Help Stock GNEX Slowing Down Over Time

[KE4NYV]

Title says it all. I have had my phone for just under two years. Running the latest stock firmware, but I have noticed that my phone is getting the point where it is slow and lagging on everything I try to do. Even when I'm trying to send a message or just get a keyboard to pop up. Other times, it's somewhat snappy, like when I first got it. I did some app management and uninstalled about 1/4 of what I had. I also watch a system monitor app to see if I can notice any issues with the processor getting overworked. Looks like it does peg out at times and stay that way for maybe 2-3 minutes.

These phones are getting as bad as a Windows machine

 

[abert78160]

Yeah I've been having a similar problem. Mine is stock too and it has some serious lag, especially with texting and Google Hangouts. Mine also restarts randomly, at least once a day.

 

[gtbarry]

Can I assume that you are both on 4.3 for sometime now?

4.3 came with TRIM which should have kicked in several times by now. As it only goes into effect when the battery has a majority charge (I think 80%) and has been idle for some time (over an hour I think).

TRIM basically is somewhat like defragging your hard drive, but it actually does something.

 

[FramCire]

Grbarry. Stock Sprint and Verizon don't have 2.3 yet

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4

 

[gtbarry]

That's what I thought until I read this.

I have had my phone for just under two years. Running the latest stock firmware,

 

[KE4NYV]

Yeah, stock Verizon 4.2.2 here.

 

[jhawkkw]

I know some people don't like to root and rom, but it will feel a lot different running 4.3 on it.

 

[KE4NYV]

I know some people don't like to root and rom, but it will feel a lot different running 4.3 on it.

I actually rooted/rom'ed my HTC Eris and Incredible in the past, so I'm not afraid to do it. I honestly wanted to see how long I could go on the stock, like the typical consumer.

 

[Tim K]

You know what I've found is that there are a lot of apps that seem to self-start and run in the background. I'm not talking about coming on for a few seconds to sync, or apps that aren't shutting down fully, or apps that are in cache...I'm talking about apps that start on their own, run in the background, and stay running all day.

For me, the Sirius XM app is a big pain in the ass and keeps running while android shuffles other things in and out of RAM. Also, Airdroid, TripIt and Google Wallet seem to always be running in the background even if I haven't used any of them in weeks. Costco, NFL Mobile, Twitter and Titanium backup are in there too.

So, I'm experimenting with "Greenify". Its not a task killer per se, as Android can manage system memory just fine.... its that these app should not be self-starting and constantly running but they are coded that way. If I didn't use them I'd just uninstall and tell the devs to fix their apps, but since I like most of these I'm giving greenify a shot. Basically, what it does is runs in the background (small process) and prevents the apps you select from self-starting or immediately shuts them down.

I'm going to see if this helps me when I get to one of those laggy periods every few days where I feel like my phone can't even open apps in less than 15 seconds.

 

[Demache]

I actually rooted/rom'ed my HTC Eris and Incredible in the past, so I'm not afraid to do it. I honestly wanted to see how long I could go on the stock, like the typical consumer.

TRIM definitely makes a huge difference. I installed the "Shiny" 4.3 ROM, and its literally stock 4.3, just ported over to the Toro Galaxy Nexus. Its not so much "faster" per se, but the brief pause between touching an icon and it responding is almost eliminated now.

 

[Tim K]

TRIM definitely makes a huge difference. I installed the "Shiny" 4.3 ROM, and its literally stock 4.3, just ported over to the Toro Galaxy Nexus. Its not so much "faster" per se, but the brief pause between touching an icon and it responding is almost eliminated now.

Do you think its TRIM or is it maybe just the fact that you've installed a fresh new ROM? I know a lot of people notice their phones are much faster when they wipe and reset or install a new ROM...but then they gradually slow down over time.....or at least it seems that way.

 

[actofgod]

I'm running 4.3 (rooted - stock rom) on VZW and my phone is still laggy as hell.

 

[Demache]

Do you think its TRIM or is it maybe just the fact that you've installed a fresh new ROM? I know a lot of people notice their phones are much faster when they wipe and reset or install a new ROM...but then they gradually slow down over time.....or at least it seems that way.

Not 100% but when I installed the LagFix app which forces fstrim to run on the device in 4.2.2, there was a significant reduction in system lag, at least for a little while. It does seem to be a common culprit, especially on the Nexus 7 which definitely had this issue. And the 4.3 ROM is almost 2 weeks old at this point and I put nearly 7 GB of music on it, and still runs like its fresh even after getting everything reconfigured again. Its also been running for a week straight with no reboots and that's normally when my GNex would have weird lag troubles. Most of the lag I see removed is loading apps and random hangups within them, due to filesystem input/output, which is what TRIM is supposed to fix.

Any other slowdowns were present at the time of install and I just boil it down to the processor becoming dated and only having 1 GB of RAM (since most slowdowns tend to surround web browsing on image heavy pages or resource hungry apps). Its not perfect, but there is an improvement from what I'm seeing.

My favorites where that there isn't the weird 4 second lag after entering my PIN to unlock (which is normally why I rebooted every other day) and the messaging app feels much much quicker. And those may be overall 4.3 improvements. Or using a different ROM (I was using PA) Either way, there's no real reason not to use 4.3 from what I find.