I get the point that splash screen look good instead of boring black screen ( if app takes time to load). But I am right now an Android user and thinking of switching to Windows Phone 8. On Windows Phone OS, it looks like most app have a splash screen. On Android, there is no splash screen in most apps, they open instantly. But on WP, why don't apps open instantly especially 3rd party apps.
Sometimes I'm in a hurry I just want to use app instantly, so splash screen may be frustrating, don't you feel. On Android and iOS, apps (3rd party also, apps open instantly, hen why not WP8???)
And I've seen videos where they tap on Display + Screen settings and it says "loading..." to load the brightness option. Even in System settings...?? Why??? Lumia 920 has 1.5 GHz processor.
On Windows 8, even the built in Mail app has splash screen which sometimes stays for 3 seconds (sometimes only, mostly it opens in 1 or less seconds)
NOTE: Some may say that I being an Android user just wants to talk bad about WP. But that's NOT true. I love WP, I am just asking this because I want to buy WP8.
I'll Keep my comment on Win 8 short: if an App is closed it takes time to load and Displays a splashscreen. If you Keep it open you can return to it instantly. It's pretty much the same on Android: if an App is closed it takes time to load (at least on my SGS2 it does) if I tap on the Icon again it Returns to the App instantly.
With WP7 the handling of tiles is differently. If you start it from the Live Tile it always creates a new instance of the App. JIT compilation takes place (which takes time) and until that is done the Splashscreen is displayed.
With WP8 the compilation to native is done in the Cloud which makes for a lot faster Startup times. Also developers can now decide to Support the fast resume behavior if launced from the tile (Facebook e.g. supports it and you return instantly - unless you closed the up instead of simply navigating away). By Default WP8 App's Project templates don't even include a Splash Screen anymore (several Apps that have been upgraded from WP/ still retain it though). My two Apps basically Launch instantly even when they are not already in Memory so this no longer is a Problem caused by the System.
As for System Settings. The actual settings of WP8 don't exhibit any problematic Launch behavior. Some OEM Apps are integrating themselves in the Settings menu though and for whatever the reason they sometimes take a Little time to load. I still prefer it if the System tells me that it is loading something instead of the Screen simply blanking. Blanking sometimes though can feel faster.
WP8 apps are still ok. The loading is not that long. But W8 apps take seriously long, especially the store. I think it should be more like the WP8 store app. It lets you open instantly and update the content on the fly. That way it feels more responsive.
Windows 8 apps load so painfully slow because apparently microsoft gave up to something they've been preaching to WP developers for several years: They perform an awful lot of things at application start up. This slows down start up considerably, but also makes the app snappier afterwards.
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Enjoying Taskiller - works very well.
Most users know their apps run better once unnecessary background apps / services have been killed.
Another set of users continue to complain about specific games or apps being laggy without taking steps to solve the problem.
Case in point is the camera application which needs more memory than most and often gets out of memory exceptions.
What would be great is if Taskiller or one of the other task closing apps could create a configurable desktop shortcut that would kill all unneeded apps, then launch a preconfigured app, e.g. camera app.
Users would need to understand that clicking this button to launch another app will lose state in any running apps, but will most likely mean the game or app they then run will have far better performance and be less laggy.
Any takers?
Though im the tiniest bit of confused...
A) If this app TaskKiller (never used) worked so well, whats the need for another?
B) I am also unsure if its absolutely necessary for the android platform. Maybe older phones or WinMo phones (<6.1) have this problem. But as far as I know, android has a garbage collector in which it treats its processes with priority and after a certain utilization, it ends it (for instance. I am playing gameboid, then just hit the home button. I can go back to gameboid fine. But if I open a large app after 'minimizing' gameboid (like opening the htc music player), gameboid will end and I will have to reload it again. Though if I open msgs while gameboid is minimized, gb stays up.
Its supposed to do that. So this request I am not sure if its really necessary.
Killing background apps when memory requires is the theory behind the OS but doesn't always work in practise.
For example, play any game on Android and you'll see occasional judders in the scrolling, etc. - this is usually because a Facebook or Twitter app on the phone has decided that its a good time to get some new notifications ... but that spoils the game experience.
I hate to mention the fruity phone but this is one of the places where it beats Android hands down and their games are in a different league to ours.
I think a way to clear the phone's background processes before launching a game / resource intensive app would make a big difference.
Hello Chefs (and all you microwave re-heaters..you know who you are..)
I have a request for a feature either as a standalone app, or implemented into a rom. Maybe, it's not possible. I don't know.
What I would love to see is a simple task killer (no gui) mapped to the 'hangup' button on android phones. When I'm running an app and I want to close it, I hit the hang up button, and it kills the currently running app. This seems to me to be intuitive, would streamline task management/eliminate unneeded apps running in the bg, and make Android much more user friendly.
Order of Operations would work something like this.
User starts an App (Browser)
If the user hits the hangup button, Browser would be killed and the screen would return to the home page. A second click on the hangup button would turn off the screen and lock the phone.
If the user hits the home button, the app stays running in the background, and when the user clicks Browser again, the app returns in it's current state with the last loaded page available.
