Dialer app becoming too slow and less responsive

Question

It takes almost more than 5-10 seconds to open the dialer application in my phone.

This has been happening for a while now and is especially critical since during incoming calls, when my phone snaps back from standby to show me who is calling, I actually have to wait sometimes more than 10 seconds to see the caller id and its like the phone is stuck during that time.

It has been the case before (stock) and after I've put a custom ROM in my phone. Though I noticed this became more severe after I installed a lot of apps etc.

Since I suspect that this is because of low free RAM (I have a low-end Android phone), I recently installed optimization apps, kept my homescreen free from widgets and running apps etc. and it did help to an extent. However, I feel like it still needs to be lightning fast and always accessible feature like in conventional handsets. How can I achieve this? How do I lock the dialer in my RAM or is there some super light dialer apps that can replace this stock dialer?

Also, could it be because I have around 150 Facebook and Google contacts synced in? (I don't think that is a big number)

How about finding a way to turn off the picture data in contacts? Will that reasonably reduce memory footprint?

Very same situation : Can I set it so the "Phone" on my phone takes priority over all other apps? (tried all the answers)

UPDATE: I found something called "FUSIONboost" on the FUSIONideos custom rom that seems to set the priority of apps or something. This seems to be exactly the solution, but I don't want to switch roms now and would really like if someone can tell me how I can get this..

Answer 1

This is likely a combination of two things: a) stuff that the dialer has to load on startup and b) possibly shortage of memory (RAM) created by loading those things. The biggest gains are to be had by resolving (a) however, this will also have the side effect of resolving (b)

You might like to try clearing the following:

• Call log - this is loaded each time the dialer is loaded.
• SMS messages - Some users have reported that a large number of SMS messages can cause the dialer to slow down, though I'm sceptical that this makes a difference.
• Contacts - finally, the number of contacts does have a bearing. Not only the ones you can see ("My Contacts"), but anyone you've ever emailed (i.e. Other contacts in GMail contacts).

The last point can be quite important. I have about 130 'real' contacts but nearly 1000 people I've emailed at some point while using GMail. There were all being synced to my phone, just not always shown.

It is important to make the distinction between RAM and persistent storage. For example, clearing out your trash, deleting emails, uninstalling unused apps, or moving them to SD storage is unlikely to help, because these are using up persistent storage, not transient RAM.

Having lots of persistence storage free means just that apps can't use it to run any faster. RAM, however, can make them fly.

You might also like to take a look at Superdial and Dialer One, two dialers that I've found most agreeable. They also have T9 contact lookup, which can be a dream to use.

Answer 2

I experienced a similar situation with my Samsung Galaxy GT-i5700 (SPICA), and I got up to a very weird solution to this:
It seems that the huge number of SMS was causing the mobile to further slow down (apart from the large number of apps in the device). I then deleted many of the messages, and there was a significant improvement in the dialer operating speeds.
I don't know whether the same thing would work for you, it's only a loophole I discovered on my mobile (Fact: Samsung SPICA can only accomodate up to 2000 SMS). I can only say you can give it a try (of course, this stands true only if you have many SMS stored on your device).

I don't have answers for the other factors.

Answer 3

Slowdowns like this on phones older than 1 year old are most likely a side affect of memory shortages. To check to see if this is the issue, go to the Android settings and look at SD card & Phone Storage. The last item, "Available Space" should be 17 Mb or more.

If you are using the Email app (NOT Gmail) then you should check your trash folder. In mail, hit Menu, then choose Folders and scroll down to Trash. Email NEVER empties the trash folder, even if you have deleted hundreds of messages. You will either have to delete them manually or delete and re-create the account.

Sometimes the browser builds up a large set of data. You can go into browser settings and hit Clear Cache. But there seems to be even more data associated with the browser. It is easiest to go to the overall Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, then choose the All tab and find Browser and tap on it. Then click on the action to Clear Data. This will delete your bookmarks as well so you should make note of them first.

Finally, you may have background tasks that are hogging the phone's CPU time. You can get an app like Advanced Task Killer (free version avail.) that will periodically kill off any apps that you don't want. For instance, the Skype and Backup apps on Verizon phones run in background all the time but are generally not needed.

Answer 4

I had similar problem, though we cannot completely rectify this we can reduce the startup time by these approaches,

1. Contacts -> More -> Check 'Only contacts with phones', select only required groups in the bottom groups, better u can create a starred group and select it.

2. Use 3rd party Contacts app like Go Contacts - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jbapps.contact to view the complete list of contacts

3. Never press back button to exit the dialer, use home button to exit dialer, pressing back will kill the dialer activity

you can also try Go Dialer or https://market.android.com/details?id=kz.mek.DialerOne&hl=en

Answer 5

I agree that this is a memory issue. I've had times with my previous phone in which my phone froze as soon as it turned on because of memory issues. If you have Froyo or above, move as many of your big apps as you can to the sd card. If you have already done this, uninstall apps to free up memory. Morris suggested 17MB. This sounds small to me, and I think the actual number depends on which version of Android you have and what types of apps you use.

Answer 6

You could attempt a factory reset, but like you said you do not want to wipe data. Do not use task killers either they will bog your phone down a great amount. Also check to see what apps are using a lot of RAM. Go to manage applications and view running applications.

Answer 7

try this low-end dialer app, http://www.appstorehq.com/dialerone-android-155708/app

gingerbread update has been officially available for Huawei IDEOS now, try that !

Answer 8

If you have installed any call blocking apps, uninstall and see if you get an improvement. (It worked for me.)