Hello,
I've updated my Nexus 7 first-gen recently to Android 5.0 and since than have spent a good amount of time using it. I use the tablet for work and fun through out my whole day, so snappiness is a big factor for me. With the 4.4 update, the tablet just got a lot slower, sometimes I needed to wait for a few seconds before I am able to kill a task. Clearing cache didn't fix the issue.
Made me think about that 5.0 update a lot. (Note that I actively started using the tablet only a few months ago. I had it for 2 years but broke the screen 3 weeks after buying it and only now I decided to repair it.)
The 5.0 update it self took a good 45 minutes. When I loaded it up for the first time, man it was buggy, I couldn't complete a single task without it bugging out. All of the Apps and settings were there untouched. The first thing I did, was go into recovery mode and cleared the cache. Then I cleared the cache for every individual app. And that boosted the performance by 100%. Next, the animations, I cut them down to 0.5x and turned on GPU rendering (just for testing) turns out that helped out a lot. I didn't notice a difference in load times, like some articles suggested.
However there are a few quirks, the sound lags behind the slider, so if I crank up the volume to MAX it will take a moment to do so. I often found my self having to tap the apps drawer button more than once to open it. And the killing of tasks is not as easy as before, now you have to slide from one side to the other in order to kill a task you can't just kick it to the side. Also, the auto-brightness is really aggressive so I disabled that. The WiFi status, when you click on a WiFi connection seems to be broken since in portrait mode all the letters are separated, and at first I couldn't make out any of it. And the biggest downer for me is the keyboard, I think they didn't do any favors with it. I have larger thumbs and it will take some time getting used to the keyboard. These are all small things, but they affect my experience.
Now the good stuff, where do I begin? The interface, it's great I like the design and the contrasts. Performance, I guess that's the biggest question since this is not exactly cutting edge hardware. To summarize it, it's good. I haven't had any issues since I cleared the cache, apps are running as they should, games as well, multitasking is as expected, fluid. Later on I switched the animations to 1.5x and 2.5x. no issues there. Boot up times, something completely irrelevant to me, but since there are people that would like to know, it takes around 30-40 seconds to boot up. However, Chrome is still the biggest enemy. If you want something to make your tablet miserable and make you wait and get frustrated because of it's unresponsiveness, you won't need to search far, just get Chrome.
All in all, the update was a step up, and an improvement.
These were my 2 cents on the subject. Hope it was of use to someone.
thanks for the review. I also updated a few days ago when the ota came through. So far, I'm experiencing terrible lag. I don't have anything stored on the N7 and don't have many apps. There is a ton of available storage on my 32gb. I did a factory rest about 3 months ago, as I like to every now and then to give the N7 a fresh start. I think I may have to yet again and keep my fingers crossed. Unfortunately, it's unusable at this point.
My experience has been variable, but not unexpected. In the past I have had issues with installing OTAs resulting in poor performance -- sluggish response to touch, certain apps immediately displayed odd lag, etc. Going from 4.4.4 to 5.0 was no different. So, I performed a factory reset and the effects were stark. The performance is exactly where you would expect it to be for Lollipop i.e. it is smooth.
HOWEVER, all is not well. There seems to be a set of problems that I suspect is related to Lollipop utilizing the ART runtime. Certain apps, even before performing a factory reset, were really really slow when running the first time. I have experienced this before: when I tried out ART when it became available on the Galaxy Nexus. Two common apps this occurs with are Facebook and Mint. Who's to blame? The app developers? Google? Don't know but hopefully these issues get resolved soon.
alphabets said:
thanks for the review. I also updated a few days ago when the ota came through. So far, I'm experiencing terrible lag. I don't have anything stored on the N7 and don't have many apps. There is a ton of available storage on my 32gb. I did a factory rest about 3 months ago, as I like to every now and then to give the N7 a fresh start. I think I may have to yet again and keep my fingers crossed. Unfortunately, it's unusable at this point.
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Click to collapse
Ugh, that is quite an issue. Have you tried wiping the cache? You should check your usage, you might be able to find out what's hogging your system, unless it's the OS it self.
