Help What causes the DROID to become slow?

[whiterabbitwww]

I too have the no icons for 10-30 seconds issue (as Nevets70, dennyc, abmoser, sonmack, etc.). Running a Motorola Droid, with
-no widgets
-no task killer
-very few apps installed
-the ONLY apps running that are NOT google are Facebook and Skype

I'm going to look into clearing the dalvik cache, see if that does anything.

 

[motoxkx]

I had the same sluggishness with my Motorola Droid and I found the following to help a bit.
Delete text messages. I had many long text message threads that included lots of images and I'm thinking it's possible that this is loaded into active memory. I really have no idea how the Android platform works under the covers, but deleting all of my text threads seems to be helping my device chug-a-long a little better.

 

[johnlgalt]

Basically, anything that is eating loads of memory is going to cause slowness issues.

Lots of SMS
Exchange emails constantly syncing and DLing emails
etc.

 

[MK19]

My phone is insanely slow as well (delayed response time, blank desktop for 10-20 seconds, etc) and I barely use it for anything more than phone calls and GMail- no text messages to speak of and barely any apps at all. What gives???!!

 

[Rockerstouch]

I just uninstalled that and it has showed a substantial difference already. Thank you for the advice!

 

[skralogy]

yeah i have noticed mine slow down too when u look and see how much memory it uses its ridiculous get rid of app killer

 

[jessica n]

I have advanced task killer but it isn't slowing my phone down, what did it was the "lookout" app I had downloaded. Once I deleted it, everything was noticeably faster. Through my experiences, I find that any app which has the job of scanning apps or scanning the phone for problems (viruses, etc.) really slows down the phone.

 

[bumbleboy]

I just wanted to second johnlgalt's suggestion that you add sdmove. I had tried moving tunein onto the sd. Uninstalling and reinstalling the app solved my problem. I wouldn't have caught this otherwise.

OK, here is another little tidbit.

if you have apps that you are using the widgets for, DO NOT MOVE THEM TO THE SDCARD.

This will significantly slow down the phone (if not make it crash outright).

I highly recommend using the following apps to tell you what apps can and cannot be moved to the SDCard:

SDWatch - Android app on AppBrain

SDMove - Android app on AppBrain

The first one watches for apps that you install / update, and if they can be moved to the SDCard it will let you know within seconds (to minutes) of installing / updating.

SDMove is even better - you run it and it gives you a list of apps that can and cannot be moved to the SDCard, color coding them as follows:

Red - Apps cannot be moved
Yellow - App supports Apps2SD but has not been moved
Green - App supports Apps2SD and has been moved
Blue - App prefers to use Apps2SD and is on the SDCard
Cyan - App prefers using Apps2SD but is still installed on internal memory

 

[Mhar2222]

I have advanced task killer but it isn't slowing my phone down, what did it was the "lookout" app I had downloaded. Once I deleted it, everything was noticeably faster. Through my experiences, I find that any app which has the job of scanning apps or scanning the phone for problems (viruses, etc.) really slows down the phone.

I had the exact same problem with Lookout and deleting it solved the sluggishness for me too.

 

[Soporose]

Same thing here -- Lookout bought my Ideos U8150 to its knees -- practically unusable.

Uninstalled Lookout and everything was back to normal.

Have replaced it with Cerberus, and have yet to find an app that even comes close to it. A really great solution.

 

[Drob23]

I was so frustrated with the slowness of my droid that I many times considered chucking it into a river. I spent a lot of times with the task killer, uninstalling apps I thought were killing performance (like lookout etc), constantly pissed about crapware like facebook etc. I was starting to think that a move to iOS might be better, since I've found the hardware/software interface to be very good over the long haul (I've had macbooks/ipods that I thought functioned great for a long time). I have been eagerly awaiting new phones, but it seems that nothing really offers what I'm looking for in terms of connectivity (4G LTE) and size (like iphone 4s, hate large droid Razr and Galaxy Nexus), along with use on Verizon's network.

