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Does the Nexus lag?

My Nexus S 4G running GPA19 at 1.5 GHz can run Jumpgate Live wallpaper at max settings w/o any decrease in performance in the launcher, jet my Galaxy Nexus w/ the GPU clocked at 384 MHz can't handle it as well. It's all software and Google has done a poor job with ICS.

Jumpgate Live Wallpaper lags because the phone is using the GPU to render two 720p screens.

With Android 2.x, you can set the Live Wallpaper to be rendered with the GPU at high priority then draw the icons with the CPU.

It is a compromise that Google made when it had the GPU render the UI at a higher priority. Hopefully Google can find a fix to the Live Wallpaper issues but there is a reason that Apple or Microsoft doesn't allows live wallpapers in on their phones.

If you set the background to a static image, ICS is silky smooth with a desktop covered with widgets, even though it has over 2x more pixels than the average GB phone. The only time I experience lag with it is when I scroll over to the widgets in the apps menu.
 
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Jumpgate Live Wallpaper lags because the phone is using the GPU to render two 720p screens.

With Android 2.x, you can set the Live Wallpaper to be rendered with the GPU at high priority then draw the icons with the CPU.

It is a compromise that Google made when it had the GPU render the UI at a higher priority. Hopefully Google can find a fix to the Live Wallpaper issues but there is a reason that Apple or Microsoft doesn't allows live wallpapers in on their phones.

If you set the background to a static image, ICS is silky smooth with a desktop covered with widgets, even though it has over 2x more pixels than the average GB phone. The only time I experience lag with it is when I scroll over to the widgets in the apps menu.


Thanks for the explanation, though I don't understand why it has to render 2 720p screens? Is one rendering the icons and the other the live wallpaper?
Anyways, I still think Google did a poor job w/ ICS. At the end of the day, I'm just upset that my newer phone can't handle the same things as well as my old one. I thought I was supposed to be upgrading?
I just can't see the improvement aside from the prettier interface. Like I said earlier, to me this feels like the original release of Windows Vista. Sure it may look prettier, but it doesn't perform as well as good ol' Gingerbread. How is it that my OG Droid which is over 2 years old, and running Gingerbread can open many stock apps quicker and scroll through static wallpapers w/o a single hiccup?
 
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Yes, the Nexus does lag, let's be honest here. In the store, the RAZR seemed a bit smoother. It gets worse with many apps running and live wallpapers etc... but is most noticeable it the app tray flicking from page to page.

Coming from a BB storm though, the level of lag on the GNex doesn't bother me... is the iphone smoother? yes, of course! If perfectly smooth transitions are the deciding factor for you, then you might want an iphone.
 
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Still haven't (outside of the landscape typing lag which has a ridiculously easy fix, and a bit of a stutter in the widget drawer which is probably due to the fact I've got 30 plus widgets in there) seen any lag. Just tried pinch to zoom on theverge.com with no lag as well. Not saying that some of you aren't seeing what you say you're seeing, I'm just saying that I'm personally not seeing the issues. BTW the LWP issue is tied into the stock launcher, try NOVA and you will see that there is no lag with any LWP.
 
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Ok, cool man. I'm happy you have the only stutter free Android phone in existence. Mine is not. This is my 5th Android phone (HTC Hero, Nexus One, Evo 4g, Evo 3d, Gnex). I'm ok with that, because overall this is the best phone in the world. But you don't have to be a douche about it. I've taught photography classes, so I'm pretty sure I know the difference between a crap camera and a good one, and this one is average at best. I've got some great looking shots in bright light, but anything in lower light looks bad. Tons of noise. Lots of motion blur from camera shake - which is just a software flaw because the flash should fire if the exposure calls for a shutter speed below 1/45 or so. I love the instant shutter, but the sensor does not do well at all in low light situations. Because I know photography, I can shoot around these issues, so it's not a deal breaker for me. But HTC, Apple and even Samsung can and have done better.

Go to theverge.com. Request desktop site. Pinch to zoom. If you're not on 4.0.3, enjoy the lag. I can recreate that every time on my phone, and you can go to youtube and see other Nexi doing the same. This was fixed, apparently, in 4.0.3 so I'm hoping things like bookmark scrolling is improved as well.