AuroEdge said:
My experience has been variable, but not unexpected. In the past I have had issues with installing OTAs resulting in poor performance -- sluggish response to touch, certain apps immediately displayed odd lag, etc. Going from 4.4.4 to 5.0 was no different. So, I performed a factory reset and the effects were stark. The performance is exactly where you would expect it to be for Lollipop i.e. it is smooth.
HOWEVER, all is not well. There seems to be a set of problems that I suspect is related to Lollipop utilizing the ART runtime. Certain apps, even before performing a factory reset, were really really slow when running the first time. I have experienced this before: when I tried out ART when it became available on the Galaxy Nexus. Two common apps this occurs with are Facebook and Mint. Who's to blame? The app developers? Google? Don't know but hopefully these issues get resolved soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also tried out the ART on some devices, mine were not even supported. There were a lot crashes but I also noticed some performance improvements.
Does factory reset also wipe the cache?
My Lollipop experience with my 16 GB WiFi-only Grouper isn't as good as yours. First, I thought I messed something up by rooting it with NRT, but after a manual factory image (flash-all.bat failed out of the box) without root it didn't get any better.
Most time its not as responsive as my N5, I've already had 1-2 minute hangs followed by hung apps (Google Search/GNL, system in most cases) and heavy lagging under most conditions. From time to time its getting close to 75-80% of the smoothness experienced on the N5 (which has better hardware, of course).
I have no idea what went wrong, I've already enabled 2D GPU hardware acceleration, but I'll definitely wipe the cache in recovery once more - you never know...
Thanks for the extensive review - Chrome is just a pain in the a** if you don't have at least 2 GB memory available.
iolinux333 said:
Does factory reset also wipe the cache?
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Click to collapse
I suggest wiping cache, because you get to keep your apps and settings.
DoNuT_1985 said:
My Lollipop experience with my 16 GB WiFi-only Grouper isn't as good as yours. First, I thought I messed something up by rooting it with NRT, but after a manual factory image (flash-all.bat failed out of the box) without root it didn't get any better.
Most time its not as responsive as my N5, I've already had 1-2 minute hangs followed by hung apps (Google Search/GNL, system in most cases) and heavy lagging under most conditions. From time to time its getting close to 75-80% of the smoothness experienced on the N5 (which has better hardware, of course).
I have no idea what went wrong, I've already enabled 2D GPU hardware acceleration, but I'll definitely wipe the cache in recovery once more - you never know...
Thanks for the extensive review - Chrome is just a pain in the a** if you don't have at least 2 GB memory available.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One thing I forgot to mention is that after the cache wipe the tablet was fairly fast but I also went into Settings > Storage, and noticed I have a lot of app data which frankly shouldn't be that much. I then went and cleared cache manually on every app and as it turns out, I managed to scrape off another 1GB there. So, I'm not sure how that would affect the overhaul system performance but it sure helped me get the snappiness I have right now.
Looks like wiping the cache had an impact on performance. I wasn't able to play around much, but it definitely felt faster after first reboot.
Too bad I just noticed my user partion only had 6,x GB (8 GB image obviously) - there are so many ways you could f**k up an Android system - so I'll have to format user data once more, approximately the third or fourth time in the last week.
Sometimes I understand why people fancy those awful Apple devices, but let's hope the speed boost persists.
Go in and delete all the apps in system folder that can be installed from play store and are not needed. After installing the lollipop images you have 11mb in system which seems to be main cause of lag. I freed up like 160 mb and no lag or stuttering. Not sure why google kept things like dialer and other things unusable on the tablet in there.
Also get now launcher and delete launcher.
For even better performance get faux kernel (Set kernel up to his recommendations) and/or install aosp 5.0 F2FS with minimal 5.0 gapps.
Oh I do have a problem with WiFi being weaker on 5.0 though.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app
i am getting terrible lag too. last week i updated with the OTA file. wiping the cache improved performance but only for a short time. i guess eventually if ii want the speed back on my 2012 nexus 7 i am going to have to root and go back to jellybean
KiljoyMcCoy said:
Go in and delete all the apps in system folder that can be installed from play store and are not needed. After installing the lollipop images you have 11mb in system which seems to be main cause of lag. I freed up like 160 mb and no lag or stuttering. Not sure why google kept things like dialer and other things unusable on the tablet in there.
