Android tablets
Thread Starter
Android tablets
I have a Samsung Tab S 8.4 which I bought when they were hot off the press. The device has 3GB of RAM plus 16GB of storage, there is about 11GB of used storage. It was originally on Android 4.?? but is now on 6.?? I generally use it for browsing the web and looking after the operation of a Go Pro 7. Over time it has been slowed down by the inevitable updates to software, it only seems to be web browsing that is really slow. Initially I used the Samsung installed browser but then I changed to my favourite Firefox, always with an AdBlocker, both of these browsers are slow. When fetching a new webpage the progress bar seems to whiz about 2/3 of the task and then stall, taking up to a minute to complete before the page is displayed.
Am I right to suspect that the issue is to do with paging of memory, the RAM getting filled up with the first burst and then page swapping is needed to fetch the rest of the page?
I started to look at the specs of the device and what I might replace it with. Most of the tablets are still only offering 2GB of RAM but most have 32GB of storage. Looking at the processing grunt is less clear cut. For phones, the GSM arena has some performance measurements in their test/specification pages but they don't run to those tests for tablets.
How might one get a feel for web browsing capability from the processor type and number of them or the clock speed specified?
ie, is the Tab A8 with OS Android 9.0 (Pie) Chipset Qualcomm SDM429 Snapdragon 429 (12 nm) CPU Quad-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53 GPU Adreno 504 with 2GB RAM
going to be noticeably faster than
Tab S with Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) Chipset Exynos 5420 Octa (28 nm) CPU Octa-core (4x1.9 GHz Cortex-A15 & 4x1.3 GHz Cortex-A7) GPU Mali-T628 MP6 with 3GB RAM?
Today, I searched for "fastest Android web browser and it was suggested that the Chrome browser is quicker than any of the others. I have installed it and it does seem to be quicker at fetching webpages. This suggests that my original assumption of RAM shortage causing the slow loading may not be correct unless the Chrome browser uses somewhat less workspace to operate leaving more space for the web content.
I have yet to try any of the reset/factory reset options as I can't find my password for SkyDemon which will need to be reinstalled after these steps.
Any other suggestions? Different brands etc? I am generally happy with Android devices.
Rans6............................................
Am I right to suspect that the issue is to do with paging of memory, the RAM getting filled up with the first burst and then page swapping is needed to fetch the rest of the page?
I started to look at the specs of the device and what I might replace it with. Most of the tablets are still only offering 2GB of RAM but most have 32GB of storage. Looking at the processing grunt is less clear cut. For phones, the GSM arena has some performance measurements in their test/specification pages but they don't run to those tests for tablets.
How might one get a feel for web browsing capability from the processor type and number of them or the clock speed specified?
ie, is the Tab A8 with OS Android 9.0 (Pie) Chipset Qualcomm SDM429 Snapdragon 429 (12 nm) CPU Quad-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53 GPU Adreno 504 with 2GB RAM
going to be noticeably faster than
Tab S with Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) Chipset Exynos 5420 Octa (28 nm) CPU Octa-core (4x1.9 GHz Cortex-A15 & 4x1.3 GHz Cortex-A7) GPU Mali-T628 MP6 with 3GB RAM?
Today, I searched for "fastest Android web browser and it was suggested that the Chrome browser is quicker than any of the others. I have installed it and it does seem to be quicker at fetching webpages. This suggests that my original assumption of RAM shortage causing the slow loading may not be correct unless the Chrome browser uses somewhat less workspace to operate leaving more space for the web content.
I have yet to try any of the reset/factory reset options as I can't find my password for SkyDemon which will need to be reinstalled after these steps.
Any other suggestions? Different brands etc? I am generally happy with Android devices.
Rans6............................................
I have always used Samsung phones, both for web browsing and phone calls. I normally buy them a couple of years after a new model has been introduced. I find that frequent "cleaning" with CCleaner keeps them quicker than not doing so. I try to keep everything off them that would be better done on a pc. I clear browsing data at least once a day. I do not have your issue with Skydemon, so when I pass my old one on to SWMBO, it gets wiped completely.
