Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

I have a problem that has persisted through three physical Sprint Touch Pros (had to replace mine twice for unrelated reasons), three different ROMs, and two different radios. I've done the "don't install anything and see if it still happens" thing. It does. I've tried every tweak I can find. I've tried disabling multiple services, using the default dialer, disabling TF3D, and many, many, MANY hard resets, etc..etc.. basically all the stuff anybody ever tells you to do when you are having a weird problem. I just had to get that out of the way. lol.

Here's the problem. After some time (it varies -- could be as short as a few hours, or as long as a week), all GDI graphics operations and standard windows controls (eg, listboxes, listviews, treeviews, scrollbars -- basically anything that is NOT TF3D) will just completely slow to a crawl. I mean I can actually watch the scrollbar render to the screen over the course of two seconds. It's ridiculous. I use DotFred's task manager to debug things and when I run it and look at CPU usage, it's normal! I mean the CPU is almost entirely idle except for the amount of CPU used by the task manager. Audio also plays smooth, so it seems to be isolated to graphics operations.

I can't find the cause! I also can't find anybody experiencing the same problem (at least how I have described).

The only resolution I've found is to soft reset. But it gets annoying having to repeatedly do that when my phone is having a bad day (basically, the problem occurring several times in one day).

I hope somebody can at least confirm I'm not the only one experiencing this.

I've tried posting at XDA-Developers about this before (where I am much more active) but I didn't get any help (nobody apparently was experiencing this problem.

The only thing I haven't disabled before is my Exchange DirectPush because that is an absolute business need. If that's the cause, I'm going to go crazy because it's the one main thing I can't live without. lol.

Here are my specs:
Carrier: Sprint
Device: Sprint-branded HTC Touch Pro
ROM: MightyROM 6 (also tried MightyROM 5, and stock Sprint ROM)
Radio: Sprint 1.11.00F (also tried Sprint 1.03.15F)
Shell: Mobile Shell 3 (also tried TF3D, Titanium, and standard Today)

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

Have you tried this?

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

I had a similar problem with Coreplayer and a few other video players.

Softreset cleared it right up.

Almost like some apps left some buffer full of garbage. (Speculation)

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

Compusurf - That's what I was thinking, but I can't nail it down to a particular app. When I get this problem, I can close every app on the device and it never gets better. Also, I can listen to music (or watch videos or whatever) for hours and never get the problem. Then the next week, after two minutes it pops up. It's so freaking inconsistent and frustrating!

Talon - I will try that. If I could at least stop the problem after it starts (without a damn soft reset), then I would feel like I'm onto something.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, it's not like a gradual slow down over time. It's like an on/off switch. I check my phone and suddenly everything is crawling. No warning! Very sudden.

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

I spent the past few weeks trying a multitude of over things (including cleanRAM) and I'm still having this problem and still have no solution! I can't believe nobody else is having this problem... What on earth am I doing different?

What I've tried since last post:
- cleanRAM when slow down occurs (result: 1MB freed, but no effect on performance)
- different chargers (no effect)
- not running many different apps (no effect)

What I'm trying now:
- Changing Exchange ActiveSync settings. I get the feeling not a lot of users here use Exchange, but I could be wrong. Maybe it's a setting there.

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

not that this should work... but for some reason this helped a guy that had terrible scrolling issues in his threaded messaging... claiming " you could literally see the scroll bar slow creeping" or something to that effect..

he used Diamond Tweak to to either change the scroll bar to small or none and it completely fixed his scrolling issue...

although, it wouldnt really be the answer to your problem persay, but you could try that and see if it gives you better navigation through the screens...

heck, youve tried everything else, might as well ya know lol

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

most of these issues is due to poor cclean flashing when reflashing roms. remember to hard reset after rom flash. load the rom let it install customizations run clear mem hard reset again

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

Been there done that. Multitple devices, multiple ROMs, etc.

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

Although the scrollbars do visibly draw, and that's annoying, the problem is that all non-accelerated graphics slow down. The only thing that doesn't slow down is TF3D, YouTube, etc... all the things using the OpenGL drawing system. So, that might shave a few seconds off the draw time, but it introduces other annoyances... like not being able to scroll in non-finger apps. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I think I may have gleaned a little into what might be happening. Today I left my phone in my car for a few hours. Oops. It was hot when I took it out because it's like a million degrees here right now. It was slowed down. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a heat thing. Most often this problem occurs after charging or playing media or some other type of situation where the phone is active. Does the graphics chip just slow down when it gets hot? It certainly doesn't speed up again later when it cools down.

I might just be chasing the wrong path (again) here, but I'm totally at a loss. I can't figure this out. I'm getting @#$#@! tired of this phone. lol. I wish Sprint had more WM PDAs to choose from.