Also get now launcher and delete launcher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that sped up things significantly. It's definitely a memory problem, because event on full stock setup you're getting glances of Lollipop smoothness.
But WTH is Google delivering a potentially lagging factory image? Couldn't they just resize /system by default in order to fit in all apps nicely? Well, that's Android - if it doesn't work, you have tons of options to fix it.
After my old N7 screen broke, I got a new refurbished 16GB unit for about US$100.
Had some bootloader issue earlier while trying to flash lollipop, and had to revert back to 4.2.2. Then it got all the OTA up to lollipop, and is running really well since.
Loving it now, better than most non-lollipop newer tablets around...
Lollipop is big disappointment. I hate new notification (double swipe down to access settings)
I am back on 4.4.4 Slimkat rom with Legokernel and f2fs
now is system smooth without lags
Listening to some of the advice in this thread, I rebooted into Recovery and wiped cache (I did it 3 times, because why not, right?)
In addition, I went into the developer settings and turned OFF "Force GPU".
After doing both of those, my performance seems to have greatly improved (specifically Chrome, which was borderline unusable).
For reference, I flashed the factory image from 4.4.4, and didn't get it OTA.
DoNuT_1985 said:
Sometimes I understand why people fancy those awful Apple devices, but let's hope the speed boost persists.
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Click to collapse
Not any more! I have three new iOS devices and things are far, far worse since iOS 8 dropped. Apple now holds the lag crown. At least with Android you can revert back to earlier versions that worked. With Apple all you can do is whimper at the master's feet.
KiljoyMcCoy said:
Go in and delete all the apps in system folder that can be installed from play store and are not needed. After installing the lollipop images you have 11mb in system which seems to be main cause of lag. I freed up like 160 mb and no lag or stuttering.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
UTTER nonsense. Stop it. System being full affects nothing; it's read-only.
Is there a way to disable the storage encryption that is enabled by default? Disabling this apparently had huge performance upgrade for the nexus 6
funtomi said:
Lollipop is big disappointment. I hate new notification (double swipe down to access settings)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Swipe once with two fingers.
I've done cleaned every thing in this ROM, repeatedly. Hopefully CM 12 will make it work!
khaytsus said:
UTTER nonsense. Stop it. System being full affects nothing; it's read-only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
understand what you are saying but after doing so i have no lag.
Have 2 x 2012 and both were lagging. After trying other things i deleted stuff in system and both are very smooth now. Very happy with them.
Even wiped and re installed one and just deleted stuff in system, to make sure it wasn't something else or a combo of things i did prior.
So from what I've seen disabling the encryption speeds up the N6. Is it anything I would see in day to day usage or just something I can measure with system speed tests?
Is there any reason I would NOT want to disable it? I'm just a normally daily user who plays on Facebook, reads forums and texts.
Also do I have to wipe the phone again to turn the encryption off? Thanks!
kdoggy said:
So from what I've seen disabling the encryption speeds up the N6. Is it anything I would see in day to day usage or just something I can measure with system speed tests?
Is there any reason I would NOT want to disable it? I'm just a normally daily user who plays on Facebook, reads forums and texts.
Also do I have to wipe the phone again to turn the encryption off? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
again. this "speed" that you are talking about, is not your actual phone itself. your reading and writing to your storage is slowed down a little, your actual phone is just as fast being encrypted as not being encrypted. it just how fast it reads and writes to your storage, thats all.
simms22 said:
again. this "speed" that you are talking about, is not your actual phone itself. your reading and writing to your storage is slowed down a little, your actual phone is just as fast being encrypted as not being encrypted. it just how fast it reads and writes to your storage, thats all.
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Yes I got that part and that is why I'm asking. I guess I should have said will it make things like playing games quicker due to loading speeds? Like standard SATA Vs. SSD etc on a computer.
I decrypted mine and it does save big files faster such as when I do a backup. It really depends on what you want out of your phone. I disabled mine because it kept causing TWRP to have issues when rebooting.
