices, you could have been incredibly unlucky and received two devices that just happen to have the exact same fault.

Well I've done some more playing about with the device, and it seems my battery drain issue seems linked with my work email account. If I am just running my normal Hotmail account, battery drain seems fine. When I add my work Exchange email/diary account, the battery drains like nothing on earth. Not sure if this has anything to do with the fact that to even get this work email account working, I had to get our IT chap to send me the security certificate for me to install.
Not sure if anyone might be able to suggest a way of having push emails still running on my work email account without the battery draining hugely?

Question Rotation lag

Hi,
anyone noticing lag in the rotation animation? Most of the time the first time is pretty smooth. When changing rotation a few times thereafter the animations look more like 60 fps (although 120 is activated). Tried it in different apps. Always the same and really annoying and ugly.
Can anybody confirm this?

This issue goes way back. Even my 10+ does it.
Might have to do with the sensor refresh rate and/or degree of tilt/time at tilt/yaw.
If it takes more then a second there's definitely a fault issue.

Mmh. Actually I didn't recognize this when using my S20 with 120hz. At least not that much. So there's nothing that can improve the experience? I even thought the phone didn't have this behavior from the start which led to the question if I have something fishy installed. But there's nothing out of the ordinary. It's the same when using stock launcher or Ruthless launcher.

Be interested if there was a way to make it more responsive. This aspect of the device's behavior is slow by comparison to it's otherwise snappy performance. It is irritating... I hate waiting.
It's about .5-1 second on the N10+ in Brave browser and elsewhere.
I'm going to go through accessibility settings again. It's likely a user hidden setting though.

Have y'all dug into Developer Options & set the animation speeds to 0.5 (or 0)?
It might help some, if you haven't already done so. However, I've experienced it as well on occasion,getting "stuck", if you will.

KOLIOSIS said:
Have y'all dug into Developer Options & set the animation speeds to 0.5 (or 0)?
It might help some, if you haven't already done so. However, I've experienced it as well on occasion,getting "stuck", if you will.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeap, no joy

KOLIOSIS said:
Have y'all dug into Developer Options & set the animation speeds to 0.5 (or 0)?
It might help some, if you haven't already done so. However, I've experienced it as well on occasion,getting "stuck", if you will.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me the problem is that it looks sluggish as if the phone struggles to display the 120 Hz. Setting the transition scale to 0.5 or 0 doesn't do it for me. Makes it even more unsatisfying.

Cris7ianO said:
For me the problem is that it looks sluggish as if the phone struggles to display the 120 Hz. Setting the transition scale to 0.5 or 0 doesn't do it for me. Makes it even more unsatisfying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It has nothing to do with your refresh rate or does it? It so there may be some hope.
Like I said though both my N10+'s behave this way, it's normal... and irritating.

blackhawk said:
It has nothing to do with your refresh rate or does it? It so there may be some hope.
Like I said though both my N10+'s behave this way, it's normal... and irritating.
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Honestly it looks like the phone is struggling to keep it on 120hz when rotating. When I choose 60hz and rotate the phone it looks the same way constantly. That's why I'm thinking it has something to do with the frame rate. So in my case it's not about a delay for the animation it's about the smoothness.

Cris7ianO said:
Honestly it looks like the phone is struggling to keep it on 120hz when rotating. When I choose 60hz and rotate the phone it looks the same way constantly. That's why I'm thinking it has something to do with the frame rate. So in my case it's not about a delay for the animation it's about the smoothness.
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What I'm talking about is how long it takes to flip the screen to landscape once the phone's flipped. Close to 1 second.
I always disable all animations as it wastes resources plus I like the snap.
Lol, if it needs animations, it's too slow.

Cris7ianO said:
Hi,
anyone noticing lag in the rotation animation? Most of the time the first time is pretty smooth. When changing rotation a few times thereafter the animations look more like 60 fps (although 120 is activated). Tried it in different apps. Always the same and really annoying and ugly.
Can anybody confirm this?
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Sounds like something might be bogging it down.
I have the obligatory delay when rotating (because you have a ton of redraws happening on top of the actual animation itself, not some accessibility setting), but it is minimal. That aside, the rotation is smooth with animation set to 0.5 and adaptive motion smoothness.
The difference between your previous S20, my previous Note 20, and the Z Flip 3 is the lost RAM. This is an 8GB device, compared to 12GB or 16GB from last year. After some time getting used to being able to launch a bunch of stuff, it is easy to forget that this one can't run quite as much at once.
The only sure way to stop that completely without having to keep tabs on how much is running would be Developer options -> Don't keep activities or setting Background process limit, both of which come with some downsides.
If it is happening with a single app running after multiple turns, that could indicate an issue with the GPU. It could be as simple as poor cache handling that will be resolved with an update or a clean start. It could also be a hardware issue.