My widget drawer stutters badly. So either I'm lying or we're just having different experiences. Others on this board have said the same thing. Again, I hope this is fixed in 4.0.3; maybe someone running a ROM can tell us.

Go to your homescreen furthest to the left. Hit the home button. Watch the frame rate drop. This is 100% consistent on my phone and others on this board have reported the same thing. This action is much smoother on my old Evo 3d and my mom's Evo 4g - but the Sense launcher has always been smooth.

Again, I am an diehard Apple hater and Android lover, but to pretend like Android is perfect and doesn't have some work to do in the smoothness department is not reality. Sure it's the best OS by FAR, but is it perfect? No. Luckily Google is working on it and 4.0.3 is supposed to be a big improvement.

Spot on post. Agreed with everything you said.
 
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Everyone that says there is no lag need there eyes checked or have low expectations...

The Galaxy Nexus is fast... the hardware is capable... but...

My Nexus S with the 3.1.7 kernel is much more smooth then the GN regarding UI and perceived performance... lets pray that future kernel + OS updates will fix the lag / stutter.

I can accept stutter from some apps and I understand that some Live Wallpapers are hogs... but the problem is garbage collection, not hardware capability. Then you look at the logs... you can clearly see that all the stuttering it related to the memory management... so there is hope. The dalvik VM has improved but why can't it just wait till the phone is idle to clean up ?

I thought I was the only one that had noticed. Everyone just says how smooth it is, but all I see is a bunch of stutter everywhere. The phone itself doesn't lag much, however it's not smooth by far. My Nexus S running GPA19 is actually a lot smoother. I was expecting it to be faster and smoother than my RAZR, however I was left deeply disappointed. I've overclocked the phone, and even tried running it at performance, but the stutter is still there. I've come to the conclusion that it's probably just ICS. I hate to say it, but to me ICS feels like the first release of Vista, and can't wait for it to be updated. The update to 4.0.3 helps a bit, so maybe by 4.0.5 it'll be less noticeable. I tried ICS on my Nexus S and it just makes the phone slower and stuttery.

I've used over 10 different phones this past year, and even though I had my expectations set low for this phone, I was still pretty disappointed. I thought it would be at least as fast as the RAZR, but with a smoother browser. To give a simple example, when I scroll through wallpapers on my OG, Nexus S, or any other phone with Android 2.3.7, it's smooth and fast as can be. However, on the Galaxy Nexus you can see an immediate stutter and drop in frame rate. How can something so simple not perform properly on a brand new phone that's supposed to offer the best of the best.

I think I'm just one of those people that have an eye for these things, and I hate that I notice it so much every time I use the phone. Also the browser doesn't text rewarp properly, which can be very annoying. I just hope they release an update soon to fix all this. The smoothest and fastest Android phone I've ever used is the Galaxy S II, tough the RAZR came really close. In my opinion Google's poor attempt at Hardware Acceleration just made the OS stutter and perform slower to the eye. I'd rather wait an extra second and get fluid 30/60 fps than to save that time and get a choppy frame rate. I really hope developers can make this phone as smooth as my other phones.
-Sorry for the long rant.
 
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Yes. Yes is does lag. And by lag I mean stutter.

Exiting youtube and other apps - sometimes it's like the launcher has crashed and is reloading the screen. This is the redraw issue we've been talking about.

The browser lags some in pinch-to-zoom and scrolling, but I've heard that 4.0.3 makes a DRAMATIC improvement so I'll reserve judgement. Overall it's pretty good tho.

Homescreen scrolling is choppy at times, and when you hit the home button to zip back to your main homescreen, the frame rate dropps like a rock. My mom's old Evo 4g is much better in this regard, mostly because HTC's launcher has always been smoother than Google's.

The widget drawer stutters badly. The app drawer stutters a little.

Scrolling thru the list of my bookmarks in the browser causes bad stuttering. I only have maybe 15. This may be fixed in 4.0.3. But that's totally unacceptable.

