Android phone crashed, now 20x faster?!

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xorbe

Supreme [H]ardness
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Sep 26, 2008
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My cheap Android (5.0.1 LG Sunset re-branded for Straight Talk) had gotten really slow. I tried uninstalling every unused app, and restarted the phone regularly. Multiple seconds to switch apps, painful to type, very laggy, unresponsive UI at every turn. I suspect it's something that got progressively worse. Today the phone kinda soft crashes, so I did another restart. It came up with a changed background, and is now crazy snappy and responsive, changes from txt msg to chat app to home screen instantly. What happened??? Seriously, I was waiting 4-5 seconds to switch apps, now it's basically instantaneous, 20x faster is not an exaggeration, probably even on the low side. This is like getting a new phone, lol.

My installed apps: FB messenger, LINE messenger, Andoku 2 free (sudoku), Netflix / Crunchyroll, Trello (notes), QS Pro (adjusts my motorcycle quickshifter).
 
cheap android phones tend to get slower at a faster pace than flagships, but it sounds like something is wrong with your phone. try the warranty and get a replacement first
 
sweets3450 said:
cheap android phones tend to get slower at a faster pace than flagships, but it sounds like something is wrong with your phone. try the warranty and get a replacement first
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Haha way too late for that, for $79 phone. I really do think the software stack was gummed up somehow. It's actually been my favorite Android phone to date, the 'idle' battery life is excellent, 3 days. If it gets slow again, I'll try a reset / wipe.
 
Did you notice any changes in the android version? Or was all the data there when you restarted it?
 
Seankay said:
Did you notice any changes in the android version? Or was all the data there when you restarted it?
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I don't think it upgraded, and I seriously doubt Straight Talk would push an upgrade for this cheaper older phone. All my data is otherwise there. I doubt anyone can answer the question, but I wanted to throw it out there just in case this is a known issue with some Androids.
 
xorbe said:
I don't think it upgraded, and I seriously doubt Straight Talk would push an upgrade for this cheaper older phone. All my data is otherwise there. I doubt anyone can answer the question, but I wanted to throw it out there just in case this is a known issue with some Androids.
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Honestly, I haven't heard of it! Though resetting the phone makes a difference
 
Okay my best guess is that some "app cache" probably got corrupted, and vm code was probably translating all the time. I bet a phone reset would probably clear that right up next time.
 
So my phone got slower and slower with time again. I think I found the answer. I went into Settings -> Storage -> Cached Data and it was about 1.5GB, and after I cleared that, switching apps was faster. It's only 5MB after a couple days, so something causes it to balloon at some point.
 
You rebooted it, even though it wasn't a manual reboot. :)

It doesn't actually hurt smartphones to turn them off and back on again from time to time, it actually HELPS in many respects, especially if you are the kind of person that never ever EVER shuts off or closes apps and leaves all of them sitting in the recents menu.

And yes, clearing out the cache can and does help in many instances on many devices, it can be done in the Settings menus or even if you boot the device into recovery mode (each device is a bit different so if you need the steps search for the info for your given device). Just make sure not to select the Data partition for wiping or else you're starting over from scratch - wiping the cache partition is what you'd want to do.
 
I'll check if restarting the phone clears the "cache" in question next time it gets large. I don't remember restarting helping actually. Yeah I could be totally wrong. I definitely have tried "close all apps" quite often.
 
Rebooting doesn't clear the cache, but it does completely wipe out the RAM contents, sometimes apps that aren't written all that well just leave crap laying around and they don't clean up after themselves properly, a reboot of a smartphone a few times a week - I mean really, it takes like 30 seconds to 1 minute to do it and nobody uses their phone THAT much where they can't do a clean reboot - keeps them running pretty damned smooth. I don't care if people don't think it's necessary, that's completely different from knowing it actually does help things regardless of which device or OS it is.
 
xorbe said:
So my phone got slower and slower with time again. I think I found the answer. I went into Settings -> Storage -> Cached Data and it was about 1.5GB, and after I cleared that, switching apps was faster. It's only 5MB after a couple days, so something causes it to balloon at some point.
Click to expand...

if you're using chrome browser that's most likely it, i can easily get my cache over a gig in a couple weeks. i manually clear it every few days.
 
