93 replies to this topic

[Colin Whiteside]

Definitely better than it was. I managed to get my home insurance bought on this thing via a certain meerkat themed site without much lagging at all. I also went through and cleared out some old download files and removed Zeebox. Just in case it's the lag source, I did install it shortly before the lagpocalypse.

[Dabogues]

Hey all. I just set up an account specifically for this topic, as my sudden slowdown on my N7 has been driving me up the wall. The other day, I thought it was perhaps Google Wallet, which I killed (don't even know why it was running to begin with) and after which I saw some better performance. Now it's back to crawling again, sadly. Clearing cache helps for about three seconds.

If it is directly tied to amount of storage space available, that is completely insane. As much as I've enjoyed the device, I still haven't forgiven Google/Asus for leaving out an SD slot.

I was probably going to eventually root and play around, anyway, but without stock even supporting USB OTG for storage, at this point I don't even see it as a choice.

I'll clean up the installed apps a bit and get rid of Currents---like Tainlorn, I only use Flipboard (and News 360), anyway. If it's memory related, though....ugh...what a major inconvenience. May have to contact Google directly about it if that is the case. Haven't seen any official comments yet, so if anyone else does, please share!

[Colin Whiteside]

God only knows what it was that fixed things but it has been running a lot better the past two days. Try working through what I've done and see if it helps any. My storage has been down below 10GB most of the time too. Also uninstalled BeyondPod, if that adds anything.

[Colin Whiteside]

Also, another thing pointing to IO-related issues: playing GTA3 is a lot less pleasant than on Day 1, and very reminiscent of playing the original on my PS2 with the slightly wonky drive laser. Every so often it would take a while to stream in the latest piece of scenery and stutter somewhat; exactly the same thing happening on my N7, which suggests it's having issues streaming game data off the flash storage fast enough.

[Dabogues]

There's always the 12 month limited warranty to fall back on, I suppose....

[ahatomastarday]

I thought the idea of not allowing microSD cards was (among other things) to somehow control the performance of the product: it's going to be always fast, you can't screw it up because you can't put a slow microSD in it that would make it slower. So this issue is just CRAZY and very dissapointing

[Dabogues]

Tell me about it.

So anyway, as tipped in the thread, I disabled Currents, and saw maybe a tiny spike in performance, but not much. I then bit the bullet and deleted a couple of the larger games on the Nexus 7 and dropped used storage to under 10 gigs.

Sure enough, suddenly everything was much snappier again. One of the benchmarks I've been using for this was GMail. When that isn't loading quickly, you know there's an issue. This time, no problem.

So here I am, stuck with a device that is labeled for 16 GB storage, that in reality only has just over 13 GB of storage (don't get me started on how the industry can continue to get away with this), but due to performance issues, REALLY only has 9-10 GB of storage available for content and software (including the OS). What the hell do we do about this?

Colin Whiteside -- I'm not too familiar with the technicalities of the whole I/O-related theory, but it seems to be the best lead anyone has. If this is the case, is that a true hardware issue, or is it something that could be fixed with a firmware update? I need to figure out if I need to start badgering Asus about replacing faulty hardware, because it is unacceptable. But, if it's a software issue, I'd imagine every Nexus 7 will have this problem.

Edited by Dabogues, 07 September 2012 - 07:23 PM.

[ahatomastarday]

Dabogues, on 07 September 2012 - 07:22 PM, said:

If this is the case, is that a true hardware issue, or is it something that could be fixed with a firmware update?

That's the most important question. If it can be solved with a software updated, I'm very confident that Google will eventually solve it. Sure it's still annoying now, but it'll be okay soon. If it has to do with the hardware, it's a total dealbreaker.

[rferrett]

It really is most frustrating. Been having similar problems myself. NX7 crammed full of comics so about to try getting the used storage down a little and see if that helps.

[Colin Whiteside]

Dabogues, on 07 September 2012 - 07:22 PM, said:

Colin Whiteside -- I'm not too familiar with the technicalities of the whole I/O-related theory, but it seems to be the best lead anyone has. If this is the case, is that a true hardware issue, or is it something that could be fixed with a firmware update? I need to figure out if I need to start badgering Asus about replacing faulty hardware, because it is unacceptable. But, if it's a software issue, I'd imagine every Nexus 7 will have this problem.

I honestly can't think of a hardware issue that would manifest like this, so I'm inclined to think it's a software issue. Whether that's down near the metal or up at the OS level I couldn't speculate on but there may be some kind of fix out there.

[Colin Whiteside]

For what it's worth I decided to run AndroBench on this and it's got some of the worst IO performance of any device released in the past two years, which may go a way to explaining all our issues. It could still be hardware I think looking at these numbers, unless the low-level memory management is really, really awful.

[Colin Whiteside]

In fact, for a giggle, here's AnandTech's benchmarking. http://www.anandtech...exus-7-review/6

For what it's worth, my current random write speeds are in the order of 60kBps. Literally, dial-up broadband speeds.

[Josh92]

Just done mine, what the heck, it's two days old and my write speed is 9.88, despite the Nex7 having the highest in the standings at 28. What is going on!?
My read was only 25 when high end devices are in the 40s.

[Dabogues]

This is depressing...has anyone tried to reach Asus for comment yet? I'd imagine this will be picked up by the tech media a bit more if this tends to happen when the memory starts filling up.

Out of curiosity for anyone who knows more about this than I do, any idea why the IO would be directly affected by the amount of storage space available? I don't get the connection.

Edited by Dabogues, 10 September 2012 - 01:33 AM.

[Paul Cahill]

I have opened a case with Asus. Could others please do the same. I don't know how to open a case with Google. If anyone does, please post a link.
Regards
Paul

There is an issue with the 16GB Nexus 7 that many people are finding.
If this tablet is filled up with files, e.g. video or music files, until there is less than 3 to 4GB free, the tablet dramatically slows down. Apps are very slow to load. The interface becomes jerky.
Benchmarks show very slow sequential and random writes. This appears to be the cause of the issue. The only solution appears to be a factory reset. However the problem will come back.
http://rootzwiki.com...y-slow-nexus-7/
http://forum.xda-dev...d.php?t=1811432
http://www.modaco.co...gy/page__st__20
http://forum.xda-dev.../t-1808952.html

[Colin Whiteside]

Josh92, on 09 September 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Just done mine, what the heck, it's two days old and my write speed is 9.88, despite the Nex7 having the highest in the standings at 28. What is going on!?
My read was only 25 when high end devices are in the 40s.

I'm wondering if they fitted the white press-preview units with better storage...

[Paul Cahill]

Please add your 2c and androbench results to this thread I've started on Google's product forums. Maybe google are watching.
http://productforums...ile/loqbCbKVMWE
Paul

[Colin Whiteside]

I'll throw in my findings tonight.

[Dabogues]

Paul Cahill, on 10 September 2012 - 02:08 AM, said:

I have opened a case with Asus. Could others please do the same.

Colin Whiteside, on 10 September 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

I'll throw in my findings tonight.

Yes and ditto. I'll do both tonight, as long as my kids cooperate.

Edited by Dabogues, 10 September 2012 - 01:50 PM.

[timfimjim]

ahatomastarday, on 06 September 2012 - 08:57 PM, said:

I thought the idea of not allowing microSD cards was (among other things) to somehow control the performance of the product: it's going to be always fast, you can't screw it up because you can't put a slow microSD in it that would make it slower. So this issue is just CRAZY and very dissapointing

That's interesting - I'd never thought of that. I know in the Nexus 7's case, they wanted less storage so the user would stream media from the playstore instead of having it in the storage (thus making them more money)!