[Q] Memory usage of HTC Sense and custom ROMs - Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I sometimes find that my Hero struggles for memory and the OS has to close background apps such as the launcher, which is kind of annoying. This leads me to ask two questions:
1) Do third party launchers like LauncherPro generally use less memory than the default HTC Sense launcher? Or does it make things worse, since it seems some parts of HTC Sense are always running in the background anyway?
2) Do vanilla custom ROMS that don't have HTC Sense generally run with more free memory for third party apps, because they aren't running HTC Sense and other HTC-related stuff?
Thanks in advance guys!

The default setup for the Hero shouldn't close your Launcher. That is odd. Are you running any task killers?
Personally I prefer Vanilla builds with Launcher Pro, but i've never bothered testing memory usage as it isn't an issue AFAIK. I never have apps close that I immediately need.

When I was using the regular sense launcher, I did find it got closed reasonably often. It happened mostly after web browsing, I guess because web browsers are very memory-hungry apps. I kind of figured the system should try not to close that app, but when I've checked with task managers, it always seems that the launcher process tends to be at priority 400 which is pretty low - certainly a candidate to be killed at any moment. Since switching to Launcher Pro things seem to have improved, but I am not sure why. I don't use any task killer, as I read that you should leave this stuff up to Android to manage.

Related

[Q] a few questions about some apps

I've got a few ideas for apps i'd love to have, but don't know if they exist, or which ones are best, so hopefully someone can help me out
1. Whenever Titanium Backup does a scheduled backup, it closes all apps and HTC sense in order to do a backup. Before doing this, i got about 120-140 free RAM, but after Titanium Backup does a backup, i'm up to 300-350 free RAM. I guess it frees alot of RAM when it closes all the programs.
My question is, is there any app that does this too? Without doing a backup? Maybe a simply 1-click widget that closes them all (including HTC sense) and then opens up the needed apps again?
2.1. I used to use normal HTC sense as my launcher, but switched to ADWLauncher EX. One of the two things i'm missing is a proper 1x1 widget to disable/enable 3g network. There are lots of apps that can make a shortcut to the settings, but i don't want this. I want one similar to the one in HTC Sense.
Any ideas?
2.2. There was a "Sync" 1x1 widget in HTC Sense, which forced it to sync all the items i had chosen whenever i clicked the widget, is there another 1x1 widget for this in the market?
3. In ADWLauncher EX, i can hide the status bar with a simple swipe, but is there any way to hide the app drawer shortcut (which is at the bottom of my screen, where the HTC sense navigation bar used to be), along with all my icons?
So the screen would be completely clean of everything, and all you could see is the wallpaper.
4. When i had my old HTC Desire, i used to have an app that would allow me to assign 1 wallpaper to each of my 7 homescreens, but i can't for the sake of me remember the name of the app, can anyone help me out?
- Moon
Can anyone help me?
No one can help me? :S
There is a lot off apps for killing running processes. Autokiller, advanced task killer and many more. If you want more ram, change rom .. Im running cm7 and have aprox 330mb free at all time.
Sent from space, with My sensation...
Randomly killing apps/processes is not advisable. Android was built to multi-task. Use Watch Dog Lite if you want too see what uses your RAM and CPU. Free RAM is wasted RAM, to some extent. And if you kill everything, you risk missing important things like texts, widget updates, etc.
Sent from my HTC Vision using XDA App

