New Google Defect created for the terrible Live Wallpaper lag (link inside)

[dabomb224]

Update: I ran an experiment comparing Live Wallpaper performance on the Stock ICS Launcher to performance on the Nova ICS Launcher. Scroll to the bottom of this post for the interesting results.


Issue 23014 - android - Extreme lag on all Live Wallpapers except Phase Beam - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting

The above link goes to a Defect page that I created on Google's defect tracker program. While some have said that the extreme slugishness in ALL Live Wallpapers might be due to the GPU being maxed out while rendering the LWP's in 720p, I still believe that this may be due to a Software related issue (as evidenced by the Phase Beam LWP running MUCH faster than all others).

If you are experiencing this and want Google to look into it, click he above link, log into your Google account and star this issue. Thanks to all.



And The Plot Thickens...

So I just tested out several different 3rd-Party Launchers to see if they had any effect on the smoothness of the various stock Live Wallpapers. Up front, I can tell you that LauncherPro, ADW, and Go Launcher exhibit as much, or more screen scrolling lag as the stock launcher.

Here's where it gets really interesting. Since all three of the aforementioned Launchers are optimized for previous Android versions, I decided to try one designed specifically for Ice Cream Sandwich: Nova Launcher.

The following summarizes my findings:

Stock Launcher

Bubbles - Somewhat laggy. Homescreen swipes are slightly delayed.
Holo Spiral - Somewhat laggy. Homescreen swipes are slightly delayed.
Maps - Extremely laggy. Homescreen swipes are both delayed and choppy.
Microbes - Moderately laggy. Homescreen swipes are slightly delayed and slightly choppy.
Nexus - Slightly laggy. Homescreen swipes are slightly choppy.
Phase Beam - Smooth as virtual butter. No lag or scrolling delay.
Spectrum - Somewhat laggy. Homescreen swipes are slightly delayed and choppy.
Water - Somewhat laggy. Homescreen swipes are slightly delayed and choppy.

Nova Launcher

Bubble: Homescreen scrolling is smooth, but slightly delayed.
Holo Spiral: Smooth as virtual butter. No scrolling delay.
Maps: Smooth as virtual butter. No scrolling delay.
Microbes: Laggy. Homescreen scrolling is both delayed and choppy.
Nexus: Smooth as virtual butter. No scrolling delay.
Phase Beam: Smooth as virtual butter. No scrolling delay.
Spectrum: Slight scrolling delay. Tiny bit of choppiness.
Water: Smooth as virtual butter. No scrolling delay.

So in summary, performance on every Live Wallpaper improved dramatically after moving from the Stock Launcher to Nova Launcher. Perhaps even more interesting is the observation that Maps, which was the laggiest Live Wallpaper in my Stock Launcher test, turned out to be as equally ultra-smooth as Phase Beam in the Nova Launcher test. What's more, I would say that the "buttery smooth" LWP's on Nova Launcher demonstrated even faster and smoother Homescreen scrolling than Phase Beam did on the Stock Launcher.

In conclusion, I believe that the evidence presented here strongly supports my original theory that sluggish homescreen performance while using Live Wallpaper is a software related problem, and not a result of the GPU being "maxed out".

 

[DucatiDude]

No problem at all with my live wallpapers. So it's not ALL.

 

[Keyan]

i definitely have a lag when swiping between home screens with any other live wallpaper than the stock.

 

[aimetti]

No problem at all with my live wallpapers. So it's not ALL.

haha no way in heck

 

[zeroG]

I was about to post about this also. I have bad lag on all live wallpapers except for phase beam. Which now thinking about it, makes me wonder why Verizon uses phase beam as the stock wallpaper to distribute the devices with. Maybe they knew about this before hand.

On an update, I downloaded Beautiful home with the beautiful live wallpaper with the grass and clouds, and it runs perfectly fine with no lag. So I definitely think it's software related and can be fixed.

 

[zebug]

no lag here whatsoever either, I even installed some from the market for a short amount of time but getting bored of them.

 

[dabomb224]

For those experiencing equal smoothness between Phase beam and other LWPs, could you post which ones? Also, are you running a custom ROM/kernel or stock?

For those who do experience this issue, please remember to click the link in the OP and Star this issue.

 

[northernale1]

for live wall papers i have used my beach hd(from market) and water (stock).. no lag. no battery drain,,,

I really think the major issues are with LTE,, no LTE nexus here in Canada and thats just fine by me,,

my girl friend has the SG2 on bell,, I had the SG2 on rogers which is LTE,, her phone was awesome from day one,, mine was buggy and annoying,,

so for me,, im a year or so before I will jump on the LTE bandwagon

i really think this forum needs to seperate this as the LTE nexus seems to be a totally different beast with its own set of issues

 

[zebug]

For me, I had the water live wallpaper that came with it for a little while. Also installed a couple from the market (snowfall free live wallpaer, thunderstorm live wallpaper, and one other I can no longer find as I uninstalled it but it was some chick in a bikini washing my screen).

