Stuttering apps, total lockup

[gkitf16]

My Exhibit II 4G has bad stuttering, especially when playing graphics-intensive apps such as Angry Birds, and sluggish unlock screen swipe response. Has been getting worse lately, phone is just over 1 month old. Today it TOTALLY locked up the whole phone while playing Angry Birds. It had been stuttering and hanging badly earlier, lots of sound skipping and freezing screens. This time no taps or pressing the power button would un-freeze it. I had to remove the battery. When I powered it on again, after the Samsung start-up screen, I got an error message:

RAMDUMP MODE Cause: Force Upload

Would not respond to power or rocker buttons. Had to pull battery again. This time it booted normally. Still same issues with apps stuttering and freezing as before.

I have tried moving Angry Birds and other apps to the memory card, no improvements, it's a 4gb Class 2 I think, so not really fast. Just ordered a Lexar 16GB class 10 to replace it, so this might produce better memory access speeds I hope.

Also just tried Go Launcher EX, NICE!!!! What should I check to find out what's causing this terrible stuttering with my apps? Hope I didn't get a lemon with bad on-board memory?

 

[surgerush]

A new launcher should help with the smoothness of your phone quite a bit, the stock touchwiz launcher just doesn't run great on this phone.

The lock screen is probably not being responsive because Samsung made it so the phone powers down quite a bit after the screen goes off to save your battery, so when you turn the phone back on, the phone has to power itself back up and it may take a few seconds to get running smooth again.

As for the games running crappy, there's not much to do about that unless you root your phone. The ram on these phones kind of suck, especially with all of T-Mobiles bloatware running in the background. If you root your phone and freeze or get rid of the bloatware, it helps quite a bit with freeing up ram and making things run a little better.

Just a tip if you ever freeze up again, unless you like taking the battery out every time, if you hold the power button in for about 15 seconds, the phone will restart.

 

[coyote1]

If you root your phone and freeze or get rid of the bloatware, it helps quite a bit with freeing up ram and making things run a little better.

I've heard different things about this - that there are apparent 'bloatware' apps you need to leave running even on a rooted phone. Any clues as to which particular T-Mo apps could safely be removed?

 

[surgerush]

I've heard different things about this - that there are apparent 'bloatware' apps you need to leave running even on a rooted phone. Any clues as to which particular T-Mo apps could safely be removed?

If you go into the "all things root" subforum up top, and go into the "how to root" thread, the second post has a list of apps that are safe/not safe to remove.

 

[gkitf16]

You hit the mark on pretty much everything I was having problems with. First off, I'm REALLY impressed w/GoLauncher! A lot of well thought out widgets in a very compact, colorful, eye-candy interface. Love the transition effects, zero lag .... who needs an iPhone?!

I see what you mean about the lock screen and the phone sleeping. Not a big deal, just a momentary hiccup on waking back up from lock. Should be a way to double-tap or something to wake the device, then swipe to unlock. Maybe it'll get fixed in the next Android release? Or rooting may take care of it?

I know this normally only applies to hard disks, you can't "defragment" RAM, correct? Or is there a way to clean up or optimize it in Android to help smooth glitchy data throughput? I did shift all my apps over to the microSD card, but didn't notice any improvement, probably because it's not a very fast card. When I get my 16 GB Class 10 card in a day or two, we'll see if things fly a lot smoother.

I've thought about getting rooted, are there any features/functionality that you lose, any reason not to do it? I guess if you back everything up first in case of disaster, as long as it's reversible if it doesn't work out.... And by freezing, I guess you're blocking the bloatware app processes from starting and sucking up RAM/CPU resources?

Good to know about holding the power button if I get a freeze-up, should RTFM