[IDEAS][COLLABORATION]Let's Fix Sense 4

So, I like Sense 4. It's a lot more trimmed down compared to previous versions, and IMO 2nd only to Sense 1.0 (which ran like a champ on the OG EVO). But, it still has some issues, and I think we've all come along them. The point of this thread is to figure out ways which these issues can be fixed. Please, submit issues you have with sense. Here is what I have encountered so far.
1. Widget browser - Long pressing a screen will bring up the widget browser, which is very similar to Honeycomb. This is very clunky, and you have to scroll through page after page to find and add a widget. This is very annoying, and cumbersome.
What should happen: Long pressing on a screen should bring up the wallpaper chooser. To add a widget, the app drawer should be combined with the widget drawer like stock ICS/JB.
2. Multi-tasking - We all know that Sense's multi-tasking sucks. Not only the memory values, and the extremely conservative memory management which kills apps only a few seconds after you leave it, but the look. In stock ICS/JB, you can see and easily swipe away about five applications, instead of having a full screen, almost app in itself.
What should happen: Stock ICS/JB multi-tasking. This was implemented in the Charmeleon ROM, but that hasn't been updated in some time. Would be worth contacting the devs to see how they got the stock multi-tasking into Sense.
3. Overall memory usage - Sense uses much more memory than stock ICS/JB. Often free memory can get down to <100MB, which can hamper the overall speed of the launcher.
What should happen: Memory usage should be scaled down, using the already implemented memory tweaks, removal of un-needed services and applications, and more liberal task management settings.
So, feel free to submit any other problems you have with sense, and submit suggestions on how to practically fix it.
yankeeboy254 said:
So, I like Sense 4. It's a lot more trimmed down compared to previous versions, and IMO 2nd only to Sense 1.0 (which ran like a champ on the OG EVO). But, it still has some issues, and I think we've all come along them. The point of this thread is to figure out ways which these issues can be fixed. Please, submit issues you have with sense. Here is what I have encountered so far.
1. Widget browser - Long pressing a screen will bring up the widget browser, which is very similar to Honeycomb. This is very clunky, and you have to scroll through page after page to find and add a widget. This is very annoying, and cumbersome.
What should happen: Long pressing on a screen should bring up the wallpaper chooser. To add a widget, the app drawer should be combined with the widget drawer like stock ICS/JB.
2. Multi-tasking - We all know that Sense's multi-tasking sucks. Not only the memory values, and the extremely conservative memory management which kills apps only a few seconds after you leave it, but the look. In stock ICS/JB, you can see and easily swipe away about five applications, instead of having a full screen, almost app in itself.
What should happen: Stock ICS/JB multi-tasking. This was implemented in the Charmeleon ROM, but that hasn't been updated in some time. Would be worth contacting the devs to see how they got the stock multi-tasking into Sense.
3. Overall memory usage - Sense uses much more memory than stock ICS/JB. Often free memory can get down to <100MB, which can hamper the overall speed of the launcher.
What should happen: Memory usage should be scaled down, using the already implemented memory tweaks, removal of un-needed services and applications, and more liberal task management settings.
So, feel free to submit any other problems you have with sense, and submit suggestions on how to practically fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with all of these but I really want the Stock ICS multitasking style.
"Widget browser - Long pressing a screen will bring up the widget browser, which is very similar to Honeycomb. This is very clunky, and you have to scroll through page after page to find and add a widget. This is very annoying, and cumbersome."
You're doing it wrong. You can use the dropdown menu to select the app you want a widget of, which can be quicker than the stock method. And the stock method isn't too much different from scrolling in Sense, besides the fact that you see more widgets at a time stock.
I agree. I'm moving storage from my phone, to my sd card just now, and I go into setting to cut my bluetooth off, and my transfer stopped. It's becoming very annoying by the day.
I'm definitely an unhappy customer at the moment. My phone doesn't restart my UI as much. Because I don't have Sense anymore. Thank god, for the Apex launcher.
Something has to be done asap. HTC should at least acknowledge the problem. Give us some hope. And to think there are some people, saying these things, doesn't bother them.
edub186 said:
I agree. I'm moving storage from my phone, to my sd card just now, and I go into setting to cut my bluetooth off, and my transfer stopped. It's becoming very annoying by the day.
I'm definitely an unhappy customer at the moment. My phone doesn't restart my UI as much. Because I don't have Sense anymore. Thank god, for the Apex launcher.
Something has to be done asap. HTC should at least acknowledge the problem. Give us some hope. And to think there are some people, saying these things, doesn't bother them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They did framework mods that mess with multitasking and kill tasks far too aggressively, see the One XL forums for more info.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using Tapatalk 2
Hunt3r.j2 said:
They did framework mods that mess with multitasking and kill tasks far too aggressively, see the One XL forums for more info.
Sent from my Inspire 4G using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But didn't HTC fix the XL's multi - tasking issue with an OTA? And if so, I really wonder why our OTA didn't include that same fix?
Sent from my EVO using xda app-developers app
What about the horrid IMAP/POP/Exchange mail app? HTC really botched that one and has let it slide since people brought this up back in May.
Surely it's not too difficult to fix the "download images" option and apply smaller zoom/font sizes. No, K-9 is not the answer.

