Help N7 slow charging and slow operating

[kingdave]

Hi all,

Been a while since I've been to these forums but you're all always very helpful!

I've got 2 infuriating problems with my Nexus 7 (16GB, bought at launch). The first one I noticed last night while watching Netflix in bed. I plugged it in with 35% left on the battery, watched a couple of episodes of DS9 and it was down to 19%. Spent 30-40 minutes surfing the web and it was down to 15%. The standard charger was plugged in throughout and the there was a connection (the little lightning bolt was present in the battery icon in the notification area).

When I woke up this morning the charge had gone from 15% to 78% - basically a 60% increase in 6 hours. I don't know why its charging so slowly and why the charger isn't able to provide enough juice to cover whatever it is the N7 is doing.

Second problem is the speed of the thing. Since updating the OS a couple of times my Nexus has become so slow and frustrating to use. There is often a 4 or 5 second delay before it does what you've asked it to do. I'm not talking about processor intensive tasks either - on the unlock screen drawing a pattern, swiping through the screens and apps in the app drawer, launching a simple news app or Google Reader, rotating the screen. You name it, it takes ages to do. Sometimes when playing Temple Run type games it won't respond to swipe commands entirely at random and other times it will be lightning quick!

It's becoming a pain to use this once loved little tablet! Any ideas on what could be wrong and what I can do to fix it? Anyone else had slow responses since upgrading the software?

Thanks

 

[John Bean]

Sounds like a rogue app or broken system process using huge amounts of CPU time and resulting battery power. Have you tried a normal reset - turn off and back on for example?

Look at the battery information too - it may give a clue as to what is happening.

 

[kingdave]

Yeah, tried turning off and on again several times but with no luck. Not tried a factory reset yet, but don't really want to go down that route if it can be avoided.

There's nothing unusual in the battery usage stats. The only thing I thought was a bit abnormal yesterday was that the display had used 72% of the battery, but not sure if that is too high or about average. Overnight however, when the screen was completely off, it doesn't explain the 10% per hour increase in battery charge.

 

[John Bean]

I had a similar issue that turned out to be some minor incompatibility between my home wifi and the way the Nexus 7 implements its wifi power saving, resulting in the background services used by the Play Store app using massive amounts of CPU time. One symptom was the inability to force stop the Play Store app.

This probably isn't the same as your issue but has similar symptoms (poor battery life, sluggish feel, slow charging) and I couldn't see the culprit using the built-in tools, but I spotted it immediately using a better battery monitoring app - GSam Battery Monitor - which may be of help.

PS: the fix for my problem was to uncheck the "power saving" option in the wifi settings, which perversely improved my battery consumption considerably.

 

[kingdave]

Thanks for that John. I'll check out what that battery monitor has to say.

I've used a non-branded off the shelf charger today and the juice is going into the Nexus a lot faster, but the operation of the tablet is still sluggish and I would rather use the actual charger that came with it

 

[Netcat]

It could be slow because some background processes are bogging it down. Or maybe some misbehaving app has some background process that you're not aware of.

As a test, you can restrict all background processes and see if that helps. Go to settings/Data Usage/menu/Restrict background data and put a check in the box. You can also turn off the auto-sync feature here and see which apps are using the most data.

Have you tried creating a second user account and see it that account is faster? If none of this works the factory reset might be the only way to fix it. You can back up your data, and your apps will return automatically.

 

[kingdave]

How do I go about backing up the data? This is why I much prefer devices with SD cards - you just take them out and stick them back in!!

 

[Netcat]

When you plug your N7 into your computer, it should show up in My Computer(PC) next to your hard drives. Open it up and click on "Internal Storage". It will take you to the SD card partition in your memory. Look around there and see where it holds different things. Copy everything (maybe not everything but at least copy your downloads and media files) and save in a folder on your computer. Copy them back to your N7 after you've done a factory reset. There are some system setting that you will still need to re-enter like wi-fi and bluetooth settings, but your downloads and media files will be restored.