I am not rooted and 100% stock still (rooting will happen soon though just been too busy to mess with it)

 

[dirtyjeep]

I don't know if it would be considered "Extreme" lag... I would just say it's lag.

But I starred it anyway.

 

[dabomb224]

Interesting. Perhaps I should have specified that I am on a Verizon LTE Nexus. I have tested out all of the stock Live Wallpapers, including Water, and only Phase Beam does not significantly slow my frame rate.

 

[2003vstrom]

Interesting. Perhaps I should have specified that I am on a Verizon LTE Nexus. I have tested out all of the stock Live Wallpapers, including Water, and only Phase Beam does not significantly slow my frame rate.

me too I just tried all of the live wallpapers and all of them were nice and smooth and I just received my Nexus today

 

[CAMAN]

Zero lag here also. And I run WeatherBug Radar as my live wallpaper.

And just tried all my other live wallpapers and they run just fine, the "Nexus" one may slow a bit but nothing I'd consider Major

 

[jimmypop13]

Vzw nexus here. Horrible lag on any live wallpaper other than Phase Beam, which was my stock wallpaper

 

[BubbaNexus]

great theories. there's a puff of smoke on the grassy knoll too.


all my live ones work great.

 

[jimmypop13]

I just tried nova launcher. It made a few more live wallpapers run smoothly, just like you mentioned. But the galactic core and happy new year 2012 ones I downloaded are still choppy as hell.
My gf's sgs2 e4gt runs these all without issue

 

[jimmypop13]

great theories. there's a puff of smoke on the grassy knoll too.


all my live ones work great.

I was able to duplicate his findings exactly.
I guess u have a vzw nexus? I wonder why urs doesn't have issues but ours do. Are you on 4.0.2 with a locked bootloader?

 

[BubbaNexus]

I was able to duplicate his findings exactly.
I guess u have a vzw nexus? I wonder why urs doesn't have issues but ours do. Are you on 4.0.2 with a locked bootloader?

no root or anything. on the 4.0.2 per the day of release update.

 

[drdoom]

I have issues with the live wall papers on my Verizon Nexus.

 

[AnotherFatalEpic]

It took me awhile to realize that it was the Live Wallpaper causing the lag. I was uninstalling my newest apps one by one until I came across a thread around here mentioning this. As soon as I switched back to Phase Beam the lag was gone. I couldn't understand why Holo Spiral (much less going on than Phase Beam) was causing the launcher to lag so much.

I starred the issue, will check out Nova Launcher, thanks for that!

 

[CharlzO]

I'm on a Verizon LTE Nexus as well, and can't say that I can notice hardly lag at all on any of them. The faintest of stutter on the microbes one on the first swipe either direction, but barely noticeable. Certainly nothing I would consider out of the ordinary. Maps wasn't any worse either. I use a static wallpaper normally though, so it wouldn't even be something I'd notice either way, but seeing this thread, I had to test mine out. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), mine seems to be fine, and not problematic at all.

 

[Keyan]

Any wallpaper that scrolls with the home screen lags. Phase beam stays stationary.

 

[William T Riker]

Some of you guys who are saying there's no lag must not understand what the OP is trying to state or just dont have the phone because using Microbes vs Phase Beam on the stock launcher its definitely noticeable difference when swiping between screens... from what I had read around the web it was because PB is hardware accelerated and the other ones werent... im gonna add a star on it though

 

[dhworph]

*** edit: ya, phase beam is really smooth in nova, haven't tried it in stock. Although the other live wallpapers still lag in nova for me...

I get lag on all live wallpapers in all launchers that I've tried. However, I usually didn't let them sit for too long (sometimes it seems letting them settle helps).

Even with Nova I saw significant lag in all live wallpapers I tried, although I think they were smoother on Nova than Stock for sure.

This is why I don't use live wallpapers... I'd love to, but I just can't deal with the lag. Maybe I'll try again and let it run for a couple days...

I don't think it's a hardware problem, b/c the phone has run what I thought were much heavier and more intensive processes with less lag. It's a matter of allocation of resources...

It is probably partially software type I issue (i.e. launcher/os/wallpaper not optimized to work with each other), and also a software type II issue (the way android is designed -- eg. the google+ post by google folk and the ensuing discussion). Of course throwing more GPU/CPU at it would probably help!

 

[snapcase]

I don't get any lag on any live wallpaper in either the stock launcher or in nova.