Massive frame mistiming on Galaxy S9 + Android 10

[Brainlet]

I've had this issue occur once in the past but restarting fixed it. Now it came back and nothing seems to help. I haven't tried reinstalling Android yet since I'm waiting for a microSD card to back up my stuff first.

Here's the issue:

Not touching the screen


Touching the screen


There are massive stutters while watching videos or initiating scrolling after idling for a bit. Did anyone ever come across this issue and find a simple fix?

[Chief Blur Buster]

These tricks are device dependent....
Power management stutter bugs are surprisingly common.

Laptops and phones are sometimes a power management PITA. TestUFO uses only a tiny % of a GPU which puts GPUs to sleep which makes them stutter bad. “Precise + low power” is often mutually exclusive, so power management makes mistaken decision on priorities when trying to save power.

Even for my Razer 240Hz laptop, it is unreliable until I (A) force Performance Mode, or (B) run a 2nd app alongside in background to “wake” the GPU. Then it instantly snaps TestUFO-perfect.

In the future, I may have to add a power-eater surge (e.g. 3D cutscene) just to rev the motor from its stuttery battery-miser state.

Low-power animations and videos that use less than 10-20% of GPU sometimes put the GPU into a low performance mode that is battery-friendly but stutters like bleep.

Let me guess....older Galaxy bogged down with an old Android, possibly. But I’ve seen fresh iPhones stutter (with embeds). It doesn’t happen on anSamsung Galaxy S10 or newer, fresh phone? Those seemed to havr stutter-free power management, but even not all Galaxy did. Discount Android phones have had wonky power management.

TestUFO embeds like this also stutter on iPhones unless I intentionally put them in pause mode. Which I programmed TestUFO to. That forces the user to tap in order to start the animation, and the act of screen touching woke up the GPU. Simple and clever!



On desktop, above TestUFO animation autoplays.
On mobiles, it starts paused first. (As a workaround to fix the stutter issue on iOS)

Does it stutter super badly (like 30-40fps) right at the start on your Android when pressing the Play button? This may not help if you launch www.testufo.com in some mobile browsers, however, hopefully embeds don’t stutter badly (at least for the first 30 seconds after touching screen)

Reinstalls do help sometimes, but I wonder if power-management-adjustment apps also work?

[Brainlet]

Let me guess....older Galaxy bogged down with an old Android, possibly.

As mentioned in the title, it's a Galaxy S9 running Android 10. I'd say it's moderately bloated. I disabled plenty of useless background services/apps but nothing in-depth that would require root permissions or using ADB. Majority of apps (I don't have many) are put to sleep permanently as well. Maximum performance mode is active at all times (the small indicator in the status bar at the top).

Does it stutter super badly (like 30-40fps) right at the start on your Android when pressing the Play button?

When pressing start, it sits at under 5 fps for a second or so, then settles for 30-40 fps.

Reinstalls do help sometimes, but I wonder if power-management-adjustment apps also work?

I was thinking about rooting or installing a custom OS and trying to fix this mess myself. Though, the weird part is, there didn't seem to be a clear trigger for this behavior. I've had this happen in the past but a simple restart fixed it. Maybe an automatic system app update through Google Play / Samsung Store started it? As far as I'm aware it didn't seem to be triggered by a non-major OS update explicitely. I'm not sure anymore but it's possible the first time this happened was on Android 10 already. Maybe there is some random inconsistent behavior with the new power saving algorithm. I can't really trace it back to the beginning sadly.

I wouldn't mind it that much if it didn't happen when watching movies/series/videos as well. As soon as there is some kind of motion the already low framerate is amplified by this stutter and it's really painful to look at. Scrolling after idling is annoying, too, of course, but I guess I can live with that. Not being able to properly watch videos is a huge dealbreaker for me, though, since I use my phone as TV replacement.

[Chief Blur Buster]

A fresh reinstall may do it well.

Be careful of custom OS -- not all of them support VSYNC. While many AOSP forks on new devices seem to be OK, some of them stutter pretty badly (framerate-refreshrate unsynchronized). Check to make sure it's VSYNC'ing its animations -- important for video playback and smooth scrolling.