Why is the s9 so slow?

[Android Central Question]

The s9 is so slow because of the app knox. The secret security system that is always running in the background that uses up almost a GB of ram constantly. I for one didn't know about this stupid app and want it to be able to at least be able to be frozen while gaming. Either that or my money back for this phone that I bought for emulators. Ps2 emulator requires 3gb of ram for its highest speeds and because the service knox I can use it. Does anyone else feel cheated?

 

[rocknrollover]

slow what you kidding my 9+is lightning fast nothing things slow on it.And no I don't feel cheated.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

I've never used it enabled Knox. It normally uses 3.5GB so maybe switch it out for 8GB Note 9, or just return it and wait for the S10+ with SD855.

3.5 + 3 + 1GB ?

 

[Rukbat]

1. You don't have Knox on the phone, you have a stub that Knox can attach to - if the company you work for decides to use Knox as their security tool. Almost no one does, so it's one of the biggest mistakes Samsung ever made, but they won't admit it. (If you ever root the phone, either freeze or uninstall all Knox-related software.

2. An app sitting in RAM isn't slowing the phone down, because Android kills any app it needs to kill if it needs the space. This isn't Windows - if Knox wasn't sitting there, something else would be. Android runs with as much ram filled as possible. (One of the developers explains why here.)

 

[belodion]

Re: Why is the s9 not able to run emulators that iPhone x can.

You posted about this before. I'll merge your three additional threads with your original thread. Members who have already replied to that may not take kindly to being questioned again, especially thrice. Note that multiple posting is deprecated.

Please register if you wish to continue to engage with our members.

 

[Adam Frix]

slow what you kidding my 9+is lightning fast nothing things slow on it.And no I don't feel cheated.

100% this.

My S9+ is is a FAST piece.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

The guveaway: thinking iPhone was/is. XS Max with 4GB. Right.

 

[Adam Frix]

The guveaway: thinking iPhone was/is. XS Max with 4GB. Right.

To be fair, though, benchmark tests show the current iPhones with the new Apple chip--and 4GB of RAM--are faster than the fastest Samsungs.

That may speak only to the benchmark tests themselves and not to real world end-user use, but I've no doubt that RAM amount in and of itself is not a determinant of speed. It's all about how the software uses the resources, and Apple has an advantage in that they design both the processor and the software together.

And I'm positive they do so with an eye toward reducing hardware costs in the final assembly, and that includes RAM.

In our world, though, the hardware manufacturers don't have that luxury--so they throw hardware at the problem, both processor and RAM. At least they don't have the same core software development costs as Apple does. So maybe it all comes out in the wash. Either way, my S9+ is wicked fast.

 

[Golfdriver97]

I'd honestly say get rid of the PS2 emulator that takes that much RAM, especially since the original hardware only had 32 MB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2_technical_specifications

 

[Martell545]

The s9 is so slow because of the app knox. The secret security system that is always running in the background that uses up almost a GB of ram constantly. I for one didn't know about this stupid app and want it to be able to at least be able to be frozen while gaming. Either that or my money back for this phone that I bought for emulators. Ps2 emulator requires 3gb of ram for its highest speeds and because the service knox I can use it. Does anyone else feel cheated?

Ps2 doesn't use that much ram bro . Nowhere near as much. I used n64 emulators on my androids I used years ago with only 1 ram.

 

[Rukbat]

Original question being answered: Why is the s9 not able to run emulators that iPhone x can.

Sub-question - Why is the s9 so slow?

Emulators run very slowly - any emulator running in any computer. They turn a compiled program (in many cases) into an interpreted one - which is 50 times as slow or slower just because of that.

Add the fact that you're comparing the speed of an app running in the native machine code of an iPhone (that's how iPhones work) with the same app running in the interpreted Java mode of an Android (because that's how Androids work). So if you're running an iPhone app in an iPhone emulator on an Android, you have teo slowdowns - interpreting the iPhone code to something the emulator can run in a Java interpreter, and interpreting that by the Java interpreter in Android.

Now we get to the original question - because Android SoCs (Systems on Chip) can't run the same code as iPhone CPUs run. It's the same reason French people don't speak English. If there's an emulator, say for the PS2, that someone wrote for the iPhone, that would be running in iPhone machine language. If someone wrote a PS2 emulator for Android (and evidently no one did), it would be written in Java/Kotlin, so it could run on an Android and, since Java is an interpreter, it would run a lot slower.

You're confusing apples and cars - they're not even the same class of things. One is native code, one is interpreted, One is running in an SoC that's used for Android, one's running in a CPU made by (or, more likely, for) Apple. Why do apples fall on cars, but cars don't fall on apples?

 

[dfwfreaks]

Go to your setting, use the Device Maintenance