Can anyone explain why Touchwiz lags?

[russel5150]

My touchwiz doesnt lad on the s7 or my note5 w 6.0.1

The only time i experience issues is when an added app lags a little bit, and that certainly isnt the phones fault.

I agree touchwiz gets a bad rap still for problems that have been fixed.

Not a coder, so my opinion is prob next to useless, but my opinion is that there will always be a bit of "lag" in any man made device. Not everytime, but the possibility is there.
Ive seen stock android hiccup slightly, and people worry about it. Samsung is smart to keep touchwiz in my opinion, because it sets them apart, and they have vastly improved it.

Sent with my white Note5 with nonremovable back and no SDcard!

 

[Feldon]

Considering a 7, so this scares me regarding lag. I'm on 6p now and it just doesn't stutter, ever.

I'm genuinely curious why someone would replace a 6P with a carrier phone. What's driving this interest? The camera? The 820 Snapdragon (although you said your 6P performance is fine)?

 

[1812dave]

I don't know what you are seeing but I read your post, switched to the Google Play store, and just flew through a huge list of apps with no lag at all.

Could it be that he is scrolling the Play Store list before it's been downloaded fully from the internet? If I am on any app or site that isn't fully loaded, of course there is a delay getting down the list. I can duplicate his complaint by opening the play store, clicking Top Charts as an example, and scrolling the list before the list has chance to fully populate. If I wait about 3-4 seconds, then I can scroll the whole list fluidly.

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

I'll stay out of the argument about if it lags or not. That is because I BE SMARTS.

But it's a matter of running processes and threads. A CPU can only do X number of things at one time. A simplified way to look at it is that the four cores on your CPU can do four things at once — one task per core. If you try to do five things, the CPU has to switch between processes. This means that there is a measurable amount of time that a task isn't being worked on. When you have hundreds of tasks that all need to run, that measurable amount of time can be long enough that we can see it.

You mitigate this by assigning each task a priority. Higher priority tasks get to run before lower priority tasks. This is a big part of what people call optimization. Developers try to figure out what tasks need to run as often as possible to provide the best user experience. Samsung is getting really good at this, because they have to be good at it.

A phone like the Galaxy S7 has a bunch of features that need to be available for instant use. That means part of their software has to be running all of the time. Meanwhile, the threads that run the user interface are always running and need to be at the front of the queue. Add in apps that you've downloaded that need to stay alive and "listen" for things to happen, and you've got a long list of things that need to happen all at once. The CPU can't do this, so it switches back and forth as fast as it can (which is really, really fast) according to priority.

When your doing so many things that even high priority threads are waiting for their turn with the CPU, you notice it. And some people notice it more than others. There's no doubt that a phone like the Nexus is doing less "stuff" at once than a phone like the Galaxy S7 is, because the Galaxy S7 is capable of doing a lot more.

And this doesn't even take RAM and memory swapping into account.

I will say this — modern Galaxy S phones are the only phones out there that have the hardware to run all the things that are going on at once. If you tried to get as much "stuff" to happen on a Nexus 6P as a GS7 has going on, everyone would hate the experience. My time with the Galaxy S7 left me with the impression that Samsung is doing just fine when it comes to running a complicated User Interface and a long list of various features at the same time, and even if there are a few instances of stuttering, it's still an engineering marvel that they can do what they are doing on mobile hardware.

While you might be like me and not want all that "stuff" going on or not really like the interface, lag is no longer an issue with the Galaxy S7. It's one of the most impressive and capable computers available when it comes to a performance/feature ratio.

 

[anon(19759)]

I'm genuinely curious why someone would replace a 6P with a carrier phone. What's driving this interest? The camera? The 820 Snapdragon (although you said your 6P performance is fine)?

Hi, not decided if I'll keep the s7 but will use it for a bit to see. It's really just the physical size of the devices. The 6p is the best phone I've ever owned but I do struggle with one hand use and the s7 fits perfectly. There are many times where I just want to use one hand to operate and the 6p is very challenging to do that with.

Also the water resistance. I'm at many kids outdoor events with my kids and take lots of pics in various weather.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Christine Aflak]

I've got a Galaxy A8 and that doesn't lag at all... it's perfectly smooth. It's running on Snapdragon 615 with 2GB of ram so the S7 is probably 3 times better... in both a specs standpoint and real life performance.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Averix]

I'll stay out of the argument about if it lags or not. That is because I BE SMARTS.

Smart man.

There is another aspect that people have to keep in mind. Data takes time to load. For instance, go into your application manager and you'll see some lag if you're trying to scroll as the list of apps is loading. That lag gets greater the more apps you have installed. (That's probably why some people complain about increased perceived lag after a week of use and installing apps.) Devs have a choice what to do when it comes to things like that. Either they can make you stare at a loading icon while it does EVERYTHING (gets app list, gets size of every app, gets disabled state, etc.) or they can chose to sequence those things in. Samsung has chosen to display the list and let you start scrolling while the rest of the queries happen and data is added to the list display. This sometimes results in dropped frames or a hitch in scrolling. Another magic programming technique helps with this. It's called caching. Back out of your S7's Application Manager list. Then go back into it. WOAH!!!! Did you see that?! It drew the whole list with all the info and no stutter! How did that happen? Well, Samsung likes using all that fancy RAM they put in the phone so they store that list in the memory so that it's faster the second visit. Until you kill the settings app, change the list (install or delete an app), or something needs that RAM, your list will draw lightning fast.
So yes, there are always trade offs for what you get because Google and Samsung decide to do things differently in their system apps. Personally, I prefer Samsung's approach to the UEX because Google's is too plain for my tastes. The occasional burp doesn't bother me. And, as Samsung tweaks TouchieWiz over the years (and yes dear naysayers, they are doing that) and hardware gets faster, those burps become less and less frequent.

 

[LeoRex]

I think some (maybe most) of it is also kernel management... Near as I can tell, Samsung gooses things to be a little more stingy with higher processor speeds under lighter loads. But put a load on it and it opens the throttle. So light duty stuff like scrolling in Google+ doesn't get the juice... You get some frame drops, but you also save power.

There's a reason the Note 5, with a 3000 mah battery, can crank out those high screen times.

 

[jamesrick80]

The tab s2 nor the S6 edge plus don't have any lag in normal experiences. ..but trust me I can even push a ipad pro or any mobile device to lag with the right complex usage patterns