Live Wallpapers Slow on Dual-Core phone!

[blacksheep242]

Hey folks

Something's been bothering me ever since I got my dual-core phone (Tegra 2). See previously I had an HTC HD2 (1Ghz single core Snapdragon proc) and loved it since I had an Android ROM running on it.

What I didn't like was how I could NEVER use Live Wallpapers. I mean, they would install and run but it would slow the phone's performance down waaaay too much for my taste to be practical. And this is EVERY live wallpaper I've tried. And man, I've tried dozens!!

So I get my dual-core Android phone (no custom ROM) and love its speed. But get this, the live wallpapers still drag my phones performance down to the unacceptable performance level. Now the live wallpaper runs great if I'm just staring at it but swiping is sluggish as is the app drawer.

And I may be wrong, but I really don't think it is any better on my new dual-core as it was on my past single core!

What gives? This more than lead me to belive that apps NEED to be written to take advantage of the 2nd core (like in PCs). Can anyone confirm this?

Thanks.

 

[jdbower]

This is a fundamental issue with multiple cores, you need to be a multithreaded app to take advantage. If your launcher runs in the same thread (or is even just on the same core) as the live wallpaper display there will be no benefit to dual (or quad) cores. You can talk to the ROM or launcher developer to see if there's anything that can be done to convert the LWP into a dedicated thread, but running LWP on my X never seemed to have a meaningful impact on swiping between screens to me - it's only the initial bootup where things seem slow.