A lot of random and inconsistant stuttering when scrolling thru lists. Some of this is third party app crap that will be fixed, but Google Voice stutters badly.

Most of this is down to crap software coding. It just is. Sorry guys, it just is. Google can fix almost all of this with updates. If you're gonna go Google, this is what you have to put up with. Their innovation is amazing, but they never really come out of beta. It's just their way. Android is about features and flexibility, not about perfect user experience. If you want that, go with iOS or WP7.

Overall however, I'm in love with this phone. With a better GPU and camera, it would be near perfect.

Going from a Galaxy S2 i can confirm pretty much all of this, GS2 was faster for some reason...i just hope they fix the lag in the transitions and animations....
 
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The only lag I have seen anywhere is when I switch from portrait to landscape and vice versa. Doesn't really bother me though since it is only for a second but it is noticeable

I know that particular post is quite old, but still it's fair to clarify that's not lag: switching orientation is deliberately delayed so the OS makes sure that you are switching orientation instead of just tilting your phone a little bit for some other reason.

Edit: and now i feel stupid because someone did reply to the same thing right away. Oh, well...
 
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I know that particular post is quite old, but still it's fair to clarify that's not lag: switching orientation is deliberately delayed so the OS makes sure that you are switching orientation instead of just tilting your phone a little bit for some other reason.

Edit: and now i feel stupid because someone did reply to the same thing right away. Oh, well...

I had the G Nex and RAZR together for 2 weeks. The G Nex I had did lag when doing that compared to my RAZR. I never tested it on the 4.0.3 update tho. I have a Rezound now, cant really compare any to the G Nex I had anymore.

The deliberate lag was longer on the G Nex vs the RAZR I had.
 
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@jroc

That makes sense, probably Motorola choose a shorter delay time. Which brings me to some skins reportedly being snappier than stock Android. I've been using Touchwiz for some time, and it feels snappy alright. Only it's a trick. A clever one. Long, slow animations between screens to create the illusion of smoothness while giving time to the cpu to load whatever there is to load, customization options removed to save resources, you get the idea.

Of course, those tricks are not exclusive of Andoid. WP7 uses animations for that purpose too, and Mobile Safari in iOS reports that the page is fully rendered when it's not by a long shot, so every fool in youtube doing a browser comparative will say "here, the iPhone finished first again".

So, about the matter in discussion, i'd say all of them (stock Android, Android OEM skins, iOS, WP7) lag and stutter. It's just that some do a better job at keeping the user from noticing than others. As for ICS in the GNex in particular, considering it's the Galaxy S GPU running a 720p display we're talking about, i'd say it does a pretty good job at showing a fluid UX.
 
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^I agree with that.

Even tho Samsung, HTC and now finally Motorola have been doing lil optimizations here n there to their UI's, and browsers for smoothness and whatnot....I agree with what you're saying.

I had a G Nex and I have a Rezound now. And the galleries on both phones, pinch n zooming, scrolling around with the pic enlarged, are silky smooth compared to my RAZR. I assume its silky smooth on the GS2 also.
 
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That's a bug, try the main one the Phase Beam, seems its the only one which works well for some reason...

Edit:still there's no reason why this phone shouldnt be as fast as GS2...so i hope 4.0.3. fix this.

A million thanks. Turns out it wasn't a rogue app that I downloaded yesterday. In the middle of my app downloading fun I did switch the wallpaper to the "Holo Spiral" - which I THOUGHT would be better since it has much less going on compared to the original Phase Beam one.

Switched back to Phase Beam and the lag on my Nexus is gone. I still get occasional browser lag (which I can't tell if it's due to a connection issue) but aside from that the phone seems smooth.
 
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So my previous Nexus that I had to exchange for screen issues had zero lag, none whatsoever, felt like a super fast sleek new phone.

New one I got, right out of box even though brand new felt laggy. Was not as bad as say some of the older phones. But I noticed when I open the app drawer it hesitates and when I scroll though apps and widgets it just not fluid.

I already tried a factory reset, and flashed the stock google 4.0.2 image, even though it came with 4.0.2

Same thing. To me it so weird how two nexus feel totally different. I am wondering if that is why some feel it and others don't?
 
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