Is the 8GB N7 slower than the 32GB N7?

[jhsrennie]

I have an 8GB Nexus 7 bought pretty soon after they were released. I've also recently bought a 32GB Nexus 7 of uncertain vintage from ebay.

I flashed them both to Kitkat using the stock image from Google, so they've both been completely reset and should be pretty much as they were when first unboxed. However my 8Gb N7 feels noticably slower than the 32GB N7. It's hard to put my finger on any specific thing that's slower - everything feels just a fraction laggier.

I have a vague recollection that when the 32GB model was first released the reviews said it used faster memory, and I also vaguely recall that N7s are supposed to get slower over time (though I thought a factory reset fixed that). Can anyone confirm these rumours or suggest another reason why my 8GB tablet should be slower.

I'm beginning to wish I'd never bought the 32GB N7 as I'd never noticed any slowness in my old tablet up till now. Worse still, the 32GB tablet is a present for my niece - maybe I'll keep the 32GB tablet and give her my old 8GB one (I hope she doesn't read this forum .

 

[SiempreTuna]

I'd definitely do that switcheroo

Don't know about the hardware, but Android can slow down noticably when the free internal storage gets low: could that apply to the 8GB model?

 

[jhsrennie]

Don't know about the hardware, but Android can slow down noticably when the free internal storage gets low: could that apply to the 8GB model?

I don't think so, because I flashed both to Kitkat so both were completely wiped, and the 8GB tablet still has 4GB free.

 

[Demache]

That's because your absolutely correct.

For anyone that doesn't know, here's an ARS Technica article from November 2012 (when the 32 GB version came out) making this exact comparison.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/googles-nexus-7-gets-a-fresh-coat-of-paint-for-the-holidays/

I'm going to guess its because of either more/higher density NAND memory. Normal computer SSD's (which use the exact same memory, albeit higher quality/more expensive) tend to be like this. More capacity = higher read/write speeds. Its perfectly normal. The 8 GB has always been a bit slower than the larger capacity versions.

N7's (all of them by the way) used to get slower over time because Android didn't support TRIM automatically until 4.3 Jelly Bean. I don't think TRIM was even supported until 4.2. SSD's need to trim to keep filesystem performance optimized. Because of this, the internal SSD would get extremely cluttered. Usually a reboot or factory reset was the only way to do it. TRIM only would run when the filesystem mounts (which happens at boot). Now Android does it automatically while its sleeping for a long period of time. Slowness should be much less severe as long as your running 4.3 or newer.

 

[boathead]

hey, nice response. can you confirm that trim is running on 4.3.....for some reason i thought it was 4.4. my gnex is 4.3 and i've been using lagfix...would love to stop using it.

 

[sfbloodbrother]

This may be possible because an 8 gigabytes Nexus 7 will fill up faster therefore leaving less memory free. Where is a 32 gigabyte Nexus 7 have more free space generally. Sometime if there is a little free space left, there may be problems.

 

[lvt]

If you empty your N7's RAM from time to time it will run more smoothly.

 

[Demache]

hey, nice response. can you confirm that trim is running on 4.3.....for some reason i thought it was 4.4. my gnex is 4.3 and i've been using lagfix...would love to stop using it.

It was definitely 4.3. That was one of the big "under-the-hood" changes.

 

[colchiro]

My wife's 8 gb, also one of the first sold, is slower than the 32 gb I picked up a year ago. Running Clean master's junk file cleanup and running lagfix helped a lot when it found 2 gb of old map data to clean up. The nice thing about lagfix is it doesn't need idle time to run. Granted it doesn't have much to do most times on 4.3 roms, but I'll still run it if I just installed a rom or update. If it finishes in 5 seconds, there wasn't much for it to cleanup.