[Q] Launcher lag when switching panels?

I have tried every launcher and I keep getting substantially annoying lag every other time I swipe a panel. Is there a way to stop this?
[ATT HOX+ Running QX Senseless v2.1]
Ectosock said:
I have tried every launcher and I keep getting substantially annoying lag every other time I swipe a panel. Is there a way to stop this?
[ATT HOX+ Running QX Senseless v2.1]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed that too when I just bought the phone, especially with a 3rd party launcher. Syncing widgets can cause it or maybe sync in general, and the stock launcher is usually smoother than the 3rd-party apps. Lag on the homescreen is virtually gone for me using Nova but I'm already using a custom rom. Forcing gpu rendering might help but I never noticed any significant difference myself.

[Q] Third party launchers on stock

Hi,
Regarding third party launchers like Nova or Apex, if i install them on my stock unrooted One X+, set one of them as default and restart the phone.. will sense still be consuming resources(doubt much cpu usage, but memory?) in the background?
Thanks!
Best regards,
Daniel
dan_alexandre said:
Hi,
Regarding third party launchers like Nova or Apex, if i install them on my stock unrooted One X+, set one of them as default and restart the phone.. will sense still be consuming resources(doubt much cpu usage, but memory?) in the background?
Thanks!
Best regards,
Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as i know...yes. Sense will still be there in background and use some of your cpu power. But a lot less than when actively used. Because without sense you wouldnt have a native lockscreen.
one thing I found you can do to use as little of the systems resources as possible is, before installing a launcher, erase all the app shortcuts and widgets off your sense home screens. widgets especially use "a lot" of memory.
I will try today to mess with it a bit, will post feedback later
Thanks for the info
Update:
Well, it did free some ram.. after cleaning up stuff and switching to nova.. 600/700 ram usage instead of 700/800.. but i missed the Sense stuff a bit too much right away
Even got beautiful widgets reinstalled and some other stuff to try and live on without sense but lost some cool widgets and no noticeable performance improvements.
I guess i should either stay as it is or unlock bootloader and flash some stock android rom
Appreciated your feedback guys
dan_alexandre said:
I will try today to mess with it a bit, will post feedback later
Thanks for the info
Update:
Well, it did free some ram.. after cleaning up stuff and switching to nova.. 600/700 ram usage instead of 700/800.. but i missed the Sense stuff a bit too much right away
Even got beautiful widgets reinstalled and some other stuff to try and live on without sense but lost some cool widgets and no noticeable performance improvements.
I guess i should either stay as it is or unlock bootloader and flash some stock android rom
Appreciated your feedback guys
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want the look of a custom launcher while retaining Sense features try one of these themes from the Virtuous team. They just add additional skins to stock Sense.
I have TSF launcher now and i can say that the only thing you still have of sense is the configuration structure, the phone application, contacts, messages, gallery and the stock notification bar. I can post some screenshots if you want. TSF is quite pricey, but worth the investment i recon.

[Q] MIUIv5 questions

Apologies if this is the wrong forum, I was unsure where to post it as the MIUI rom is not fixed to one phone in particular...
I have just flashed MIUIv5 for my HTC one X phone, absolutely love the rom, the graphical user interface and just about everything.
Unfortunately I am struggling with the launcher. I really love the launcher, but not being able to edit the shortcuts or change the icons with a few clicks is a killer. All the big third party launchers offer this simple feature. Quite a few third party apps end up with ugly icons with a background.
Can anyone recommend an MIUIv5 style launcher that could allow me to edit the icon/app short cuts on the desktop? I have played with Nova, Apex, Holo and they all get close with the various icon packs but the layout just doesn't look the same. I don't need an app drawer either so the MIUI launcher would have been perfect but for the icon/app issue.
Also, as much as I love this rom, many of the system apps installed I really do not or would not use. Coming from CM and AOSP roms, I would prefer not to have the system monitor apps, root monitor apps, app control, MI credit, cloud and whatever non essential apps. I would prefer it more like a bare bones rom. So my question, which of these system apps can I remove without causing rom instability? I like to install apps, play in root etc without multiple warnings, notifications for this and that.
Otherwise, fantastic stuff. I can see me being an MIUI user for a long time.

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