Not happy with the touch screen responsiveness of the moto g

[Naer]

anyone else?

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Input lag or just scroll lagginess?

 

[sweenish]

I can only go from videos I've seen of the phone in action, but there never appeared to be any. You'll have to answer DLeRium's question and be more specific.

Could be some crapware is hogging resources.

I had an old Samsung Transform, had to root it uninstall maps, could never put facebook on it; I stripped it bare, and I still couldn't answer a phone call before it got kicked to voicemail. Because the phone would never switch over and present the option fast enough.

 

[Graze]

I bought one for my girlfriend and it is as responsive as my Nexus 4 and I never had a problem with that.

 

[Necrolezbeast]

Judging by OP's previous post about the same thing just a few days ago, I'm guessing he's just here to troll... has unrealistic expectations, or has a defective device...

 

[mcveigh]

I just received the moto G LTE and gave my wife my nexus 4 (her nexus 4 broke)
I definitively feel some lag and other slowness. which is weird as I think they have the same CPU but a different GPU.
I thought the GPU would mainly make a difference in games and stuff but the is some lag and when closing an app it takes a couple seconds to redraw the homescreen.

 

[Bman123]

It has 1gb of ram, there's the culprit

 

[sweenish]

I just received the moto G LTE and gave my wife my nexus 4 (her nexus 4 broke)
I definitively feel some lag and other slowness. which is weird as I think they have the same CPU but a different GPU.
I thought the GPU would mainly make a difference in games and stuff but the is some lag and when closing an app it takes a couple seconds to redraw the homescreen.

Like Bman123 said, that's RAM. Games demand a lot of that, too.

The Moto G wasn't intended to be a powerful phone. It gives you the internet and enough power to have that perform well. I imagine it plays small games fine as well. But it's still a basic smartphone at a great price.

I just wouldn't be surprised if a lot of background apps slow it down. Run it relatively lean, and it should treat you great.

 

[lakedude]

My Moto-G's performance is variable. Most of the time it is plenty fast but sometimes it does get herkey-jerkey. I assume this is when it is busy doing things in the background. Sometimes a good turning off and on again works wonders...

 

[soccerballtux]

Like Bman123 said, that's RAM. Games demand a lot of that, too.

The Moto G wasn't intended to be a powerful phone. It gives you the internet and enough power to have that perform well. I imagine it plays small games fine as well. But it's still a basic smartphone at a great price.

I just wouldn't be surprised if a lot of background apps slow it down. Run it relatively lean, and it should treat you great.

homescreen redraws are a lack of optimization in Android, that really shouldn't be happening now in this day in age. Yes one gigabyte of RAM is a little bit restrictive, but its nothing that should cause home screen redraws.

you can lock the home screen and memory, download an app and Google for this ability

 

[Graze]

I just received the moto G LTE and gave my wife my nexus 4 (her nexus 4 broke)
I definitively feel some lag and other slowness. which is weird as I think they have the same CPU but a different GPU.
I thought the GPU would mainly make a difference in games and stuff but the is some lag and when closing an app it takes a couple seconds to redraw the homescreen.

Same CPU? How about NO

 

[Rdmkr]

cortex a7 (1.9) @ 1.2ghz = 2.28 KDMIPS
krait (3.3) @ 1.5ghz = 4.95 KDMIPS

nexus 4 kinda underperforms other snapdragon s4 pro stuff, though. closer to samsung S3 performance (+/- 3.5 KDMIPS).

there's no exaggerating how slow the moto G's cpu is on a single threaded basis. it'd be an outright weak SoC if it didn't have such a kickass gpu on its side.

people mentioned background apps slowing it down... I'd actually think it most struggles with high priority foreground tasks. it has a lot of computation power in reserve thanks to the 4 cores, but it just can't concentrate the processing in one place when it needs to.

 

[sweenish]

homescreen redraws are a lack of optimization in Android, that really shouldn't be happening now in this day in age. Yes one gigabyte of RAM is a little bit restrictive, but its nothing that should cause home screen redraws.

you can lock the home screen and memory, download an app and Google for this ability

Because of RAM. That's not hard to understand. Boot up a game that needs RAM, Android will kill the launcher. You don't need it in the game. Exit the game, the launcher has to be started up again, hence the re-draw.

To keep the launcher active, it requires RAM. The apps and launchers that prevent redraws, gasp!, simply refuse to give up the RAM, and even use up more of it to do so.

It's not a fundamental issue with Android. An oversight at worst. As it stands right now, it's a RAM issue, pure and simple.

