The honeymoon is over, the romance is fading, and even the lust is dying down. The Samsung Galaxy S has some issues which are very obviously shown due to the way I use it, and some Applications I have installed.
After a time of use, the Galaxy S slows down, and shows major evidence of lag:
- A black screen, lasting lots of seconds when changing from one screen to another within an application.
- Huge pauses when trying to use the keyboard – incredibly noticeable when you use Swype.
- The phone appearing to lock up for seconds at a time.
From reading around on various blogs and fora, it appears that Samsung have got something wrong in the memory management department. There are two suggested fixes
- Install a patch that’s supposed to improve memory management.
- Install Autokiller, which tweaks Android’s normal memory management routines.
Both involve “rooting” the phone. This means installing new, non-official firmware that gives you “root” access – that is complete access to everything on the phone.
One problem here is that rooting a phone is potentially dangerous. It may void your warrenty, but even worse, it may “brick” your phone, meaning it’s now useless.
Applying remedy 1. also has this risk.
Right now I’m using a workaround, where I’ve dumped the apps that cause me the most problems (any Google Reader client and Tweetdeck), and use an alternative (Twitter and Facebook official clients) where one exists. These alleviate the problem somewhat.
Apparently you can also regularly reboot your phone. I’m not sure that that’s much of a solution either.
If I decide to root the Galaxy S, I’ll do a write up here, but right now that idea is making me very, very nervous.