Overall speed - HTC U11 Real Life Review

Would you say that the HTC U11 is "fast" in day-to-day use? A higher rating indicates that you think the HTC U11 exhibits fantastic performance. Like, is it as fast as your tears when you watch The Titanic?
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!

Performance for me has been great eversince I enabled performance mode under development settings. Overall very happy.

It's right there for me. Snappy.

waltnich said:
It's right there for me. Snappy.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Found this article that details away to make the u11 even faster. I have tried it and it in deed does speed things up. I have never seen this so forgive me if this is common knowledge, or it is just an illusion of making it seem faster.
You can make your Android device feel snappier by reducing or turning off some of animations. You’ll need to enable Developer options in order to do this. Go to Settings > About phone and scroll down to the System section to look for Build number. Tap on it seven times and you should see a message about being a developer. You can now go back to the previous menu and you should see Developer options listed under System. Head in there and scroll down to find Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale. Tap each in turn and set it to .5x or off. Pick an option and find out what suits you, if you don’t like just go back in and change the values again.
The above was extracted from this article
https://www.androidauthority.com/11-tricks-make-android-run-faster-414542/

I'd give it 5+ if I could.

Related

slight 'jerky' animation?

just got my razr i here in the uk. love the device so far. fantastic form factor and importantly for me, a superb battery life one things nagging me though...is anyone else seeing a slight 'jerky' animation? i see it when swiping left to the 'quick settings' screen and when pressing the apps button. once in the apps though the left <> right swiping is perfect! pressing the home button from the home screen to show 'manage pages' too is pretty jerky or laggy but not sure if that is how it should be this guy sees it initailly when starting the game just before 4.00 mins in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SILUVIwiNF0
but once the game is running all seems ok. this guy i can see it at 1.57 when he swipes left from the homescreen to the 'quick settings'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rfud0GFXRg&feature=related
seems like it occurs when at some places within the phone but not everywhere. have i been spoilt using a nexus for the past week running a silky smooth jellybean vs this running ics? or is it a defective unit?
I would say on mine there is the slightest pause when moving to the quick settings that I hadn't noticed before! I hope it doesn't bug me now!!
Going to the manage pages screen or indeed the "helicopter view" (pinch zoom on the homescreen) is really jerky. But I dont find any noticeable lag or jerkiness anywhere else. In fact I find the whole experience smoother and slicker than even my Nexus 7. The only better Android experience I had was Jelly Bean on the Galaxy Nexus which is super silky.
Jelly Bean is slightly faster at a number of things especially switching screen context as the CPU is ramped to a high clock speed as soon as you touch the screen. I noticed the improvement in opening things like the app drawer when I had my Galaxy Nexus and upgraded to JB.
The Jones said:
I would say on mine there is the slightest pause when moving to the quick settings that I hadn't noticed before! I hope it doesn't bug me now!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ooops sorry about that! :laugh:well i've adjusted both 'window animation scale' and 'transition animation scale' from 1x to off and that certainly speeds the whole ics experience up so that is worth doing if you have not. hope it does not affect the phone in another adverse way though
alpha beta gaga said:
ooops sorry about that! :laugh:well i've adjusted both 'window animation scale' and 'transition animation scale' from 1x to off and that certainly speeds the whole ics experience up so that is worth doing if you have not. hope it does not affect the phone in another adverse way though
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does that not disbale animations?
don't think so. just seems to speed things up a touch.
This does indeed deactivate some Animations but only the ones Navigating in Apps or Settings and so on.
The actual Launcher Animation is not changed at all.
I have the same lag and its not so bad but still somehow annoying.
Didn't noticed that so much in all the test videos out there.
Someone tried to do a hard reset and start from scratch? Maybe fixes it.
The Jones said:
Does that not disbale animations?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed really jerky animations on an M I saw at a Verizon kiosk, and the i seems to be fine from videos I see.

Impression.

