M8 certain apps scrolling very choppy

[Rad_Cam]

Hi all, had the M8 for a month now and really enjoying it. Just one problem: on certain apps (e.g. Facebook, Pleco Chinese dictionary etc.) scrolling through the News Feed/dictionary list is very choppy, and stutters a lot more than my old HTC Wildfire. I've tried using various update versions with the same lag. Scrolling isn't a problem with other apps/Chrome browser/device menus etc (where the scrolling is buttery-smooth!).

Is this due to poorly-optimised apps, or a backend issue like hardware acceleration? What can I do to improve performance?

 

[Rad_Cam]

Update: Scroll is also choppy on Google Play Store, which is surprising as it's an 'official' app...

 

[IAmSixNine]

I checked my play store and it scrolls fine.
Is it choppy because your having to load data? or is the data already loaded and scrolling is choppy?

 

[Rad_Cam]

I checked my play store and it scrolls fine.
Is it choppy because your having to load data? or is the data already loaded and scrolling is choppy?

The choppiness is definitely worse when loading data, and once the data is loaded is scrolls okay in Play Store. However, offline apps like the dictionary and Pocket (articles predownloaded) are stuttery too.

Everything's installed on the internal memory, plenty of space, and only ~50% of RAM in use at any one time. I've tried the ART runtime and that improves it marginally, but it's still choppy. Wiping the cache partition doesn't help either.

I'm also getting this weird glitch where the home button won't return to the set home page or the page the app was opened from, but goes to the furthest-right page with the 1st app always highlighted in green (see attachment).

 

[bigoldthor]

I've noticed Chrome and Drippler are less smooth than most other apps.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[IAmSixNine]

hum. now that you mention it i too have had my device open up after lock screen to the farthest left.. which is odd as i only have 1 app on it.
humm....

 

[anon(730457)]

I think this is an Android problem (always was, it's just less bad now), because I have a Moto X and the first week, before I'd downloaded any unnecessary apps, it was zippy fast on almost everything, but then when I finally downloaded all the other apps I use (games, news, books, etc), things started scrolling jittery and jerky. I then noticed only some apps did this (like Twitter) and some apps didn't (like the Play store), so either these apps are not optimized or the others are optimized better. It seems it only happens when it has to load pictures on a list, as it pauses just before it gets to the picture then continues.

On iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), usually pictures on a list lazy-load, meaning the list still scrolls smoothly but the pictures load as you scroll rather than making you wait for them to load (or they wait until you stop scrolling). I think unless an Android app is optimized to do this (or it loads everything into RAM at once) it will be jittery. I do think Android can be programmed to get around this (meaning preventing app developers from having to do this) or find some middle ground to not make the phone seem laggy.

I did read that someone found the Amazon apps ping the CPU too much and too often, so I uninstalled that and things have definitely improved (uninstalling the games I played made almost no difference, and I had a half a dozen graphic/memory/CPU-intensive games), though I still notice the jitteryness and for some reason the pull-down bar is affected dramatically as well.

I just think Android is not optimized for scrolling lists with images (and I have no idea why more apps on the phone would slow down the pull-down bar but not the homescreens regardless of how many notifications you have up there), and also developers' apps are not optimized for this. However, I do think both can fix this so that it's not an issue even on a slower phone.

 

[mirko77]

There are some apps on Android incredibly smooth even with images, like QuickPic gallery...I just think developers do not want to optimised that much for scrolling, they aim more for acceptable scrolling and focus on something else