EDIT: do you have the link to the other discussion about slow threaded messaging? I'm wondering if it's the same problem, but different manifestations... Or maybe he never noticed that all GDI drawing was uberslow and fixated on the scrollbars. Man I'd love to see I'm not alone...

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

upon finding the link, im afraid i may have given you false hope for another in your situation... his fix was really all about sms lagging, but here it is

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread...ght=scroll+bar

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

Hey, no prob. I appreciate the assistance! :-) I found some more avenues I'm exploring. Will report later if I have any luck figuring it out. (My current train of thought is apps that I have used, but aren't necessarily running when the device slows down -- sort of a "leaving system resources open" that doesn't show up immediately nor clear up when you close the app. It's a long shot, but I've tried about everything else.)

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

I have experienced a problem similar in the past. I searched around for various video drivers for the touch pro.

I'm on my third touch pro. Each touch pro seemed to respond differently to each video driver. xda, google and ppcgeeks yield various drivers to try. I know there are at least 2-3 out there, so try each and see if you get the improvement you're after.

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

That's interesting. I will have to try. I know you said each TP performed differently, but I have to ask: do you have one you recommend anyway? Also, the similar problem you mention -- did a different video driver ever fix it?

EDIT: I just spent a lot of time on the google. The only alternate driver I could find was the ATI Direct3D driver that came out a while back. I think it may have been taken from the Omnia? Not sure. Anyway, I've tried that before with no luck, but that was on a different ROM. So it might be worth it again to try on Mighty 6. If you don't mind, can you link me to the other drivers you speak of? I could only find that one. I'm a bit skeptical because that's a Direct 3D driver and the only graphics slow-down I notice is with the GDI graphics operations. Direct 3D always performs at top speed. However, I'm not ruling it out completely since there might be some odd relationship between the two.

EDIT 2: If you know of any cabs to install alternate ddi.dll drivers, I would also be interested. From what I read, that's the primary display driver in the system and would be more relevant to my case. I could not find anything for CDMA Touch Pros.

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

I may have found the culprit. I'm wondering if somebody else can confirm for me.

Now I'm not sure if this piece of software is the cause or simply a way to trigger something in the OS. There seems to be a particular set of things you have to do to get it to trigger. I've been able to do it reliably now about five times in a row tonight. I never really put two and two together before because I was never really doing all these things simultaneously all the time.

The cause (or a cause) seems to be Pocket Player by Conduits. I listen to music so often, that like I said, I never really put it all together. Also, it doesn't seem that PocketPlayer has to even being playing when the slow-down occurs, just open and having had played in the past.

Here are the steps to reliably trigger the slow down on my phone. I'd love to see some confirmation from somebody else.

1. Enable bluetooth (it's not important that you play through A2DP, and the slowdown can happen without bluetooth, but this seems to speed it up for some reason)
2. Run pocket player
3. Enable a CPU intensive visualization (eg, NOT album artwork -- I've been using Randomization)
4. Play a shoutcast stream (in case the stream might be important, I've been using Energy 98 which is http://sc-rly.181.fm:80/stream/1093 )
5. Turn the visualization on.
6. Connect your device to AC power.
7. Keep the screen on (don't let it sleep -- PP has an option for this or you can disable all screen dim/screen off in WM power settings)
8. Wait a couple hours
9. Exit Pocket Player and open an app that uses a lot of GDI drawing, like Pocket Outlook Email or Total Commander. The apps should be running incredibly slow. To confirm the slow-down, soft reset and compare the speed after the reset.

Doing this, I've made the device slow down five times tonight. For the previous three days, I've been using SPB Radio to play my audio streams with NO slow down. So I'm pretty sure this may be the culprit.

I hope somebody can confirm. Please make sure you let your device run long enough (give it a few hours at least, or let it run overnight to be really sure). I ran my device on mute so I wasn't bothered by the music while I did something else. :-)

Download link for PocketPlayer: http://www.conduits.com/download_cab...ket+Player+4.1

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

I ran some more tests. Everything else the same as above, but with visualizations disabled, it took about 12 hours, but the graphics slow down happened. So although the visualization speeds up the occurence, it doesn't depend on it.

Re: Sprint Touch Pro Graphics Slow Down Problem
 

Update #2...

I did yet more testing! This time I created a skin with no UI elements other than the play button, so I could easily see if the stream was still playing. In my previous test, I still had the timer counting and the playlist activated.

After several days of letting it play overnight while on, there was NO slow down. I can infer from this that the cause of the slow down is, in fact, the graphics subsystem of Pocket Player. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm guessing there is some sort of underlying resource leak. But I'm just guessing.

Hopefully I can get some feedback from other users or Conduits on how widespread this problem is.