Help Some applications take 5-10 seconds to load. WHY?

[Droid_Badger]

Why does it take a substantially long time for some of my applications to open? Once I open them, they are quick and responsive. Usually after some time, they go back to being slow.

I have plenty of memory and space. I also have aggressive battery killing on here, so I imagine that some of these applications are being killed by Android after they are not used for a while.

But that does not explain what makes, for example, GroupOn take exactly 8 seconds to open every single time I use the phone. This makes the DX experience worse. Why is this happening? What can I do?

 

[Droid_Badger]

bump

 

[Deleted User]

It was only 30 minutes... it doesn't need a bump.

Not all apps are created equal. Some apps are inefficiently programmed, some apps won't load until they grab certain online data, some apps require more resources... It's no different from your computer. Does Internet Explorer take the same amount of time to open as your favorite game? Of course not. By the same token, far less complex apps take longer to open than Internet Explorer, because they rely on frameworks or they're inefficiently coded, or they need some kind of data before they can start.

This is especially common with apps that aren't really native apps. Some apps are basically fancy rendering of webpages. Those tend to be slower.

Aggressive app killing is going to make your problem worse because apps that are happily sleeping, not consuming any system resources, are being killed and need to start over again from scratch every time.

 

[Droid_Badger]

So this is a normal Android function?

I ask because my close friends and family all have iPhones. Their applications seem to be more smooth, although I have noticed several take a few seconds to load once the initial main screen pops up. I just don't want to have defective or buggy machine because I didn't know of a setting.

Sorry for the eager bump.

 

[sic0048]

If you are using a task killer (battery helper app) then you are doing it to yourself. Apps that are loaded into RAM do not use battery power, yet are much quicker to load. Stop using the battery manager app and see if there is any noticeable difference. I suspect your apps will load quicker and yet have little effect on your battery life.

 

[Droid_Badger]

If you are using a task killer (battery helper app) then you are doing it to yourself. Apps that are loaded into RAM do not use battery power, yet are much quicker to load. Stop using the battery manager app and see if there is any noticeable difference. I suspect your apps will load quicker and yet have little effect on your battery life.

I am not using a task killer.

 

[Deleted User]

Does it take 8 seconds for anything to appear on the screen?

BTW, it likely has nothing to do with iPhone vs. Android, just the coding of the program.

 

[Droid_Badger]

Yes, for some apps, 8 seconds. GroupOn is an example.

Gmail and Texts often take 2, sometimes 3 seconds. I can live with that, but I still want to know what prevents it from being snappy all of the time.

And occasionally when I am using my SwiftKey Beta X keyboard (I know, it's Beta, so that might be the problem), my inputs can sometimes get laggy.

 

[Droid_Badger]

A follow up q I have is whether or not I should try a different launcher. Will that make the applications start quicker or are alternative launchers better for those who want different home screens? I don't mind my current home screen.

 

[Deleted User]

Alternative launchers won't help much with app launching speeds.

I just downloaded Groupon. It's just a slow app. You can tell because the white screen comes up quickly, which means the app has started loading. Everything else is the app grabbing your GPS location, pulling down the information from the internet, etc.

 

[Droid_Badger]

hey man, thanks for answering my qs on here; I sense it's just the settings I have on the phone combined with normal app speeds

 

[Metfanant]

A follow up q I have is whether or not I should try a different launcher. Will that make the applications start quicker or are alternative launchers better for those who want different home screens? I don't mind my current home screen.

launcher won't help the app opening speeds...but it will surely speed up the transitions between home screens...

 

[RichSz]

I have plenty of memory and space. I also have aggressive battery killing on here, so I imagine that some of these applications are being killed by Android after they are not used for a while

I am not using a task killer.

I'm confused by these two statements. If you're not task killing, what do you mean by "aggressive battery killing"? I'm just curious.

That aside, what I think is happening is normal memory management. When you first open an app, Groupon by your example, the OS needs to make room for it in memory, then load it. This takes time. If you exit that app, you are really just putting it in the background where it sits, doing nothing. That isn't a bad thing at all. If you then re-open that app, it probably pops up a lot faster because Android only needs to bring it to the foreground, not reload the whole thing.

Then if you open other apps, eventually the OS figures you no longer need Groupon in memory and clears it out so other apps can use that memory. If you were to then re-open Groupon, it will take more time to come up because it needs to be reloaded, just like it was run the first time.

I believe the iOS uses a different model. Apple just stuffs unused apps in the background, where they seem to reside almost "permanently". It doesn't appear to do much garbage collection and memory can get pretty full. I've seen this on my iPad, where I have to clean out old apps from memory to increase the performance of a large app I want to run. Since all those apps stick around in memory a lot longer, they reload much more quickly.

Also, like others said, if an app in Android uses a lot of resources or is coded poorly, you're screwed regardless.

 

[quickaudi]

fwiw, the Gmail taking 2-3 seconds to pull up is based on it loading all of your messages from the internet over your connection every time you open

 

[Wally World]

If you are using a task killer (battery helper app) then you are doing it to yourself. Apps that are loaded into RAM do not use battery power, yet are much quicker to load. Stop using the battery manager app and see if there is any noticeable difference. I suspect your apps will load quicker and yet have little effect on your battery life.

Yes. I used to be obsessed with task killer. I didn't want any app loaded into ram that I didn't want there. Well after monitoring the apps with Watchdog, those apps preloaded in the ram are using 0.0% CPU. This is what you want to watch, what app is using CPU while in the background.

 

[scary alien]

Didn't see this thread until tonight (sorry, been busy with thread cataloging in other forums...ugh ).

Most of the reasons for an app's slow load times have been addressed above, but here's a quick summary and an addition or two:

1. What you already have loaded / running on your phone (and is currently active)

2. If you have some kind of virus scanner running

3. Your memory management settings (i.e., AutoKiller (not ATK))

4. What resources the app needs / uses (i.e., if it need internet and you don't have a wi-fi or 3G or 4G signal, then you'll wait while the app tries to acquire a connection; LOL, I just turn my screen on to start to the Market to search for AutoKiller and it took about 6 seconds, since my phone had been asleep and internet was not currently connected); this is especially true of apps that need an internet connection to serve-up ads; you are also at the mercy of the source-system servicing that internet connection, not just the connection speed itself

5. How efficiently the app was written; its a tenant that an app should be responsive to the user and send any serious resource-intensive work to the background...this is not always easy to do--its easier to simply write the code for sequential processing and make the user wait (obviously not cool or a good practice)

6. How fast your device is (obviously the DX is a pretty sweet, fast device)

That's all I got.

Cheers!

 

[foo]

download OS Monitor(free) & make sure nothing is pulling a ton of CPU usage constantly, which slows down your phone (have seen it happen on many phones)

 

[colchiro]

Moved to support.