Slow in general

[mickkassem]

A500 with ICS. Tablet appears very slow. Cisco E4200 at 28 but response more like dial up. What about killing open apps? Does that make a difference? What is best way to do it?

 

[leeshor]

I'm assuming when you say slow you're talking about your Internet access. Killing apps will not likely make that any better at all. You have a pretty decent router so I would look at optimizing the router settings by installing WiFi Analyzer to see if you have any channel conflicts. Some channels work better with some tablets than others so a channel change might help, as might a simple power cycle on the router. You should also consider fairly frequent restarts of your tablet rather than just allowing it to go to sleep.

 

[Frederuco]

Have you tried giving your A500 some coffee? Perhaps a double espresso?

Ok, kidding aside, in addition to what leeshor suggested run a speed test on your tablet: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.zwanoo.android.speedtest&hl=en

Also, run the same test on another device on your networks (phone, computer, etc) and compare the results.

I have noticed that you may max out around 30 Mbps as your NAND storage chip inside may not be able to process faster than this.

Another thing that I found was that decreasing the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) in the router setup can actually make the internet feel faster. It will use more data (maybe 2-5% more), but the data is sent in smaller buckets so the buckets can be received quicker. Large MTU is handy for slow connections (below 500 kbps) but if you are over 10 Mbps, having a large MTU can actually increase buffering time.

 

[J515OP]

I'll answer in a different way since you compared to dial up speeds but didn't necessarily say the problem was wifi speed related. For an overall slow tablet more than likely there is an app or apps slowing your system down. A couple that have recently been talked about causing this issue on the A500 are the web browsers.

Chrome browser in particular has been identified as a system slower. If you have this uninstall it and you should notice a significant speed up. Also Dolphin browser and the Stock browser have been reported as being resource hogs if you have multiple tabs open and let the app sit in the back ground. If you don't need to have many tabs open in a browser in the back ground close down all tabs before closing down the browser. If you do need that ability Opera beta is supposed to have low overhead for holding multiple tabs in the back ground.

Aside from that there are many "spy" app that will let you identify rouge apps that are sucking resources. You can download one of these and see if a particular app is drawing more resources than it should. If you can't identify any you can try uninstalling apps one at a time until you find the one(s) that are causing the slow downs.

JP

 

[mickkassem]

Thanks for the reply. Removed Chrome and I did have a lot of tabs open in browser. Going to check wifi next. Speed test is very fast but will download the app for signal.

 

[mickkassem]

For info, we also had a Motorola Vonage router that was also "broadcasting". Removed the Motorola modem and all channels are showing Max stars on wifi app but only two rings or bars at the bottom of the screen. Will a 2.4 phone also cause interference?

 

[leeshor]

For info, we also had a Motorola Vonage router that was also "broadcasting". Removed the Motorola modem and all channels are showing Max stars on wifi app but only two rings or bars at the bottom of the screen. Will a 2.4 phone also cause interference?

That certainly is a possibility. Cordless 2.4 Ghz phones and microwave ovens can interfere with the WiFi.

 

[Tom T]

They sure will, I had to buy a new phone that operated on a diffetent frequency because every time the phone would ring I lost my connection. I shouldn't have bothered because I dropped the land line a couple months later anyway.

 

[Douvie]

Thanks for the reply. Removed Chrome and I did have a lot of tabs open in browser. Going to check wifi next. Speed test is very fast but will download the app for signal.

Another suggestion - get rid of Google plus (Google+) that is a system and bandwidth hog. Watch those widgets as well.