Why apps are launching slowly?

Question

This issue happens on all of my devices no matter what operating system is on it. Apps launch slowly, however the resources monitor says that CPU and RAM are not busy that much.



For instance, I installed a resources monitor floating widget on my Sony Xperia M2. What I found out that before I tap on a big app like FaceBook, the CPU usage is 3% and there are 370MB free RAM available. Then when I tap on the FaceBook app, the CPU usage started to vary within the range of 50~60% and the free RAM was changing within the range 300~350MB. However the app was still laggy, unlike higher-end Sony phone like Xperia Z2.



Briefly, the question is, why my phone is not functioning as fast as a higher-end phone of the same OS and brand even though it has 40% free CPU and 300MB of free RAM, why isn't it using 80 or 90% of the processor and the same in RAM?


— McLovin | Sources

Answer

The most probable answer is the speed of the NVRAM (or hard drive).



When an application loads, it needs to read the application into memory - Hard drives and sd cards (but not so much SSD cards) are very slow to read and write, and this is most likely the bottleneck.



A typical hard drive has a read speed of 100 Megabytes per second and SD card can vary greatly but would be typically much slower then a hard drive. I have been unable to find the type of built in storage in the M2, but it looks like a very budget phone (540x960 pixels) so I imagine they have skimped on the speed of the storage on it to keep the price down. That said, if you are running apps from an SD card, you may benefit (speedwise) from moving them back to the internal storage, or investing in higher speed sd card. (A class 4 card is a LOT slower then a class 10 SD card)


— davidgo | Sources

Q & A

Soft Bricked Nexus 4
Phone changes timezone itself
Ringtone volume automatic set to zero in Samsung Galaxy S5
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Gray Horizontal Bars on Screen
Can all or any smartphone manufacturer ship their phones with the stock, unmodified version of Android besides Google?
Are offline google maps used device wide?
No background data on Gingerbread
Okay Google Everywhere options missing from Google Now
Is there no basic mp3 player?
How do I remove what appears to be malware on my Nexus 5?
file transfer after encryption
Is it necessary to update android apps
How to install Play Store on Jio Lyf LS 4005?
Phone only works with busted battery
Enable gesture (swipe) input (on Fairphone 2) without Google Keyboard
Is there any Custom ROM for the Acer Iconia B1-710 Tablet?
How to install kitkat 4.4.4 over Android 4.2.2
How can I check which CPU chipset do I have?
My Samsung Galaxy S6 is bricked
Error when flashing recovery to Moto G4 Plus Xt1640 - Image not signed or corrupt

Topics

2D Engines   3D Engines   9-Patch   Action Bars   Activities   ADB   Advertisements   Analytics   Animations   ANR   AOP   API   APK   APT   Architecture   Audio   Autocomplete   Background Processing   Backward Compatibility   Badges   Bar Codes   Benchmarking   Bitmaps   Bluetooth   Blur Effects   Bread Crumbs   BRMS   Browser Extensions   Build Systems   Bundles   Buttons   Caching   Camera   Canvas   Cards   Carousels   Changelog   Checkboxes   Cloud Storages   Color Analysis   Color Pickers   Colors   Comet/Push   Compass Sensors   Conferences   Content Providers   Continuous Integration   Crash Reports   Credit Cards   Credits   CSV   Curl/Flip   Data Binding   Data Generators   Data Structures   Database   Database Browsers   Date &   Debugging   Decompilers   Deep Links   Dependency Injections   Design   Design Patterns   Dex   Dialogs   Distributed Computing   Distribution Platforms   Download Managers   Drawables   Emoji   Emulators   EPUB   Equalizers &   Event Buses   Exception Handling   Face Recognition   Feedback &   File System   File/Directory   Fingerprint   Floating Action   Fonts   Forms   Fragments   FRP   FSM   Functional Programming   Gamepads   Games   Geocaching   Gestures   GIF   Glow Pad   Gradle Plugins   Graphics   Grid Views   Highlighting   HTML   HTTP Mocking   Icons   IDE   IDE Plugins   Image Croppers   Image Loaders   Image Pickers   Image Processing   Image Views   Instrumentation   Intents   Job Schedulers   JSON   Keyboard   Kotlin   Layouts   Library Demos   List View   List Views   Localization   Location   Lock Patterns   Logcat   Logging   Mails   Maps   Markdown   Mathematics   Maven Plugins   MBaaS   Media   Menus   Messaging   MIME   Mobile Web   Native Image   Navigation   NDK   Networking   NFC   NoSQL   Number Pickers   OAuth   Object Mocking   OCR Engines   OpenGL   ORM   Other Pickers   Parallax List   Parcelables   Particle Systems   Password Inputs   PDF   Permissions   Physics Engines   Platforms   Plugin Frameworks   Preferences   Progress Indicators   ProGuard   Properties   Protocol Buffer   Pull To   Purchases   Push/Pull   QR Codes   Quick Return   Radio Buttons   Range Bars   Ratings   Recycler Views   Resources   REST   Ripple Effects   RSS   Screenshots   Scripting   Scroll Views   SDK   Search Inputs   Security   Sensors   Services   Showcase Views   Signatures   Sliding Panels   Snackbars   SOAP   Social Networks   Spannable   Spinners   Splash Screens   SSH   Static Analysis   Status Bars   Styling   SVG   System   Tags   Task Managers   TDD &   Template Engines   Testing   Testing Tools   Text Formatting   Text Views   Text Watchers   Text-to   Toasts   Toolkits For   Tools   Tooltips   Trainings   TV   Twitter   Updaters   USB   User Stories   Utils   Validation   Video   View Adapters   View Pagers   Views   Watch Face   Wearable Data   Wearables   Weather   Web Tools   Web Views   WebRTC   WebSockets   Wheel Widgets   Wi-Fi   Widgets   Windows   Wizards   XML   XMPP   YAML   ZIP Codes