Like I said, it seems pretty simple and straightforward. I know it would require a rooted phone, but it seems like it would give maximum flexibility to the user and allow them to kill the apps that they want when they want to. But maybe it's not possible. So please, let me know. Thanks for the great work guys.
And what would you do if you had a call running in the background?
WHY do you want to kill the running application? It won't do anything once you switch off of it except consume memory, and if more memory is needed, the task killer will take care of that for you.
If you need this you either:
* fail to understand how the user interface works in android (including reclaiming of processes)
Or
* are running applications by developers who didn't design the application to work correctly on android.
The button you are looking for is the back button. It will background the app immediately and allow it to be overwritten as soon as anything needs memory.
Has anyone else had an occasional scrolling lag in situations? It's happened to be on the Program List where the Program icons don't load immediately. Also, most noticeably in apps such as Beezz the scrolling is laggy... Is it just me, or are others experiencing the same...?
Early bump as I'm trying to decide whether a Hard Reset is in order, maybe I installed something that didn't fare too well. Thanks guys.
80% (if not more) of the 3rd apps are NOT optimized (or rushed diplomatically saying) for Windows Phone 7 OS. HTC Hub for example wasn't as fast as the new update for it.
I can make a slight lag (more of a chopping than lag) ONLY IF I visit WPCentral page which chops on my browser than after 4-5 minutes it disappears. So I am pretty sure it's not optimised well rather than a lag because let's face it , the hardware is there and the OS is damn fast.
Have you also experienced start menu icons taking their sweet times to show up?
I've seen some choppiness on 3rd party apps. Agreed that it is a developer issue as they learn how to make apps for wp7. beezz is better than it was, but for best results, m.twitter.com is your best option.
FiyaFleye said:
Have you also experienced start menu icons taking their sweet times to show up?
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Click to collapse
In almost 1 month of use, never I have. To continue my initial post, that is one of the reason why I haven't installed many 3rd apps. Personally I hate having a sleek OS and then enter an app and feel like Android.. In fact besides YouTube and Adobe Reader I have only 4 other apps installed.
Same here. I can repeatedly reproduce the program list icon thing by scrolling to the bottom of the list, then hitting the home key, it'll fly to the top of the list and you'll see "white stars" before it switches to the home screen instead of the icons. Happens in random situations too, this is just a consistent occurrence..
I'd like to point out that as a developer, the choppy scrolling is a platform issue with the way Microsoft have design listbox scrolling - Silverlight defaults to virtualising the list box and recycling the listbox items - and this works fine of the PC where there is enough processing power to recycle and virtualise whilst you scroll. However, with Windows Phone 7's limited processing power, and Microsoft's very unoptimised seeming implementation, listboxes can't virtualise data fast enough. Ergo, voodoo is needed to get it working to scroll smoothly You could turn off virtualisation, but then that greatly increases RAM usage, which in Silverlight is already and lot, and then you get comparatively long load & draw & render times, and blargh. There's no one good way to do it yet for long lists - not until Microsoft go and optimise the Silverlight platform better.
I'm assuming the program list icon thing is to save RAM - you can also get it with the Home screen tiles if you have a lot of tiles on it - and saving RAM is something Windows Phone is going to like to do, seeing as the apps and the Silverlight platform use up so much RAM
i had my hd7 for almost a month now and experienced lag on it. there was also an instance that icons of the apps i installed via market place took a few seconds to load up. theres also this occasional slow response time of the unlock screen. i still have 9gb of space though
Hi, i'm thinking of buying an HTC one and i can't wait for it and i wonder how much of a difference does closing apps make in terms of battery life because it is obvious that having apps running in the background makes the OS feel a lot faster and if it's a minor downside than i'd rather have the upside of having those running in the background.
Hahaahahahahahahahahaahaha. Closing them neither increases battery nor makes the system feel faster... Have you come from an iPhone? (It doesn't make a difference on iPhones either)
nope im coning from glaxy nexus and it does make a difference in it though
According to what I've read, the newer android systems freeze the apps while in the background. I don't know what apps you'd keep open in the background, though. The only one I have keep running is my browser.
Im asking that if im surfing on net and then have to go somewhere, do i have to close apps and then put the phone in my pocket or is just locking your phone and putting it in your pocket is fine.
battle1 said:
Im asking that if im surfing on net and then have to go somewhere, do i have to close apps and then put the phone in my pocket or is just locking your phone and putting it in your pocket is fine.
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Click to collapse
I just lock the phone and put it in my pocket. Does fine for me. I get awesome battery life. Usually your screen is what eats up your battery anyways, again I say usually ;p (always an exception somewhere). Out of all the android phones I've had, this one has the best battery life. Not saying there aren't better, but I can go a whole day with moderate use and still have a little juice at the end of the day. Now granted, if you were playing music, you may want to stop that first, but I figured that was common sense...
battle1 said:
Im asking that if im surfing on net and then have to go somewhere, do i have to close apps and then put the phone in my pocket or is just locking your phone and putting it in your pocket is fine.
