Windows Phone 8.1: Laggy and slower for older devices.

[fernancgf]

Tested on a Lumia 920

Maybe is only my phone but I really feel Windows Phone 8.1 slower than WP 8.0 and I'm seen a lot of graphic/visual lags in it...

Don't get me wrong, is an amazing update... The notification/action center, the always present icons like battery, the Word Flow keyboard, Cortana and IE11 are cool but... They have all been covered by WPCentral and similar sites... Lets see the bad news...

1) After doing a clean update of Windows Phone 8.1 my app list shows the alphabetical letters because of the huge amount of apps that are been shown... Do I really need a space in the list for the battery saver app? For FM Radio? Now my phone has an impressively log list of apps and I don't even use the half of them -.-

For example, battery saver is not something that a user use/change often... Why do they bring that to the app list?

Why are games in the app list? And Podcast divided from music and videos? Why are so many things that usually were organized now divided in a bunch of little apps?

I hate the letters in the app list... And now even with a clean install have those letters and there's no way to get rid of them...

2) I haven't found a way to disable the Word Flow Keyboard... It works really good but I prefer classic typing.

3) I like the the 2-3 row selection for the start screen... With 3 rows small size is too small but Medium and Large are perfect. I think that the background option doesn't fit the Windows Phone 8.x design language but that's my opinion...

Overall is a huge step and bring a lot of new features but the little problems that it has are so annoying and so... Stupid... I mean... A separated app for the FM Radio and Battery Saver? For Podcast? How many average users use podcasts?

The best of Windows Phone is how minimalistic and simple it is, the notification/action center is an example, works amazing and is clean, simple and intuitive...

Cortana is pretty cool but (and the same for siri and google now) how many average users really use a voice assistant regularly?

Windows Phone 8.1 is amazing but it ignores some small details and those mistakes together are not so small...

 

[kingenu]

reset should sort the lag issue and you can't complain about things in the app list because you don't use it, other people do, this update improves experience but obviously you can't please everyone but my friends on ios love the background feature on my ativ s and i hate it haha.

also a lot of people on here ask for podcast app and things like that and that is what microsoft have provided and the apps being on the app list doesn't harm you in anyway so i dont really see the issue?

 

[Bearach]

I have noticed some notable "lag" in animations. Especially in closing tab while in tab view of Internet Explorer. This is despite a hard reset.

I'm with you in regards to the letters, I would prefer a button below the search icon to bring up the letter selector than the - in my opinion - waste of space boxed letters. I know many prefer it the way it now is, so we might be in the minority on that one.

As for the new flow keyboard, it's very easy to disable:

Go to Settings > Keyboard > Tap on your language. Then take the out of "Type as I flick through letters". Although you can still use the previous method of typing while it's on.

I'm also on the fence about the background on the tiles. It can look nice, but it can look terrible and makes the tiles' text/content very hard to see. I like people to have the option, but I think it's something that requires a lot of trial and error to get an image that "works". I would have liked simple images/colours for the background too. People can say you can't see the image... blah, blah, but in my opinion it would have been a nice addition.

This update has some really cool and nice additions, but some things are stupid... Whether it's worth the changes they did? I don't know yet. Games in the applications list seems to be my biggest gripe at this moment. Maybe it's just my OCD.

 

[dorelse]

I realize this will sound counter-intuitive, but a soft reboot & turning off wifi solved a lot of my lag issues. (see the many bug reports)

I personally think the time has come to get the app list into a grid format, but, realize most won't see it that way.

 

[unstoppablekem]

I realize this will sound counter-intuitive, but a soft reboot & turning off wifi solved a lot of my lag issues. (see the many bug reports)

I personally think the time has come to get the app list into a grid format, but, realize most won't see it that way.

Exactly!

When I first put 8.1 on my 920, it was a bit laggy. But when I did a soft reset and a battery drain, it resolved my issues.

 

[adam220891]

My 521 is running better after a hard reset, but, there is still delay sometimes. I might push the win key and it might not be immediate. This was not the case before.

 

[Luigi Lop]

at first was slower, then it got a lot faster, especially the apps loading time.

 

[waazzupppp]

Welcome to "Preview" releases...

This release was not aimed at the consumer that was wanting to update to the latest and greatest OS version. It was sent out to developers that needed to test their code with the bare bones Windows Phone 8.1 OS. While it might be nice to have the earlier release, there will undoubtedly be tweaks that the OS gets via carrier testing - and possibly some additional features removed (or that become removable - can I get my Maps off please?) I know everyone said that this is the "Gold Code" that went RTM last month, but the facts are, it hasn't gone through any additional testing nor has it actually been released to anyone - except for developers and carriers for testing (and we don't even know for sure that this was the carrier test version or just a stable developer model.)

I think they did a great job of getting me software for testing my new Apps in a very timely fashion and I would expect to see a bit more polished version (and maybe graphically toned down version for older devices) later on this summer.

I'm with those that say, do a hard reset if there is a serious lag. Watch for non-optimized Apps (there are tons of them out there right now since developers just got the code to start testing them in a non-emulator ecosystem) and try rolling back with NSU if you need to.

 

[mariusfilip]

My 720 is running smoothly,as the users stated above, you could try a hard reset, you cold back-up your data first.

 

[CaptBender]

My 920 actually seems a tad faster with 8.1

 

[rubenwidjaja]

I did soft reset and the animation now smooth on my 720
thanks all

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

Nothing compared with other OS, but yeah, little laggy here and there. The start screen is laggy (just a bit) when you swype to the right (just like 512mb devices).

Hope they fix it, but it's not the end of world. Just a little bit of laggy.

 

[himmatsj]

I have a Lumia 1320 with very little apps installed and it lags like crazy. It's gonna be like lag-droid from hereon in. At least iOS is still lag free...

 

[Maurice Alexander]

It quite depends on the device and the amounts of apps installed. I've installed the 8.1 preview on my Lumia 521 and it runs quite smoothly. A bug and a lag appears every now and then, yet again, this is still on it's beta phase.

 

[vlad0]

I have a Lumia 1320 with very little apps installed and it lags like crazy. It's gonna be like lag-droid from hereon in. At least iOS is still lag free...

If you put iOS on a random device without the necessary optimization you will see similar behavior.

Wait for the official NOKIA firmware for your device.. this is a PREVIEW = not specifically optimized for you device = issues

If you want to beta test for Microsoft, go ahead, but don't expect everything to work like it should.

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

I have a Lumia 1320 with very little apps installed and it lags like crazy. It's gonna be like lag-droid from hereon in. At least iOS is still lag free...

It isn't, my girlfriend have a Iphone 5s. A lot of laggy too. Little more than Windows Phone 8 I think.

 

[IShan Bhardwaj]

Lumia 720...Everything is smooth but battery drain is little more but its a developer preview and i'm satisfied

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

Lumia 720...Everything is smooth but battery drain is little more but its a developer preview and i'm satisfied

Give a look in how many apps are ON in background. Maybe you find the answer.

 

[himmatsj]

It isn't, my girlfriend have a Iphone 5s. A lot of laggy too. Little more than Windows Phone 8 I think.

No kidding. I have an IPAD2 running on iOS7 and it is way smoother than this. Of course, Android is million times worse.

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

No kidding. I have an IPAD2 running on iOS7 and it is way smoother than this. Of course, Android is million times worse.

Yeah, Ipad is the most smooth device that I ever seen. But at least in my experience, things are different for Iphone. Very smooth, but less than Windows Phone 8.