twistedumbrella said:
Sounds like something might be bogging it down.
I have the obligatory delay when rotating (because you have a ton of redraws happening on top of the actual animation itself, not some accessibility setting), but it is minimal. That aside, the rotation is smooth with animation set to 0.5 and adaptive motion smoothness.
The difference between your previous S20, my previous Note 20, and the Z Flip 3 is the lost RAM. This is an 8GB device, compared to 12GB or 16GB from last year. After some time getting used to being able to launch a bunch of stuff, it is easy to forget that this one can't run quite as much at once.
The only sure way to stop that completely without having to keep tabs on how much is running would be Developer options -> Don't keep activities or setting Background process limit, both of which come with some downsides.
If it is happening with a single app running after multiple turns, that could indicate an issue with the GPU. It could be as simple as poor cache handling that will be resolved with an update or a clean start. It could also be a hardware issue.
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This sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. The S20 with 12 GB indeed hadn't any of those issues, at least not to that extent. In addition I don't have that issue permanently. It only occurs from time to time. Haven't got an update since release. Hopefully it gets an improvement in the near future as it is disturbing. Nevertheless it is a joke that something like that happens even with 8 GB of RAM.

Cris7ianO said:
This sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. The S20 with 12 GB indeed hadn't any of those issues, at least not to that extent. In addition I don't have that issue permanently. It only occurs from time to time. Haven't got an update since release. Hopefully it gets an improvement in the near future as it is disturbing. Nevertheless it is a joke that something like that happens even with 8 GB of RAM.
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Do you use split screen apps? The only time i've really come across the issue was trying to run both a game and the browser with a couple other apps still in the background.
I think an update will definitely help, though. It seems like the 8GB on this is a larger step down than it should be right now and it is supposed to be a much better GPU.

twistedumbrella said:
Do you use split screen apps? The only time i've really come across the issue was trying to run both a game and the browser with a couple other apps still in the background.
I think an update will definitely help, though. It seems like the 8GB on this is a larger step down than it should be right now and it is supposed to be a much better GPU.
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No, I don't really use split screen apps. Hopefully an update will help. The device definitely has some obvious tradeoffs but in general it feels fresh and I really like it.

Just an update from my side: Indeed my inner feeling wasn't wrong. I just encountered the sluggish rotation again. Thereafter I went to developer settings and enabled show refresh rate. I went back and tried rotation again. The first time all is fine and it shows 120, but the times thereafter it jumped to 60 Hz when rotating. And if course my eyes will notice this behavior as they are used to 120. Hopefully this will get fixed. This has to be software related.
So this behavior is due to the adaptive refresh rate. It's there a way to force 120 all the time?

Cris7ianO said:
Just an update from my side: Indeed my inner feeling wasn't wrong. I just encountered the sluggish rotation again. Thereafter I went to developer settings and enabled show refresh rate. I went back and tried rotation again. The first time all is fine and it shows 120, but the times thereafter it jumped to 60 Hz when rotating. And if course my eyes will notice this behavior as they are used to 120. Hopefully this will get fixed. This has to be software related.
So this behavior is due to the adaptive refresh rate. It's there a way to force 120 all the time?
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Click to collapse
[App]Galaxy Max Hz (Refresh Rate Mods, Screen-off Mods, QS Tiles, Tasker Support and More)
About this app: Refresh Rate Control: Easily control the max refresh rate (Hz) of android devices with multiple refresh rates (e.g. note20 ultra, s20/S20+/S20Ultra, z fold 2, s21/s21+/s21Ultra, tab S7/S7+, z fold 3, z flip 3). This app can limit...
forum.xda-developers.com
Pretty sure that would be able to handle it for you.

twistedumbrella said:
[App]Galaxy Max Hz (Refresh Rate Mods, Screen-off Mods, QS Tiles, Tasker Support and More)
About this app: Refresh Rate Control: Easily control the max refresh rate (Hz) of android devices with multiple refresh rates (e.g. note20 ultra, s20/S20+/S20Ultra, z fold 2, s21/s21+/s21Ultra, tab S7/S7+, z fold 3, z flip 3). This app can limit...
forum.xda-developers.com
Pretty sure that would be able to handle it for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried this app and I am not fully satisfied with the outcome. Of course forcing 120hz will train the small battery even more and I don't want to be dependant on a 3rd party solution. Just to confirm the behavior is not only on my end, can you please test the following on your device?
1. Go to developer options and enable show refresh rate
2. Go in following apps: e.g. Whatsapp, Facebook, Google Play, Samsung Internet, Amazon Shopping (cause I don't face this issue on all apps)
3. In each app wait a few seconds four the refresh rate to go down to 60 and then rotate the screen (In my case the refresh rate stays at 60 when rotating in the mentioned apps and this looks horrible when the rest is running on 120hz)
If you could borrow a few minutes of your time to check that would be awesome and is very appreciated Thanks in advance!

Update: Just to be sure I did a factory reset. Still no improvement...
Further investigation gave me more information. There is something weird going on. When display brightness is low (around 10-15%) there is no issue for the phone keeping 120 while rotating. When I go up in brightness the 60hz rotation is back again. This is horrible. I've had a look on the new iPhone 13 pro and Apple doesn't have these issues with their adaptive screen. As I had the S20 before and skipped the s21 with the adaptive one this Flip is my first Samsung device with an adaptive screen. The experience is horrible. I just want a compact android device without such a compromise. This is ridiculous.