 

[tipoo]

I just got one and found it underresponsive too. Not in terms of scroll lag or touch lag or UI performance (due to RAM or CPU or otherwise) of any sort, it just seems to need a firmer press than most phones and tablets before a touch is registered. I can be touching the screen and buttons won't press, until I apply a bit more pressure.

A minor issue, and far less annoying than my old Nexus S which reported a touch with your fingers still a few millimeters away from the screen, but still an issue.

 

[lopri]

Moto X is also slightly slower than S800 devices in launching stuff despite the reviews stating otherwise. (Superior single thread performance, blah blah) At first I saw that in person and thoght I was mistaken, but it's very visible on Youtube reviews.

 

[sweenish]

Moto X is also slightly slower than S800 devices in launching stuff despite the reviews stating otherwise. (Superior single thread performance, blah blah) At first I saw that in person and thoght I was mistaken, but it's very visible on Youtube reviews.

Is this being said because Moto X app launch speed == Moto G input responsiveness?

Or because you want to point out that the S4 Pro is surprisingly not as fast as the S800? Having a hard time seeing the point.

There's a difference between "the fastest" and "good enough." The main one being that Motorola never implied the Moto X was the former, but always the latter.

 

[Morbus]

My two weeks old Moto G has no problems with screen responsiveness whatsoever. I don't feel anything wrong with it, and if I try to look for issues (which I just did now for a minute or so), absolutely no lag, delay, inaccuracy or problem at all.

That's with Android version 4.4.2 installed, if it makes any difference.

I just got one and found it underresponsive too. Not in terms of scroll lag or touch lag or UI performance (due to RAM or CPU or otherwise) of any sort, it just seems to need a firmer press than most phones and tablets before a touch is registered. I can be touching the screen and buttons won't press, until I apply a bit more pressure.

It must be an hardware issue. My Moto G accepts even the lightest of touches. I just need barely touch the screen, and it's there.

Either that, or your fingers are too rough. My father can't work touchscreen devices cause his fingers are too callused or something. At least it doesn't always detect his fingers anyway.

A minor issue, and far less annoying than my old Nexus S which reported a touch with your fingers still a few millimeters away from the screen, but still an issue.

A few MILLIMETERS??? Gosh, that phone must have been hideously hard to use, considering I rarely lift my fingers off the phone more than a single millimeter...

 

[Rdmkr]

On my LG G2 with G Pro 2 ported Rom, there is an OS feature (triple tap to zoom in) that when enabled slows down the touchscreen reponse time by about 150ms. Things like these can impact the reponsiveness of your phone a lot. Maybe it's something similar.

I stopped using pie controls to be safe for the same reason. I want as few layers of software as possible between a basic touchscreen act and the OS' response.

 

[tipoo]

It must be an hardware issue. My Moto G accepts even the lightest of touches. I just need barely touch the screen, and it's there.

Either that, or your fingers are too rough. My father can't work touchscreen devices cause his fingers are too callused or something. At least it doesn't always detect his fingers anyway.


A few MILLIMETERS??? Gosh, that phone must have been hideously hard to use, considering I rarely lift my fingers off the phone more than a single millimeter...

To the first part, like I said no other device behaves like this, so I'm pretty sure it's device side, not phone side. I know the Moto G had different models though, maybe it's a different touch panel supplier? Not a *huge* deal anways, I'm very satisfied with the phone, just have to press things an extra time now and again.

And yeah, the Nexus S was a PITA, letters would press before I even came close to touching the screen, games were much harder, etc. This is much preferable. In fact, I'll just think of it as a laptop palmcheck like feature

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Because of RAM. That's not hard to understand. Boot up a game that needs RAM, Android will kill the launcher. You don't need it in the game. Exit the game, the launcher has to be started up again, hence the re-draw.

To keep the launcher active, it requires RAM. The apps and launchers that prevent redraws, gasp!, simply refuse to give up the RAM, and even use up more of it to do so.

It's not a fundamental issue with Android. An oversight at worst. As it stands right now, it's a RAM issue, pure and simple.

I still find it a fundamental issue. The Home button is like an escape button for most people on Android. Given the back button is inconsistent in behavior still and it sometimes takes you back a screen in the app or back to the last app, the Home button is always the escape button. Accidentally loaded Youtube playing Katy Perry at work and its blasting at full volume? What's faster than messing with the volume rocker and pressing 10 times? Home. Loaded the app? Home. Sick of this game? Home.

It's for that reason the Home button demands fast response and instant loading of the home screen. Custom launchers with all features enabled like Nova and Apex take something like 80-90 MB tops. It's not that hard to keep those launchers alive.