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Click to collapse
Just minimize it to the recent apps tray, you can just restore the app where you left off ... Android manages apps extremely efficiently so you don't need to close them, force stop them in settings, use a task manager or any of the above. It actually drains your battery more to kill apps and have them start again, especially system apps that constantly run, than it does to just leave them running.
when you pause an activity (hit the home button, rather than the back button - or venture off to a different activity)
The app does not continue running, however it does preserve the application state (as long as dalvik doesn't kill it, due to higher priority memory allocation requests)
Apps can launch background services, which are NOT paused in the same way (depending on how they are created, of course). In order to force kill all services associated with an app, you'll have to use the app manager.
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As far as performance/battery impact:
- You'd think "Oh, if i pause 50 apps then i'm going to run out of memory?" NO - the dalvik will kill them in the order it deems necessary to ensure a certain amount of memory is always free.
- This also means you cannot count on a paused app ALWAYS being where you left it off. In the middle of writing an important email? pause the app, go look something up in chrome, and come back to the email it MAY or MAY NOT BE where you left it off. (The dalvik could have killed it)
- Paused apps do not account for any CPU time, therefore there is no battery impact.
Services MAY account for cpu time depending on what they're doing - and they will run even when the app is killed depending on how they were registered.
So even in my Galaxy Nexus it's actually better if i don't swipe all the recent apps?
Hello together,
I searched through the whole forum but I did not find any thread regarding the problem I have found.
I own a Nokia Lumia 1520 (RM-937). It was flashed with WP8 version from APAC.
I updated it to WP 8.1 via developer preview app.
Language and region is set to german/germany.
I have a 32 GB SD card.
Now its working almost as expected and with known issues.
But one thing is very bad: This device has almost 2 GB of usable ram. But when I minimize an app via Windows Button (e.g. Internet Explorer; only one tab opened) it constantly reloads the whole page after only 30 seconds of being minimized.
The same for other apps like amazon kindle.
It feels like an android device with only 512 MB of ram.
It only costs seconds. But IE eats all my contingent given by my provider. I have LTE enabled and the page is loaded so fast, that I cannot stop it.
With WP8 the browser stayed in memory even for days without reloading the pages.
So I expect that behaviour from WP8.1 too.
Reboot helps only for couple of minutes.
Even with all other apps closed (hold back button and swipe down the app to the bottom) that behaviour is there.
Someone here with equivalent experiences? Any help?
You can test this: Open IE. Load a website. Minimize via Start Button.
Open other apps and use them for a couple of minutes.
Afterwards open IE and look if the page is beeing reloaded.
Is there any method known to look, if there is any app that blocks the memory? Like a task manager?
Maybe it's only an error that happened during the update!?
MarioOrlando said:
Hello together,
I searched through the whole forum but I did not find any thread regarding the problem I have found.
I own a Nokia Lumia 1520 (RM-937). It was flashed with WP8 version from APAC.
I updated it to WP 8.1 via developer preview app.
Language and region is set to german/germany.
I have a 32 GB SD card.
Now its working almost as expected and with known issues.
But one thing is very bad: This device has almost 2 GB of usable ram. But when I minimize an app via Windows Button (e.g. Internet Explorer; only one tab opened) it constantly reloads the whole page after only 30 seconds of being minimized.
The same for other apps like amazon kindle.
It feels like an android device with only 512 MB of ram.
It only costs seconds. But IE eats all my contingent given by my provider. I have LTE enabled and the page is loaded so fast, that I cannot stop it.
With WP8 the browser stayed in memory even for days without reloading the pages.
So I expect that behaviour from WP8.1 too.
Reboot helps only for couple of minutes.
Even with all other apps closed (hold back button and swipe down the app to the bottom) that behaviour is there.
Someone here with equivalent experiences? Any help?
You can test this: Open IE. Load a website. Minimize via Start Button.
Open other apps and use them for a couple of minutes.
Afterwards open IE and look if the page is beeing reloaded.
Is there any method known to look, if there is any app that blocks the memory? Like a task manager?
Maybe it's only an error that happened during the update!?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Windows phone 8.1 multitasking now is similar to windows 8 multitasking, that is, an app still runs in background for about 10 seconds after you leave the app.
The system also does a lot better at suspending apps and saving their state upon tombstone, so even if you leave the app and said app is automatically killed because you opened too many apps, the system will restore its original state when you open it again.
I do not have any issues with internet explorer running in background after i disabled all background communication for it from settings.
mcosmin222 said:
Windows phone 8.1 multitasking now is similar to windows 8 multitasking, that is, an app still runs in background for about 10 seconds after you leave the app.
The system also does a lot better at suspending apps and saving their state upon tombstone, so even if you leave the app and said app is automatically killed because you opened too many apps, the system will restore its original state when you open it again.
I do not have any issues with internet explorer running in background after i disabled all background communication for it from settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
thanks for your answer.
I know these new behaviour and read about the differences.
Whats strange now: I uninstalled the app "Battery", deleted temporary files, made a system backup to OneDrive, copied some files from phone to my PC, installed the Microsoft App "Diagnosis" to give a message to the developers and now this strange behaviour is away so far.
Ok, I have to consider again, that this version is only a "Developer Preview".
When I have news about this problem, I'll give a message in this thread.