Okay, so I'm new to the N6 but not XDA and device tweaking. I've been doing a lot of reading on the argument of performance increase on 5.1.1 unencrypted vs encrypted. Being as I have my device all set up as I like it I'd like some input from people experienced with the N6 on whether I would see a decent enough improvement to warrant unencrypting my device. Also, if the general census is pro unencrypting, is there a way to do a nandroid and then restore it after unencrypting so all I have to do is move my media folder files from my pc back to my device. Thanks in advance to anyone that helps me out with this query.
Neph
The slight benefit you probably wouldn't even notice is not worth the time and effort.
Nephilim said:
Okay, so I'm new to the N6 but not XDA and device tweaking. I've been doing a lot of reading on the argument of performance increase on 5.1.1 unencrypted vs encrypted. Being as I have my device all set up as I like it I'd like some input from people experienced with the N6 on whether I would see a decent enough improvement to warrant unencrypting my device. Also, if the general census is pro unencrypting, is there a way to do a nandroid and then restore it after unencrypting so all I have to do is move my media folder files from my pc back to my device. Thanks in advance to anyone that helps me out with this query.
Neph
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In order to decrypt, you must flash a kernel that doesn't force encrypt. Then you have to format data, resulting in a complete wipe of all data. The main, noticeable difference, is in download speed of large files. Otherwise, you won't see a difference. FWIW, I'm encrypted since launch.
Evolution_Tech said:
In order to decrypt, you must flash a kernel that doesn't force encrypt. Then you have to format data, resulting in a complete wipe of all data. The main, noticeable difference, is in download speed of large files. Otherwise, you won't see a difference. FWIW, I'm encrypted since launch.
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Click to collapse
Yea, I read up on the process, mainly I'm just looking for opinions on differences in performance. If I can get good enough results just tweaking my kernel like I have been then I don't really want to waste the little time I have outside of work having to wipe and setup my device all over again. On a side note, this thing hasn't had a bit of lag for me and has great battery with my current kernel settings using benzocore kernel.
Thanks for your input.
If it ain't broke don't fix it. I agree with the statement that you only really see it on large data transfers. And then it isn't that big a deal.
i havent decrypted. sure, read/write is a bit faster when decrypted. but i dont own a computer, and am not transferring much, ever. anyways, when it comes to performance, decryption has nothing to do with anything. my n6 is encrypted, and its one of the fastest n6 out there
Thanks guys, I assumed there wasn't much of a boost but I wanted to get some feedback from the forum. So far I've had nothing lag this thing, games, 4k video playback, excessive multitasking, nothing, not so much as a hiccup. I'm loving my N6.
Hi All,
Finally got my hands on a new nexus 6 for a bargain price. I've been reading and searching alot in this subforum in order to answer alot of questions i had.
My 6 is upgraded to last ota available with the last security patches, but the phone is encrypted.
Now the question is, is either me that is over-sensible to slowdowns and juddering due to encryption, or the people doens't really notice it that much? It bugs me out.
Granted my 6 is not rooted and unfortunately due to the need of having a working phone in an hour i didn't even explored the possibility of disabling force encrypt, but afaik this would lead me to:
- Do a full wipe to keep encryption off and thus loose all my stuff
- Reinstall everything from scratch
Is that right?
Also if i got right, doing so leads to:
- Impossibility to install OTAS because doing so will re-encrypt my phone and i will need to start from scratch again
- Impossibility to upgrade to Nougat when released, granted it will be encrypted from the start
Is that right?
Also if those saying that encryption performance is almost the same of having none, why i'm having such lags, juddering, pauses between apps, low battery performance and excessive warm when used for long?
Is my phone faulty/my android version or that is what happens when you run an encrypted phone with alot of apps (more than 50 due to work)?
Thanks for those who will take a minute to answer my questions.
Have a good day y'all.
https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-disable-encryption-on-the-nexus-6
NLBeev said:
https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-disable-encryption-on-the-nexus-6
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Click to collapse
Thank you, actually i have all the stuff to disable the encryption. My point in question is, restoring a backup made in TWRP makes it encrypted again?
Because i want to avoid to reinstall everything, set my apps back from zero and so on.
