Do widgets effect the performance of my phone?

[Robert7107]

I have heard that widgets slow your phones speed down and eats up the battery. I am using three widgets and use my task manager. I have it set to close large apps two minutes after when phones screen closes . I also almost never run more then one window open at a time. I own the droid bionic.

 

[jerofld]

The simplest answer is that they don't impact performance so much that you would notice it, unless you have an underpowered or older Android device. The Bionic isn't either of those.

But for battery, it depends on the widget. Weather, twitter, facebook widgets are the worst, because they keep your phone active and keep getting updates. But all of them can be set to only update in an interval that you determine. I have my widgets only update once an hour, and everything is dandy for me.

 

[sohguanh]

I believe it is more of what the widget does that will determine if it affect your battery life. If the widgets function like what jerofld post, then battery life is impacted, you just got to set the interval further apart. However if the widget function does not need to retrieve or send info out to the net, it is pretty kind to your battery life.

Just to share, I still have not received reports from my buyers my apps with widgets is impacting their battery life. The only reports I have so far are new feature requests and app not able to work as advertised. That case I have investigated and those affected install some so call battery-saving third party apps on their smart-phones that prevent my apps from waking up to do it's job. It takes me quite sometime to nail it down but once it is identified, it is simple to re-produce the problem.

 

[itsallgood]

This is a good question. People complain about how their phones lag after they've had it awhile and wonder why. I would say yes, but it depends on what apps the widget belongs to and how often they update.

As others have said, it depends on the phone. (How much RAM it has available to run things and how fast the processor is.) I have an Atrix 4G which is really power and fast. (I came from a Backflip, which was my first smart phone.) My Backflip kept running out of memory, even though I had a 16 GB SD card. I only had like 65 apps, most productivity apps, and about 12 to 15 widgets. That phone lagged with everything I did. On my Atrix, I have 22 widgets, 195 apps, can run my lapdock, which has two windows running, mobil and webtop view both at the same time, while my Atrix is docked and only see some lag every now and then.

We have to remember that today's cellphones are miniature computers and the more stuff we give them to do, the more they will lag, if the RAM gets really low or the processors can't keep up. Right now I'm typing this up on my lapdock, which is my Atrix, while streaming Pandora in the background and there is no lag in my typing at all.

So, know your phone and its capibilities and limits. Doing this will prevent future headachs as to trying to figure out what's wrong with your cell when it starts acting weird.