Typing lag with G-Mail

[Mrhelper]

It could be possible that there is a syncing issue with the Gmail app (or another app running in the background) though that is using the wifi. In that case the tablet could be struggling to send and receive email (or data) which is eating system resources that could otherwise be used for the typing of the draft that is being worked on (or more accurately to run the spell checker for that draft email). This could give the appearance that wifi has something to do with the email being drafted when really it is a system issue caused by an app that has issues with wifi or the tablet struggling with the wifi itself (connecting and disconnecting).

So while the problem may not be directly tied to the Gmail app sending and receiving from the text box, this resource intensive task (due apparently to the spell checker) highlights another issue the tablet is coincidentally having.

I agree, and hinted at this in an earlier post (#9) -- i.e., that any network related causes are likely indirect. Indirect causes can be as bad as or worse as direct causes though, and must be considered. Accurately identifying any and all real causes is an essential step in effective problem solving. What you note seems very likely in some of the cases I see described above, where, for example the OP reports editing issues being more severe when wifi service is poor. Poor network service can cause background apps to hang and crash, sync operations to block, and result in numerous symptoms. Such effects would not be limited to just editing in Gmail though, and would likely present other symptoms.

It seems relevant to note also that the OP appeared to be referring exclusively to the Gmail app, but some of our other posts in the thread expanded the topic to include browsers, which add different problems. Some browser operations would be affected similar to the Gmail app, but with the added problems caused by various web sites. Web pages are often full of ads, scripts and various animations that can quickly drain any remaining life out of already slow connections. That can be improved somewhat by turning off flash support, sticking to mobile sites, using more efficient browsers, etc.

 

[Mrhelper]

Hi Douvie,

Well, whether Gmail sends every single character to the cloud (which I thought would be a dumb design) or is just doing some kind of polling that affects the app's response the typing lag was definitely worse this year with the poorer performing Wi Fi than it was last year. So I agee, which my empirical data supports, that Gmail's typing lag somehow depends on the performance of the Wi Fi network its connected to.

Thanks,
Gerry

You last post here reminded me of one more thing. In your email you note the correlation between a bad wifi connection this year and Gmail app lags, and better wifi last year with fewer Gmail app lags. Correlation alone is rarely enough to determine causation, and appears to be misleading here. There was likely another very key difference in your tablet from last year to this year, and that difference is that it was not running ICS, but HC.

I ran a test on this today using an a100 on Android 3.2.1, and I found that I could increase the message size in the Gmail compose window to greater than 10000 words, and no matter what I tried, I could not reproduce the ICS Gmail client delay in typing and/or scrolling. I had the "aggressive" correction feature of HC turned on. Edit delay in the HC Gmail app was effectively non-existent. I just stopped growing the message when I hit that level in the HC Gmail client because the problem was just not happening. On the other hand, with ICS, I was seeing severe lag at as few as 1000 to 2000 words. Again, this lag would disappear completely when I turned spell checking off.

I'm convinced that the difference that you saw between last year and this year with the Gmail app was entirely a difference between HC and ICS. This discussion about network performance may be of some relevance to browsers and web sites, but appears to have little or nothing to do with the performance of Gmail app edits.

As noted in the post above, network problems can exacerbate system performance issues relative to background resource usage, but I'm convinced that you were not seeing anything of the kind. You only commented about the Gmail app, and not other app functions. If you were also having problems with numerous other apps, then the network may have been a factor, but even then, I would look for misbehaving apps using excess background CPU before suspecting network causes. As thorough as I've found you to be, I doubt that you would have just omitted such important information from your original post. My conclusion from this is that you were not seeing such widespread performance problems in the tablet. So again, it appears that you have encountered and reported here yet another ICS problem. This one being a significant ICS Gmail app edit problem that was not present in HC.

As I wrote in my first post, there's likely very little that can be done about this short of using a different email client. I guess we could add solutions such as reverting back to HC, or just writing shorter messages.

 

[gerryex]

. . .
I'm convinced that the difference that you saw between last year and this year with the Gmail app was entirely a difference between HC and ICS. This discussion about network performance may be of some relevance to browsers and web sites, but appears to have little or nothing to do with the performance of Gmail app edits.
. . .

Hi Mrhelper,

You may be right! Although I'm very aware that I'm now running ICS vs HC from last year, the Wi Fi where I was staying in France was terrible and I think when I started this thread I was just concentrating on that fact and completely forgot about ICS! And yes, other than this typing lag in Gmail I have had no other issues with ICS, which also kind of took the factor of ICS possibly causing this problem out of my head.

So if it truly is ICS causing this, that is disappointing as I would think such a simple thing as typing into Gmail (albeit with the spell checker on) should not cause a problem. Especially since it was not a really bad problem with HC.

But anyway, other this this problem ICS has been performing quite well and again the A500 was great through out the trip.

Gerry