Nexus 5, Nexus 4, Moto G: Off-contract Android Heaven

[teh_chem]

This surprises me because I was basing part of my assessment on how well my Nexus 7 runs with only 1GB. It always seems fast at pretty much every task. What are you doing on yours when you notice a slowdown?

Funny you should ask; I was getting really poor performance with my N7 (original, not the 2013 model). I don't do anything out of the ordinary, no root, no custom launchers etc. Just stock, with media stored and about 7GB free at any given time. It was so dreadfully slow and laggy--BTW, app updates was the worst, it would be essentially non-responsive when just downloading and installing just a single app update. So I reset it to factory stock about a week ago, and it was immediately flying like lightning. Until I started to install my apps again--and again, nothing out of the ordinary: Netflix, gmail, calendar, keep, hangouts, Kindle, Pocket Casts, Sketcher radio--various other benign things. This time I didn't put ANY media on it, it's sitting around with 25+GB free, and 1 week later it's lagging almost as bad as it was before I did the factory reset.

To be fair, in comparison to my TF101, the N7 IS much faster and smoother in many respects. But the N7 compared to my phone, the N7 lags horribly. No disrespect intended, but have you done a side-by-side comparison of the Tegra3 N7 to a phone or tablet running a S4 pro or Snapdragon 600/800? In my experience with the N7, it's no comparison. But maybe I just have a defective N7. Though the fact that it performs like lightning from a fresh reset indicates that there's nothing wrong with the device.

Dunno, maybe there are just some bad batches. With the 4.2 update and TRIM support and how people touted it, I expected some relief with the lag (assuming that my issues were hard drive-related). Ruling out a malfunctioning unit, my uneducated guess is that it's just not sufficient RAM for the multitasking that became more-standard with 4.1 and up.

Full disclosure, my phone has a Snapdragon S4 Pro, which is leaps and bounds faster than the Tegra3 in the N7. But my gut says that when I frequently see 1.5+GB of RAM in use on my phone, and it's butter-smooth, then compare it to my N7 with half the RAM and the N7 frequently lags and feels like it can't multitask to save its life, that it's probably more a factor of the RAM than anything else.

 

[JD88]

This surprises me because I was basing part of my assessment on how well my Nexus 7 runs with only 1GB. It always seems fast at pretty much every task. What are you doing on yours when you notice a slowdown?

Funny you should ask; I was getting really poor performance with my N7 (original, not the 2013 model). I don't do anything out of the ordinary, no root, no custom launchers etc. Just stock, with media stored and about 7GB free at any given time. It was so dreadfully slow and laggy--BTW, app updates was the worst, it would be essentially non-responsive when just downloading and installing just a single app update. So I reset it to factory stock about a week ago, and it was immediately flying like lightning. Until I started to install my apps again--and again, nothing out of the ordinary: Netflix, gmail, calendar, keep, hangouts, Kindle, Pocket Casts, Sketcher radio--various other benign things. This time I didn't put ANY media on it, it's sitting around with 25+GB free, and 1 week later it's lagging almost as bad as it was before I did the factory reset.

To be fair, in comparison to my TF101, the N7 IS much faster and smoother in many respects. But the N7 compared to my phone, the N7 lags horribly. No disrespect intended, but have you done a side-by-side comparison of the Tegra3 N7 to a phone or tablet running a S4 pro or Snapdragon 600/800? In my experience with the N7, it's no comparison. But maybe I just have a defective N7. Though the fact that it performs like lightning from a fresh reset indicates that there's nothing wrong with the device.

Dunno, maybe there are just some bad batches. With the 4.2 update and TRIM support and how people touted it, I expected some relief with the lag (assuming that my issues were hard drive-related). Ruling out a malfunctioning unit, my uneducated guess is that it's just not sufficient RAM for the multitasking that became more-standard with 4.1 and up.

Full disclosure, my phone has a Snapdragon S4 Pro, which is leaps and bounds faster than the Tegra3 in the N7. But my gut says that when I frequently see 1.5+GB of RAM in use on my phone, and it's butter-smooth, then compare it to my N7 with half the RAM and the N7 frequently lags and feels like it can't multitask to save its life, that it's probably more a factor of the RAM than anything else.

Yeah sounds like you have something wrong with yours. We have five Nexus 7 in our family, including a couple 2013 models. Performance on the 2013 models is only slightly better, just a few tenths of a second faster when opening and closing apps and when browsing intensive web pages.

I run pretty much all of the apps you listed. I don't run a lot of apps side by side though. Typically just 3-4 at the same time. I might have Gmail, a couple of Chrome tabs, and Google Drive open at once with no problems.

 

[teh_chem]

Yeah sounds like you have something wrong with yours. We have five Nexus 7 in our family, including a couple 2013 models. Performance on the 2013 models is only slightly better, just a few tenths of a second faster when opening and closing apps and when browsing intensive web pages.

I run pretty much all of the apps you listed. I don't run a lot of apps side by side though. Typically just 3-4 at the same time. I might have Gmail, a couple of Chrome tabs, and Google Drive open at once with no problems.

Well, see this is why I don't think it's just me or a lone defective unit: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/bcRZPhz8F9Q Lots of people having the same problems.

 

[JD88]

Yeah sounds like you have something wrong with yours. We have five Nexus 7 in our family, including a couple 2013 models. Performance on the 2013 models is only slightly better, just a few tenths of a second faster when opening and closing apps and when browsing intensive web pages.

I run pretty much all of the apps you listed. I don't run a lot of apps side by side though. Typically just 3-4 at the same time. I might have Gmail, a couple of Chrome tabs, and Google Drive open at once with no problems.

Well, see this is why I don't think it's just me or a lone defective unit: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/bcRZPhz8F9Q Lots of people having the same problems.

Those are a few unfortunate examples and that could basically be a forum page for any product in which a few people experience software/hardware issues. We have three Nexus 7 and they all perform the same, no slower than they did the day they came out of the box. I also spend a lot of time in the G+ community of Nexus 7 owners and there is no widespread (or much of any) complaining about performance issues. The issues they are talking about don't sound RAM related anyway since most of them said their Nexus runs fine until an update or until certain apps are installed.

Right now I just ran a test in which I have about 15 apps open including Skype and Google music playing in the background. I'm using the app switcher button to move between them as fast as I can. It's almost flawlessly smooth. It's showing around 675mb of ram usage. You've got a lemon or you've done something to cause a slowdown on yours.

 

[teh_chem]

Those are a few unfortunate examples and that could basically be a forum page for any product in which a few people experience software/hardware issues. We have three Nexus 7 and they all perform the same, no slower than they did the day they came out of the box. I also spend a lot of time in the G+ community of Nexus 7 owners and there is no widespread (or much of any) complaining about performance issues. The issues they are talking about don't sound RAM related anyway since most of them said their Nexus runs fine until an update or until certain apps are installed.

Right now I just ran a test in which I have about 15 apps open including Skype and Google music playing in the background. I'm using the app switcher button to move between them as fast as I can. It's almost flawlessly smooth. It's showing around 675mb of ram usage. You've got a lemon or you've done something to cause a slowdown on yours.

Well, whatever, I only picked one source; these experiences are ubiquitous. Even on higher-profile tech blogs, not just google's forums. I'm glad for you that you're not experiencing with yours what I am with mine. I understand why you might think that there's something I've done that would lead to this experience, but after the factory reset, not even putting media back on, only loading a benign set of apps and having the same experience, I don't know what else to think. Maybe 4.4 will provide some relief when it eventually rolls out.