Ok, so to the point: I finally decided what the hell, I'll root my phone and see if I can at least remove facebook and the other crapware that seems to start at bootup, maybe that will fix things?

I did it (not too painless), and on a whim tried the app SetCPU (requires root access), which allows you to change the CPU clock and some other parameters. I changed the CPU to 800 MHz (stock is 500 MHz), and WOW!!!!!, it feels almost like it did when I first got it. Moving screens is snappy, using apps, pulling up the app list...WOW...it's amazing how good the performance is.

In particular, there is the ability to set a min and max CPU throttle, along with a switching process threshold (this mode is called "ondemand"). When the CPU is working below the threshold, it clocks at the min, while above, at the max. The obvious purpose being to improve battery life etc. However, I think when not set correctly, this makes performance HORRIBLE!

My hypothesis is this: when they updated to 2.0, the min cpu throttle was set at 100MHz and max around 500MHz, but the threshold was set very high, like 90%. If you are doing something that requires little CPU, like changing homescreen windows or opening the app drawer, it works at 100 MHz, and thus feels really really slow.

I also did remove a lot of the crapware (which could help with this), however it seems like changing the min/max CPU settings along with the threshold for switching is really what changes the performance.

The only catch is I'm really not sure what the change in battery life will be like.

My overall hypothesis: After the droid no longer was the flagship (around the release of 2.0?), Moto/Verizon did not care about supporting old hardware by using shoddy CPU throttling settings; likely a business decision to put forth all energy to support the latest/greatest along with forcing people with old phones to upgrade in order to have a usable phone.

TLDR: Root your droid, and change the CPU throttling using an app. It will feel MUCH snappier!

Of course this is all based on having my phone rooted for ~ 1 day, so we'll see how things go in the long run...

 

[Vinay G]

Hi Drob 23,

Any issues after rooting and overclocking your phone?

 

[stanbrown39]

I have noticed that dismounting the sd card drastically improves performance. I keep all my apps on the phone and only mount the card for photos! This works for me! I wish I knew a better way. Task killers kill tasks them but then they start back up! It's not my tasks as I have basically just the stock ones running!

 

[bollygoat]

I removed my task manager from my droid and moved a couple apps from sd back to root drive and it still seems very slow. My keyboard is very slow at times and lags behind my typing and the wallpaper with no apps shown is a regular after closing an app, or even the web browser. I do have a lot installed (140+ apps, mostly games on my SD) but, I am wondering if there is a way to check if my root cache is being used (my phone is not rooted I just mean the root hdd) by apps that are no longer installed on my phone. I seem to have hardly any room and I can't find what is taking all the room. I try to leave 40mb free space just because.. Is there any other work arounds?

Running services while phone is slow. all are on the phone drive not SD:
App2SD
Batter Monitor App
Browser
GO SMS
Market
Maps
Settings
Gogle Services Framework
Media Storage
Youtube
Dialer
Contacts Storage
Google Search
Dialer Storage
Voice Commands
Home
Multi-Touch Keyboard
Download Manager
Settings Storage
USB
A few 20-28kb things

Not sure about other active things. Don'y really know how to check that.

As far as other memory management things I have Uninstaller and App Cache Cleaner should I remove those too? So far I have removed Advanced Task Killer and that's it.

I had to do a factory reset and try that. It was just freaking painful.

 

[kreeg1]

Turn of the Verizon Navigator Seems the phones are trying to use two navigators at the same time Google & Verizon Navigator, eating up the processor. One of the latest updates turns on the Verizon Navigator.

 

[hallmomma]

I had task killer and removed. Didn't change much. I also have the 1tap cleaner app. I moved my file storage to media (it was suggested..don't really know why) But I was at the point of frustration/desperation. It worked!! phone is moving fabulously now! Well worth a try. Also, literally as I was writing this I had the app updating. I just cleared a lot of cache that it wouldn't show pre bug fix. It's working like new!! Hope this helps. Yay! I'm a happy camper now