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Android users who have a keen eye for design and detail, how is the whole stutter/lag situation? Esp. after a few years of use? (beehaw.org)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I haven't used an Android device since my last one, the Galaxy S8. Beautiful hardware, beautiful design, but it was plagued with animation stutters and dropped frames. I switched to an iPhone and an iPad around 6 years ago. And the animations were buttersmooth. It was almost unthinkable to achieve such a fluid interface on any Android phone I had ever used, flagship or otherwise.

Now I am curious about how it is now. Especially after a 2-3 years of use. Does your phone or tablet stutter when you scroll, open an app, switch to another app, start multitasking etc etc? One thing I especially remember was opening certain apps like big games or Office apps. When I'd tap on the app's icon, there would be a half a second delay. But in that infinitesimally short period of time I would question whether the phone registered the touch or not. I would then reach with my finger again but the app would launch right before my second tap. That was constant and infuriating. Does that sort of stuff still happen on Android?

Thanks (:

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

OK, so you have the opinion of people with flagship or even midrange phones, now here I come with my budget phone, a Redmi Note 8.

I've used budget phones all my life since, well, they're cheaper. The truth is that yes, you do notice some animation stuttering and some delayed responses, especially as the years go by and you have more apps installed (probably doing stuff in the background) and the apps you do have keep updating to be more bloated.

This phone in particular makes it very hard to multi-task, as it's very liberal with killing apps in the background to save RAM. This is annoying. But I'm using MI UI instead of stock android, and I'm sure I could change this.

Honestly, I do feel like I'm being left behind and that I'm going to have to switch phones more often than if I had a more expensive model. But so far I haven't encountered any apps I could not run (or even that I could run but only with too much stutter, making for a terrible user experience). So I'll keep using it until I truly feel left behind, which can take a surprisingly long time. My usage time tends to rival that of people with flagship android phones and iPhones (maybe I even come out ahead)

But you specifically asked about animation stutter. It does happen but it simply doesn't bother me at all. It's not constant, only happening when the phone is doing something else at the same time, and even when it does I can wait a few seconds and it'll be fine. You also mentioned lag when opening an app, so much that you thought it didn't register your input. It doesn't happen to me since, while the app itself can take some time to open, the icon has feedback so I know I pressed it.

Overall, I don't think any of these issues are enough to bother me significantly for a good few years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I've literally tried every single fix like toggling settings, installing and playing around with custom kernels or trying out root apps, and I've never been able to reduce the aggressiveness of MIUI's RAM management.

That issue persisted even on my flagship-equivalent end MIUI devices. It only seems to disappear after installing AOSP-based custom ROMs.