Android users who have a keen eye for design and detail, how is the whole stutter/lag situation? Esp. after a few years of use?

I haven’t used an Android device since my last one, the Galaxy S8. Beautiful hardware, beautiful design, but it was plagued with animation stutters and dropped frames. I switched to an iPhone and an iPad around 6 years ago. And the animations were buttersmooth. It was almost unthinkable to achieve such a fluid interface on any Android phone I had ever used, flagship or otherwise.

Now I am curious about how it is now. Especially after a 2-3 years of use. Does your phone or tablet stutter when you scroll, open an app, switch to another app, start multitasking etc etc? One thing I especially remember was opening certain apps like big games or Office apps. When I’d tap on the app’s icon, there would be a half a second delay. But in that infinitesimally short period of time I would question whether the phone registered the touch or not. I would then reach with my finger again but the app would launch right before my second tap. That was constant and infuriating. Does that sort of stuff still happen on Android?

Thanks (:

Oha,
@Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz avatar

Been running Lineage on a Pixel 2 xl and Pixel 5 for about 2.5 years and its buttery smooth

Zworf,

To be honest I don’t really care about this at all.

I also owned an S8 which I used for years until they dropped support way too early. It’s been my best phone ever. I have an S23 now (which was a unique chance to get a real Snapdragon in a Samsung here in Europe). It’s smoother but I’m not sure if it will be acceptable to you.

I still loved my S8 more though. With its 3,5mm jack, Notification LED, flat camera (nothing sticking out), curved display and higher resolution than the S23 has today.

Vodulas,

I have an S22 ultra and still miss my S8+. I like having a stylus, but I don’t use it a ton. My S8 still runs, but the screen is pretty jacked and the battery life is non-existent. Thinking about turning it into an Octoprint server so I can use my Pi for something else

Zworf,

Yeah there was actually a Samsung reuse-for-IoT program for old hardware.

Unfortunately it was really dumb and you could only use your phone for a few usecases blessed by our Samsung overlords. As far as I remember you could use the phone as a light sensor or something which was terrible overkill.

It wasn’t anything like postmarketos. It’s been deprecated or killed off silently too in the last few years.

Unfortunately the S8 are hardly supported by AOSP distros. Lineage only supported the S7, S9 and S10 (the latter two it supports still) but the S8 was never on the radar somehow. Postmarket doesn’t support it either. The only distros I found were a few once-off images (so no updates whatsoever) on XDA-Developers, with lots of things non-working.

Vodulas,

Ah, that sucks. Fortunately for my use, Octoprint runs on the stock phone just fine. It can even use the phone camera for print monitoring.

Zworf,

Oh octoprint is available as an Android app? Sorry I wasn’t aware.

Vodulas,

Yes indeed! github.com/feelfreelinux/octo4a

algorithmae,

The first thing I do on any new phone is go to developer options and turn all 3 animation settings to off. It’s a night and day difference. I’ve probably saved a collective hour of my life not waiting for animations lol

kratoz29,

Scrolling is fucked up in most apps than it should be, change my mind.

MangoKangaroo,

I’ve had a pretty smooth experience with both the Pixel 6 and the Pixel 7 Pro.

Kolanaki, (edited )
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I have a pixel 8 and it has a 120hz mode which I of course turned on, but I still see a lot of stutter when I scroll things. Which really just confirmed what I was thinking with my previous phone and it’s not the age of the hardware, but the OS itself just sucks now because it’s only started to show visible slow down in the last few years and still has a lot of the same random issues. Plus new ones because the square button constantly stops working to switch apps.

expr,

My pixel 7 pro is perfectly smooth and seamless. Oh and voice assistant is far faster than anything on iPhone thanks to the on-board Tensor chip.

agegamon, (edited )

Hmmm, I’ve never noticed what you mentioned on my recent phones. That said you should test a newer android yourself before making a purchase!

More of my personal experience… I have a Pixel 7 XL and a work Iphone which (edit) is an Iphone 12. Generally they are the same in terms of having no scroll lag or input lag at all. But, there is some lag on both when they are overheated, especially on the Iphone if I put it on a higher power charger (I trickle charge both when I can).

From a design perspective the biggest difference I notice is that my Pixel feels significantly smoother because of the 120hz display, and just the larger display in general. While I said neither of them have much lag, the Iphone feels noticeably less speedy. That said, I’m sure if you compared my Pixel to a high end Iphone results would be flipped. My work isn’t shelling out for whatever pro max stuff they sell (and neither would I!).

Beyond that, I can’t offer guidance. In my personal experience the Iphone UI is so frustrating that I can’t judge which one performs “better” or not, because only the Android feels comfortable to me. Between that and the lack of labels in some places (like the pull-down settings menu) it is impossible for me to daily drive the apple.

Drusas,

I had problems with my Pixel 5 crashing all the damn time but haven't had any issues with the 6 (or when I had the 4).

JackGreenEarth,

I’ve never noticed lag issues on my £250 Motorola G73.

politicalcustard, (edited )

I’d imagine quite a bit of the stuttering and lag on Androids was/is a result of all the bloatware phone companies insist on putting on their phones. I’ve a 2018 OnePlus 6 that doesn’t lag or stutter because the only apps on it are the ones I choose to have on it and allow to run - it’s a degoogled phone running Lineage OS (Android 14) with zero bloat and zero ads and as a result a six-year-old phone is still buttery smooth. Phone companies have a lot to answer for… it’s lucky they don’t sell cars; they’d sell you a Ferrari and then weld a mobile home to the back of it to make it incredibly difficult to disconnect.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

I’ve got an older s10 and the animations are smooth 99% of the time then I’ll see a stutter when I’m loading something like a heavy webpage and scrolling.

Ephera,

Delay after starting an app is essentially not a problem anymore. Most apps now come with a splash screen, so you get at least some feedback.

Lag while scrolling is still horrid. This has to do with Android apps generally being written in Java or Kotlin, which use a Stop-The-World Garbage Collector for memory management.
So, you shouldn’t expect this to be fixed any time soon.

mihies,

Nah, it's not GC unless lists are really poorly implemented.

Ephera,

Hmm, you probably mean lists shouldn’t be creating new objects (/allocating new memory) while just scrolling.
Which, yeah, I remember a colleague knowledgeable about Android saying that a RecyclerView specifically re-uses allocated list elements.

And from the little bit of Android dev I saw, it also looked like all the APIs are designed to stop you from doing(/allocating) much while the user is merely scrolling. Then, I’m not sure what’s causing the lag…

mihies,

Yep, that's the case. Who knows what's causing lags. It still can be a poorly implemented list, it could be OS doing something else it could be something else. It would be interesting testing same app on different devices.

onlinepersona,

Have big games and office apps not given you the same problem on iOS?

Tbh, I never noticed this on android 🤔 But maybe I’m just less perceptive.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Goopadrew,

I have a galaxy s21 that I’ve been using for the last 3 years. I haven’t noticed any difference in performance from the day I got the phone, and I don’t feel I’ll need to upgrade for another couple years. Full disclosure, I did use adb to remove a ton of Samsung bloat when I got the phone, and that definitely improved performance, so I’m not sure how different my experience would be with all the extra Samsung stuff added.

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