What's up with this lag stuff?

[Stromson]

First, please forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere and my lackluster search skills failed to find it.

That said: We're switching to Big Red from Blue Death Star this weekend and the Fascinate has been on our radar (the BOGO doesn't hurt), but I keep seeing "Lag fix" posts without any explanation as to what is actually lagging. Michael Oryl mentioned in his review that he didn't experience this "lag" on the Fascinate, but didn't exactly elaborate to what the other Galaxy S phones were suffering from.

Is the phone bogging down in applications, or web browsing (technically an app, yes), or what? I'm increasingly turned off by the sheer number of "fixes" required to get this phone operating the way it should've been out of the box.

Edited for being unnecessarily dramatic.

 

[namebrandon]

First, please forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere and my lackluster search skills failed to find it.

That said: We're switching to Big Red from Blue Death Star this weekend and the Fascinate has been on our radar (the BOGO doesn't hurt), but I keep seeing "Lag fix" posts without any explanation as to what is actually lagging. Michael Oryl mentioned in his review that he didn't experience this "lag" on the Fascinate, but didn't exactly elaborate to what the other Galaxy S phones were suffering from.

Is the phone bogging down in applications, or web browsing (technically an app, yes), or what? I'm increasingly turned off by the sheer number of "fixes" required to get this phone operating the way it should've been out of the box. Smartphones should integrate seamlessly into our lives, not force us to spend countless hours hacking and tweaking them to force them to function properly.

People have different views on the lag fix. I personally didn't see that much improvement (besides the benchmark), others claim it's a whole new phone. It's just dependent on what apps you use most frequently and how you use the phone.

I think you're being a little melodramatic here with the "sheer number of fixes". Most people wanted to remove Bing in favor of getting Google back. There are three main steps to doing that, 2 of which do not require root, and will get you 75-80% of the way there. The third requires root, as does the lag "fix". That's really all there is at this point.

The phone works for the majority of people without every doing any of this. The people who come to the forums to discuss these issues and apply these changes constitute maybe 5-10% (if that much) of the owners of the Fascinate. The other ~90% are walking around blissfully unaware of anything that could be or should be different on their device.

The phone works just fine as is. If you want to change the things you've seen talked about, those changes have been pretty well documented at this point. Just do a search, read, and ask if you have further questions.

 

[kvaughan#AC]

The phone works just fine as is.

This.

Most of the "problems" are not really problems. Just a matter of personal preference for Google search and bitterness at there not being an easy way to change it. Out of the box I didn't even notive any lag and after the lagfix I didn't notice any difference other than a higher quadrant score. Soon enough we'll have custom recoveries, roms, and kernels to cover just about any issue you may have. This thing is a great piece of hardware you will not regret buying.

 

[tampajoe]

I picked up my Fascinate on the BOGO deal from Verizon this weekend (fiancee got a Droid 2). Haven't noticed any "lag" so I never messed with the lag fix. Like the poster above me said, most people that do the lag fix just notice a higher benchmark score.

The Bing issue bothered me, but the Internet community took care of that within 48 hours of the phone being out. That is the only "fix" I have put on the phone, and I've never rooted a phone before. I understand now there is a "1 click root" out there which will expedite the process for you.

I will say that my Fascinate is much more user friendly than my fiancee's Droid 2. I spent an hour the other night trying to get something just right in her contact list that took a few seconds to do on my Fascinate.

 

[Stromson]

Hah, I have a penchant for melodrama, I'll give you that one. I'm not phased by having to root or tinker (I had the original Moto Droid) so it really isn't *that* big of an issue. I was mostly just curious about what the lag situation was. I'll be coming from a Palm Pre, so having to wait in the range of 2-10 seconds for things to open (and then having said applications bog down) is pretty much par for the course, but I was hoping to get away from that, and was afraid that might be the "lag" issue.

 

[kvaughan#AC]

Everything is basically instant opening up, no lag whatsoever in that department.

 

[namebrandon]

Hah, I have a penchant for melodrama, I'll give you that one. I'm not phased by having to root or tinker (I had the original Moto Droid) so it really isn't *that* big of an issue. I was mostly just curious about what the lag situation was. I'll be coming from a Palm Pre, so having to wait in the range of 2-10 seconds for things to open (and then having said applications bog down) is pretty much par for the course, but I was hoping to get away from that, and was afraid that might be the "lag" issue.

I'm torn on the lag fix. People have experienced lag problems on other version of the Galaxy S, and so naturally the assumption is made that the Fascinate has these issues as well. You'll notice the lag fix was posted long before anyone even mentioned noticing lag.

I have no doubt that the lag fix does assist some people who use very write intensive applications, but for me it did nothing besides improve my Quadrant score. The concept behind the fix is perfectly sound, but it's like overclocking your PC when all you do is surf and check email. You're not going to see a difference. For most people, it's not necessary.

The Google/Bing thing.. That was just annoying. I think VZW seriously underestimated the backlash on that, and dropped the ball not making an easy switch to Google possible. We took care of that for them rather quickly.

 

[j32driver]

I think I'm just now starting to see this "lag" that people are trying to fix. Every now and then when switching from a program to a home screen, or vice versa... the phone will just sit and do nothing for 3-5 seconds. I've seen it 2 or 3 times now and the 1st time it did it, I actually thought it had frozen and I was going to have to do a battery pull. But 5 seconds later it snapped back to life and ran just like normal. It's almost looks like the phone is stopping to think and close background apps before it moves on to do something else.

This certainly isn't a deal breaker for me. I'll wait until the lag fix is idiot proof, and then I might root and give it a shot.

As for the rest of the phone... I'm in love...and I was REAL skeptical about this one. The GPS is rock solid, the voice reverb problem problem has gone completely away after lowering the volume a bit, and this community has defeated Bing. Go pick this think up... you won't regret it.

 

[josue]

I think I'm just now starting to see this "lag" that people are trying to fix. Every now and then when switching from a program to a home screen, or vice versa... the phone will just sit and do nothing for 3-5 seconds. I've seen it 2 or 3 times now and the 1st time it did it, I actually thought it had frozen and I was going to have to do a battery pull. But 5 seconds later it snapped back to life and ran just like normal. It's almost looks like the phone is stopping to think and close background apps before it moves on to do something else.

This certainly isn't a deal breaker for me. I'll wait until the lag fix is idiot proof, and then I might root and give it a shot.

As for the rest of the phone... I'm in love...and I was REAL skeptical about this one. The GPS is rock solid, the voice reverb problem problem has gone completely away after lowering the volume a bit, and this community has defeated Bing. Go pick this think up... you won't regret it.

Exact same situation I'm in. I haven't noticed it lagging TOO much, but the few times it's happened already, definately has me thinking about rooting and doing the fix. I haven't rooted for the Google fix yet, so as namebrandon said, I'm only 75-80% there, but I didn't know if I was going to or not. For the most part, I'll never use the voice search, and the rest of the time, I just hit the google widget and search from there when I need to look for something, and it works perfect.

I just keep reading about "putting it back to stock" when some new "froyo" thingamajig" comes out, and if I'm having this hard of a time just trying to understand what all these terms mean and how to do all this tech/hack stuff, I don't want to do something to the phone that I won't be able to reverse..lol