Help Homescreen lag - is there a fix?

[Ruben]

I saw on a youtube video how much the home screen lagged. Is it the hardware, or can this be fixed with a software update?

Thanks,
Ruben

 

[smitty24]

ive not noticed any homescreen lag. possibly a defective unit?

 

[oniongirl]

My homescreen is smooth as.... ummmm.... something that slides really smoothly. Like a well oiled... slidey thing....

So yeh, don't know what they'd done to their home to make it all laggy. I can't get over how sensitive this is compared to the HTC my boyfriend has where you have to jab at the screen ten times to get it to respond.

 

[Ruben]

Great to hear. I'll post the video so you guys can compare. My next question was going to ask if the home screen switching was as smooth as an HTC android, but I think that answered my question. Do you guys see lag in the browser when scrolling?

YouTube - Google Nexus One vs HTC Magic home screen lag - Swedroid.se

 

[dwang]

The youtube video is correct. the home screen app on the n1 is not as smooth or as fast as the g1/magic/mt3g. I have a n1, mt3g, and g1.

Currently there is no fix. The workaround is to install a home replacement app, such as home++. Home++ is incredibly smooth and fast on the n1.

That being said, the n1 is a super fast smartphone. Everything else just blows the older android devices out of the water.

 

[MartinS]

If you are not using a Task Killer app try one of these to keep RAM level up. I sometimes get a slight slowdown if I have lots of things running.

 

[Rusty]

Hmm my homescreen is nothing like that, would bug me if it was though.

As above, be interesting to know what both phones have open in the background.

 

[MartinS]

Hmm actually, mine is more like the Nexus on there. The Mytouch is certainly smoother. I'm not going to let it bother me though.

I'm also running live wallpapers, have the big TwiDroid widget, the big Facebook widget, News, Battery all running so Its not doing badly in my opinion.

 

[bluehaze013]

Don't remember mine ever lagging like that, i'm on Cyanogen's now though and there is definitely no lag whatsoever even with a bunch of programs running in the background.

 

[Ruben]

I'm getting mixed results. Totally being unbias (sp?), is there truly no lag on some phones (compared to the HTC phones) and lag on others?

Could this be fixed with future software? For me, I can live with almost anything as long as I know there will be an update that could fix it. Is the GPU/GUI (I honestly have no clue) strong enough? I'm very familiar with processors, but not whatever handles the graphics.

 

[KlaymenDK]

I don't know what your expectations are, but I honestly can not see any lag whatsoever in that video.

You should see the Galaxy ... you'll frequently wait seconds for the icons to appear.

 

[pastafish]

Mine is just like the video, sometimes worse. I keep having to swipe two or three times to get it to work properly. Could be related to the number of apps installed, although I hardly ever have more than about 10 running in the background (including all the default android stuff).

Kind of annoying really, I assumed it was like this for everyone :/

 

[Ruben]

For the people that know, if I do end-up getting a device with home screen lag, could software fix this, or is it a hardware issue?

 

[pastafish]

I just closed all running apps and removed all the complex widgets from my homescreens and it went smooth as butter again, so I think it's most likely related to third party software. Just be careful with the apps and widgets you download, and check the homescreen after every new install to make sure it isn't slowing down.

 

[seeking]

my home screens are full to the max with programs, and im running beautiful widgets/face book widget/and that widget that allows you to have like 4 icons in the place of one in multiple instances and my phone doesnt have any lag

 

[Fabolous]

Pretty sure there's homescreen lag on highres stock Android devices (i.e. N1 and Droid) because there's no GPU acceleration, and it's all done by CPU.

So the more widgets you got running eating up CPU cycles, less are dedicated to animating the swiping.

This is less prominent in the lower res devices because weak as their processors are, they have 2.6x less pixels than our devices.

Not that much an issue with SenseUI as I'm sure HTC optimized it for their devices. Not sure how Home++ is coded, but it seems to be smoother too.

 

[Ruben]

The Nexus doesn't have a dedicated GPU? (excuse my noob language)

 

[Fabolous]

The Nexus doesn't have a dedicated GPU? (excuse my noob language)

I guess I was a bit ambiguous. The N1 does have a dedicated GPU.

The launcher (home screens), however, do not seem to call upon the GPU, but rather rely on CPU computations.

Seems like pretty shoddy optimization to me. Hopefully, they update it to take advantage of the GPU.

 

[Ruben]

I see. Let's hope so. Thank you guys so much!

 

[gibson6594]

The amount of things we are all hoping for in a software fix is becoming astronomical. Don't get your hopes up people. I suggest you learn to like this phone for what it is.

 

[Ruben]

And indeed I do. The amazing features, android, it goes on and on. Just wondering if it was a software or a hardware thing. Looks like the hardware is there, so I'm good; I'll just wait for the software.

 

[konman795]

I have the same problem, but I installed home++ and love it. Hopefully they can fix the homescreen lag with some sort of software update.

 

[Ruben]

Does home++ utilize the GPU more efficiently? Thanks for the tip, konman.

 

[konman795]

yea it definitely seems like home++ utilizes the gpu more becaus i basically have the same exact setup as my default homescreen with all my widgets and icons wih the addition of two extra homescreens and the interface is extremely smooth. i just wish the app launcher was the same as the default homescreen one (3D Carousal) i stead of he old style android drawer. Oh and animated wallpaper support for home++ woupd be nice too.

 

[idiotekniQues]

wouldnt a home replacement app suck up battery life?