The issue is that the system doesn't assign priority to the launcher. If you look at apps that typically stay alive on a phone, there's Facebook, Youtube, Chrome, etc. I'd argue those 3 can be killed before the launcher.

That's why there's a whole script out there (V6 Supercharger) that focuses on assigning a near unkillable priority to the launcher to get rid of redraws.

Sure brute forcing adding RAM to a device is fine, but at 1gb, that's plenty of RAM. iOS devices function flawlessly with 1GB already. I mean seriously, do we need 2gb or 3gb like modern desktops to get away with running a phone?

 

[sweenish]

I still find it a fundamental issue. The Home button is like an escape button for most people on Android. Given the back button is inconsistent in behavior still and it sometimes takes you back a screen in the app or back to the last app, the Home button is always the escape button. Accidentally loaded Youtube playing Katy Perry at work and its blasting at full volume? What's faster than messing with the volume rocker and pressing 10 times? Home. Loaded the app? Home. Sick of this game? Home.

It's for that reason the Home button demands fast response and instant loading of the home screen. Custom launchers with all features enabled like Nova and Apex take something like 80-90 MB tops. It's not that hard to keep those launchers alive.

The issue is that the system doesn't assign priority to the launcher. If you look at apps that typically stay alive on a phone, there's Facebook, Youtube, Chrome, etc. I'd argue those 3 can be killed before the launcher.

That's why there's a whole script out there (V6 Supercharger) that focuses on assigning a near unkillable priority to the launcher to get rid of redraws.

Sure brute forcing adding RAM to a device is fine, but at 1gb, that's plenty of RAM. iOS devices function flawlessly with 1GB already. I mean seriously, do we need 2gb or 3gb like modern desktops to get away with running a phone?

The launchers you mentioned have options to remain in RAM already. No scripts needed. Home is a fast escape, but for one of those examples, holding volume down is a close second (repeated pressing? that was forced). In any case, it doesn't actually matter if the launcher is in RAM or not. You get your fast escape; the app is killed when the home button is pressed. That argument doesn't fly.

I'm not swayed at all. I still only see it as an oversight at worst. Those that care have options, but it would be nice if Google provided a class exception for launchers, and an ability for them to stay active using less RAM. On a 1 GB RAM phone, 10% (likely more because the OS always resides) is needed by a lot of games, one of the only times that redraw really becomes an issue. I'd much rather my home screen redraw than my game lag or error out.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The launchers you mentioned have options to remain in RAM already. No scripts needed. Home is a fast escape, but for one of those examples, holding volume down is a close second (repeated pressing? that was forced). In any case, it doesn't actually matter if the launcher is in RAM or not. You get your fast escape; the app is killed when the home button is pressed. That argument doesn't fly.

I'm not swayed at all. I still only see it as an oversight at worst. Those that care have options, but it would be nice if Google provided a class exception for launchers, and an ability for them to stay active using less RAM. On a 1 GB RAM phone, 10% (likely more because the OS always resides) is needed by a lot of games, one of the only times that redraw really becomes an issue. I'd much rather my home screen redraw than my game lag or error out.

They do but this is a developer's hacky method. I wrote about this before in that you still observe redraws. I'm not talking about launching intensive 3D games. Just exiting out of Chrome sometimes can you get you redraws. I believe Android 4.3 seemed to clean up some memory management where the issue was less prevalent (at least for me). I agree that there should be a class exception for launchers, and perhaps Android 4.3 was the magic pill.

Yeah, but 10% consumption by a game shouldn't result in a redraw. Freaking Mozilla Firefox is taking 25% of my RAM right now on my desktop.

Getting back to the topic though, input lag definitely could also be an issue and the results depend app to app. I was just playing with Google Maps side by side on my Nexus 5 and iPhone 5. Both are not 60 fps for sure. Its hard without an fps meter, but I *think* the Nexus 5 was a tad slower. But what was definitely noticeable was input lag. I think part of it is the inherent input lag for the device itself, but there might be something with Google Maps too in that its just a slow app in general.

 

[sweenish]

I worded that second point you bolded weird.

I was meaning to say that the bigger games need all the RAM they can get, and even 10% held for the launcher could cause issues.

I don't care to draw the side discussion out any further, so we'll just respectfully disagree on the severity of this problem. I do acknowledge that it exists; just don't want to be misunderstood there.

 

[chimaxi83]

You guys respond to the OP as if he doesn't make idiotic troll threads and then disappear.

 

[sweenish]

You guys respond to the OP as if he doesn't make idiotic troll threads and then disappear.

Some decent side conversations came about from it, at least.