OP here. So my phone started to get really slow again, and clearing the "cache" did nothing. What did seem to make the phone snappy again was clearing out everything from DCIM/ and DCIM/thumbnails/ -- maybe it's scanning the media (or thumbnails!) between app changes or something. Maybe when the phone crashed, it reset the thumbnail database. I didn't change DCIM before/after the crash.
 
I've made another observation. I think the come-and-go app switching slowness might be related to network activity. Turning off the radio results in fast switching. With network on, *sometimes* app switching results in <-> flashing before switching to each app. The reality is that it's probably a combination of this mystery network activity, and the budget phone performance. =/
 
This made a world of sifference for keyboard response on my aging S5...

I cleared DATA within application manager for my keyboard bout a month ago. Keyboard was slow and refused to learn or use learned words. Worth a try if u don't mind re-teaching some of your custom words. Month later, I swear it feels ever so slightly slower, but still miles better than before the data wipe.
 
Maybe there was some APP on the background (like some antivirus) that was slowing everything down? Now that APP finally broke down?
 
I bet its google services. It can run up your cache size very quickly.

One thing I think is happening is its using a majority of your space left on the phone or wants to use more but you are maxed. It apparently only has a max usable amount of 4gb and if your cache is 1.5gb's then it could be hitting a rock wall. If you want to slow down flash storage you max it out, it can get crazy slow when it is full.
 
I would swap FB Messenger with "Messenger Lite: Free calls & Messages" It's a lower profile messaging program without the lag, bells, and whistles. It's also officially by facebook
 
So I fixed my pos old slow crap phone by replacing it with a stock unlocked 128GB Pixel 2. :woot: Man that's a nice phone. In the end, I never really concluded why my older KitKat phone would alternate between just-fine and dog-slow.
 
I use Straight Talk. I have ~ 25 phones running in my home. Mostly for beer money apps and distributed computing. Many of them are the pre-paids I have picked up on really cheap deals. I used an LG Power which was very similar for a while. Then I moved to the Galaxy S6. I have used ST since ~8 years and have yet to see them actually update any of their devices. Most of the time my slowness issues was due to apps in the background, cache needing emptied, or the NAND somehow getting corrupt. Usually a factory wipe would correct the NAND. Funny enough, my S6 was recently getting buggy and slow. I encrypted the phone and it got really quick and snappy again. I could only guess that something wasn't right with the internal storage and when it encrypted, it re-wrote the data elsewhere. No idea, but it did make it better. I'm guessing this is one of the reasons a factory reset might also work. Phones will obviously get slower over time due to app updates, but it can also have issues if the battery degrades or overheats. My wife kept forgetting that she turned on her Power Saving or Ultra Power Saving options when she had "slowness" problems. I was like...duh... it downclocks the phone to save battery. Now she just disables all the stuff she doesn't need/use as much as possible.
 
OP here. So my old flasgship 9.7" Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 started doing the same thing. It was lightning fast, then one day suddenly, 5-10 second pauses, massive lag, unusable. I guess these android devices come with the crappiest flash ever that once fragmented results in devices that barely work. Unlike my pos old phone that nobody else had, there are tons of people that still have a Tab S2 (because S3 and S4 aren't that different really, except blessed with newer Android versions), plenty of help on reddit. Solution is power + volume up + home button on boot, and select cache wipe / cache reformat (this is non-destructive). If that doesn't cure it, do a device reset (this is destructive). It works again until the flash gets overly fragmented.

Another point is that I've found Firefox for Android is massively slower than Chrome on a few popular sites.
 
It's a pity but Google is not friendly with Firefox either especially on its search page :(
 
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