How to reduce lag in Nexus 7 2012 Lollipop

When I first started to use the Nexus 7 2012 tablet with Android 4.x / Kitkat, it was buttery smooth, I recall, opening and switching seamlessly from Facebook to Youtube and Games.

The biggest WTF moments came after I upgraded to Lollipop 5.x and other subsequent versions of it (currently 5.1.1). The updates made the tablet unusable. Opening apps took several seconds (10+ sometimes), and you could barely do anything at all. It became a clock, not even for alarms. This is a pretty good reason to write a SHFU post.

After searching the internet, I was not so surprised that tons of people suffered the same thing, but surprised the issue hasn't been fixed from the developers, or so I cannot find.

Good news is, with the help of so many others trying fixes, several minor changes can be made to make the tablet useful again with respectable performance.

Here is a set of things that might work:

1. Clearing the cache partition:

See how here: http://goo.gl/75jxHS

It might be worth mentioning to notice this comment while trying the fix: http://goo.gl/agvRr5

2. Tweaking the settings:

A range of settings can be dialed down to make the tablet snappy. The complete list here: https://goo.gl/oEufMM

The list is long but here are the best tweaks that have made great improvement:

• Suggest words in gesture typing - OFF (under keyboard section) - read this elsewhere as well and it works amazingly well
• Cloud Printing - OFF (under settings)
• (New update) disable the google plus app (this did wonders)

This can be coupled with (1) for best results

3. Downgrade to Kitkat:

Honestly, I feel the Nexus 7 2012 just isn't built for Lollipop; it was a blast on Kitkat so here is a youtube video on how to do it. There may be more ways, but this is just one.

https://goo.gl/VjOSRx

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See my other post on how to solve lag issues on the Nexus 5 2013 http://goo.gl/iOGDlk

Credits to the several people who found and shared the fixes.

How to save file names for multiple files as text quickly

Recently I had a set of photos whose file names I needed as a list.

Since there were several hundred of them, it would be tedious to select each filename and paste the name onto some notepad or word file.

Fortunately there is a much easier way to get this done.

1. Select all files you want to get file names for
2. Press shift and right click
3. You will see a copy path option, click that option
4. Open a notepad file and paste

Now you have all the file paths and file names in a single file.

If you want only the file names then you can paste this in excel and proceed to break the text into parts.

How to take notes quickly when at work?

Hey,

Most of us today spend a lot of time on the internet for work and its not uncommon for us to have to make a list or jot down some reminders or paste paragraphs.

What's an easy way to do this?

We could use any text program like notepad or word but then for those who spend a lot of time using a browser it is inconvenient to switch between apps (yes even with keyboard shortcuts).

A very simple and amazing tool I've come across is actually a web clipboard. 

Open in a new tab "Zenpen.io".

You will get a very clean and user friendly online notepad. You can do more than the windows notepad in this.

Notes:

Text is stored in your cache so be careful, you may lose this if you clear the same. Just in case you may want to ctrl a + c (select all and copy) then save the text in a notepad file in your computer 

Or go a step ahead and keep that file synced to the cloud.

Nexus 5 2013 lagging - Solved

Hey, if you own a Nexus 5 and if you feel your phone has suddenly started to lag in any or all of these

• opening apps (eg. Whatsapp)
• swiping through home screens
• just about anything that it never was slow for earlier

Then, this might be the cause:

Certain apps are making it slow.

Along with the frustrating lag, it also drains battery quickly. My nexus conservatively gave a 17-hour battery back-up but with the lag, I was getting about 10-12 hours only.

Fix:

• Start by recalling when the phone was last working without the horrible lag then open up the list of apps in your phone
• proceed to uninstall the latest apps which you have installed, you do not need to follow the exact order but apps that are not by known developers or low rated (and also very high rated apps - who might have gotten there through dummy ratings) should be removed
• check usage for few hours - 1 day, if it shows improvement, then you have found it

The same may be applied to recently changed settings as well.

For me, the app that caused the lag was 'Twilight', although it was useful, I removed it (note: it might be early to conclude if that exactly was it but this can be tested over time).

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The above fix can be tried on any Android phone I believe, no surprise why people disable or remove bloatware as soon as they buy a new phone.

Upon reading about such issues, it seems the best way is to have an 'image' of the phone backed up. Something that I am not familiar with, Nandroid? If anyone knows about it, do comment and help out. 


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New update:

Now even with a lot more apps, it seems the phone slows down every some weeks, just restarting helps get back to normal. I still don't keep the full version of Facebook though. Maybe this is the RAM drain issue everyone keeps talking about. ___

Check out how to improve performance of Nexus 7 2012 with Lollipop. http://goo.gl/krgNLA