Also that doesn't quite answer to the question about security patches and OTA's. Do the phone reencrypts itselfs and gets wiped if i force install an OTA or security patch?
Each time i need to do the whole process from scratch?
To change kernel, system and data partitions you need root access. When rooted OTA update will fail.
That's why many N6 users have a custom rom and Twrp-recovery installed.
To avoid hassle and reinstall data and apps.
I am using this rom: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=59561445/
The dev updates the rom mostly before the official OTA .
About encryption: in daily use not noticeable.
Only backup is faster; twice.
Battery. The amoled display is consuming a lot of battery power. To avoid this I am using apps withdark themes and a black background.
So no Gmail but Aquamail.
NLBeev said:
To change kernel, system and data partitions you need root access. When rooted OTA update will fail.
That's why many N6 users have a custom rom and Twrp-recovery installed.
To avoid hassle and reinstall data and apps.
I am using this rom: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=59561445/
The dev updates the rom mostly before the official OTA .
About encryption: in daily use not noticeable.
Only backup is faster; twice.
Battery. The amoled display is consuming a lot of battery power. To avoid this I am using apps withdark themes and a black background.
So no Gmail but Aquamail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your insight. So i'm better off to a custom rom, updated with encryption off and call it a day?
I don't want to stick to CM or other roms, i would like to stick to official-based ones, to keep the sake of google pureness.
Thanks again.
In a short time the new version Android Nougat will be available for the N6.
I think it's useful to wait. Don't make changes before you updated to Nougat.
NLBeev said:
In a short time the new version Android Nougat will be available for the N6.
I think it's useful to wait. Don't make changes before you updated to Nougat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah thats my point, the problem is that i can't bear anymore the sluggish performance and the lag, sometimes it slows down to crawl, and based on some benches i did its because the disk access is so high that even alot of cpu power is used. The phone becomes hot when managing 6 mailboxes, 4 social profiles and pages and tons of other activites.
It destroys my battery life and also the performance takes a huge hit.
I guess ill be patient and wait for Nougat to come in a form of custom rom.
Decrypt will not give you a noticeable Bett. performance.
Try the app Advanced Task Manager. To kill background activities.
NLBeev said:
Decrypt will not give you a noticeable Bett. performance.
Try the app Advanced Task Manager. To kill background activities.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well then definitely something is wrong with my phone. It really (sometimes) slows down to something unbearable. I think i'll wait, if things gets complicated, i will do a wipe.
I never experienced such low performance not even on dual core phones. I had to reboot at least once yesterday to get things decent enough.
KingpinZero said:
I never experienced such low performance not even on dual core phones. I had to reboot at least once yesterday to get things decent enough.
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Click to collapse
When a reboot solves the performance issue than try the app Quit Reboot (PhongIT). It has several options for rebooting. .
Another performance issue can be caused by the Google Play Services (searches continuously for updates), or apps working in background. Check the battery use in Settings - Apps - <app name>.
Disable the Google Plays Services temporarely to see possible differences.
When the battery is becoming warm/hot. Could be a bad radio connection. Switch to 2G.
Switch off wifi and bluetooth when you don't need it.
Delete apps you hardly use or disable them in Settings.
NLBeev said:
When a reboot solves the performance issue than try the app Quit Reboot (PhongIT). It has several options for rebooting. .
Another performance issue can be caused by the Google Play Services (searches continuously for updates), or apps working in background. Check the battery use in Settings - Apps - <app name>.
Disable the Google Plays Services temporarely to see possible differences.
When the battery is becoming warm/hot. Could be a bad radio connection. Switch to 2G.
Switch off wifi and bluetooth when you don't need it.
Delete apps you hardly use or disable them in Settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you, will take care of the things listed.
there are so many great custom roms to try, some cm based, some not, and most if not ALL of them do not have any of the issues you are complaining about.
its a Nexus; root it, and start trying the dozens of custom roms out there..
dont bother decrypting; its a hassle with zero real world benefiits, aside from back up speed, which is meaningless imo
and, all the custom roms pretty much update constantly, so rarely are you more than a few days/week behind any google updates when you use a good rom; the dev's make sure they update/add any real improvements/features really fast.