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I am not referring to the App opening/closing animations (that can be modified in the launcher or the Developer Options changing the animation scale) but the actual scrolling of websites, webviews, and within applications.

I am noticing this on a few flagship devices, but it occurs far less on Nexus devices. I'm assuming the OEM skins or the 1080p screens on these devices (or both) are contributory factors.

I've tried changing goveneors and I/O schedulers to no avail. This is persistent lag across a range of browsers (Chrome, Samsung, HTC, Dolphin, Boat, Firefox) and across other apps such as Google Plus, the Play Store and Facebook.

Is there any way to improve this scroll lag, it is severely degrading the performance on several devices including S5, M8, Note 3 and others.

Edit: Devices are rooted so all suggestions welcome.

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First I would jump into the developer options and play around with rendering settings in there. This is going to pertain to the GPU probably a lot more than the CPU.

You can also enable some helpful rendering overlays to get visual feedback regarding touch areas, rendered areas, and gpu utilization.

Unfortunately I can't say that one particular item or another will fix it so you will have to play around with them until you see some improvement. Things to try:

  • High performance mode
  • Force GPU rendering

The next step would be to try to overclock the GPU's which is going to vary by device.

I would suspect that a mobile friendly site would have much less of an issue rendering all the scrolling than a full desktop site. Another option would be to zoom in more and see if that alleviates some of the lag.

Yet another option would be to try out some custom roms on each of the devices that boast smoother performance. The trade off you're looking for is more performance which is usually at the cost of more battery drain. Efficiency is a great thing but I would always prefer stable smooth performance first and then efficiency.

Do you see any difference if you start scrolling from a still screen vs continuous up and down scrolling? (ie not letting the gpu stop rendering) If so, bumping up the minimum clock at least temporarily may improve this area. The performance governor is your best bet for now.

For the M8, I would recommend ViperOne. I run it on my M7 and its very smooth. You can overclock the GPU with built in software. The only thing I see some lag on is when there are a ton of complex button/slider items that need to be loaded which happens to only be on a few pages within the ViperTweaks sub-app.

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  • Hi @Enigma, thanks for the answer, I'm going to try some of this out later and I'll get back to you. It's consistent across websites and this is on new Flagship devices. It's the one thing Android seems to keep messing up. I can't flash on the M8 at present but am trying ROMs on other devices as I type this! :) I'll have a lash. I'm going to have to install a new kernel on the Samsung devices to get tweaking the gov etc. I should add this happens in Facebook, Google+ and other apps. Force GPU rendering is degrading the performance sadly.
    – RossC
    Oct 9, 2014 at 14:59
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    Sounds good. Do try the developer options in the mean time as that does provide a small window into some kernel functionality. If you find a good Samsung rom already paired with a good kernel you may have better overall smoothness (worth keeping in mind anyways).
    – Enigma
    Oct 9, 2014 at 15:02
  • The issue is persistent for ALL scrolling. The GPU doesn't seem to be involved, and the 2.5Ghz QUAD core should be more than enough to render websites!! This is the very reason I am tempted to get a few more Apple devices as this is endemic on my devices. I'm paying 600 euro PER PHONE and all i get is stutters and lags sadly.
    – RossC
    Oct 9, 2014 at 15:03
  • That is unfortunate. You may also want to take a peak at ram usage. The more that is readily available, the more efficient/quickly new content will be loaded. Greenify would be a good testing tool to keep unused apps out of memory. I have high hopes that a good kernel and some tweaking can get the performance where you want it.
    – Enigma
    Oct 9, 2014 at 15:04
  • Greenify installed, RAM the usual usage for the respective device. I think the best bet is for me to give a few things a try and I'll reply once I do it (busy evening ahead of me so will be tomorrow probably), and I'll be back to you. :) Thanks!
    – RossC
    Oct 9, 2014 at 15:06

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