I just used the phone for half a day and thoroughly enjoy it. On first impression, the phone is very light for the size and they give nice accessories considering the price; earphones, screen protector, case. The phone have an RGB notification light.
Interface:
-The interface is not stock Android, it's more like a modified version of MIUI. It's very usable once you install your choice of stock launcher, replace the default keyboard, and disable some of the bloat apps.
-Since it's not stock Android, I find it take a bit of time to get used to finding things in the Settings menu.
-The swipe up hardware toggles (Control center, similar to iPhone toggles) are pretty useful and more well organized than stock Android imo.
-Screen off gestures, you get many different commands (double tap on, camera, flashlight, customize your own, etc) and it work pretty good.
-Feature to display network speed on the notification bar
-"Close all" button in the recent apps menu.
-There is a feature to modify apps permissions called "Permissions of App".
-I can not find the shortcut to "Smart Lock" window anywhere, even though it is supported in the OS, if you pair a bluetooth device it will display the notification to enable it. But there seems to be no way to get to the actual Smart Lock window to enable other smart lock features, or I miss it somewhere.
Performance:
I installed all my programs pretty quick. I don't see any lag issues. All the apps launches fast and run smoothly. I don't intend to play any heavy games on a $100 phone, all the light games I play like Subway Surfer and Horizon Chase have no lags.
Connection:
Cell: The dual sim feature seems to work good. I still have to to test the signal quality, but I have to say the data speed is average. I get about 10 to 12mbps down for T-Mobile LTE speed test.
Bluetooth: I'm happy to report the Bluetooth have good performance, the motion of people lips in videos are in synced with the audio from the bluetooth speaker.
WiFi: Can reach high speed, no problem.
GPS: No problem.
Storage:
There is a strange quirk with the phone which is by default your microSD is acts as the main 'internal storage' of the phone (sdcard0), and the actual internal storage act as external (sdcard1). So it would help if you use a fast microSD. I think this is because I have the microSD inserted the first time I set up the phone. Maybe this problem can be prevented by not inserting the microSD for the first time you boot up the phone. I don't know, but I'll just live with it.
Display:
The screen is very nice for a 5.5" 720p AMOLED display. It's not going to be sharp, but it the pixels are smooth so you don't get so much of that pixelation effect. Pretty much deep black, saturated colors and good viewing angles you expect from AMOLED. It's definitely not the brightest of display though, so you might have some problem under direct sunlight.
Camera: I haven't used it too much, but it's pretty average. Like all lower end camera, it have issue with under/over exposure, also the white balance is really off on auto mode. I like the manual mode that let you control the ISO and shutter speed. It's no where bad in good lighting condition, I'd say it takes good enough details for a budget phone.
Speaker: Very average, don't expect much here.
Charging: I used my Anker quick charger and it seems to charge the device fast and safely.
Ringtones selection:
The only thing I don't like is that if you have music in your phone, when you go to change the default ringtones, it will display every single songs in your phone and you have to scroll through it. The way to remedy this is to use the file manager in the phone and create a file called ".nomedia" in your music folder, so the phone will not recognize songs in it. Once you set your desired ringtone, you can remove that file. Or you can simply use a third party app to do the job.
Aside from some quirks, I honestly have no complaints so far, I would have no problem paying the full $150 for this device. I definitely like it better than the Moto G3, except that Motorola phones tends to have superior signals and call quality compared to most other brands. I definitely will not use this phone without a case though since it's on the light side.
Couple of things I noticed
1. The navigation buttons at the bottom (Home, Back & Option) does not have backlight. Not sure if there is a LED there that can be enabled in settings. I couldn't find any setting for that.
2. The data connection drops from 4G LTE to 'H' (HSPA) when on a call.
One of thing I notice about the Gallery app in this phone is there is an "Encrypt" option. If you press it accidentally it encrypt the file and move it into the "Pictures\.GallerySafe" folder. To access the encrypted photo, you have to "pinch outward" in the app.
No Smart Lock support: I tested and even though the smart lock feature turned on when you paired a bluetooth device, it actually doesn't work.
Here are some photo samples. The main problem are over exposure, white balance detection and some lost of saturation. The quality suffers when you're indoor with less lights.
https://goo.gl/photos/j9BrJ7gcbDCXBQgD6
The LED notification light seem like its set a ways under the glass and has this really bright shining affect versus a little glow other devices have.
I must say, the amoled screen on this is quite impressive for $100 phone..
wifi and data speeds are very similar compared to my oneplus 2 (both running Tmobile)
I noticed that the user cannot remove home screen icons. Like when you press and hold there's no option to remove the icon. Some apps show an option to uninstall. But for some pre installed apps there is no option to remove the icon.
Like Google chrome, opera browser, BLU help, amazon etc....
I don't want to uninstall the app, just remove from home screen.
Yea I noticed the LED light being very bright. I could read a book under that lighting.
hamilLewiston said:
I noticed that the user cannot remove home screen icons. Like when you press and hold there's no option to remove the icon. Some apps show an option to uninstall. But for some pre installed apps there is no option to remove the icon.
Like Google chrome, opera browser, BLU help, amazon etc....
I don't want to uninstall the app, just remove from home screen.
Yea I noticed the LED light being very bright. I could read a book under that lighting.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just use another launcher. google now, nova
eksasol said:
One of thing I notice about the Gallery app in this phone is there is an "Encrypt" option. If you press it accidentally it encrypt the file and move it into the "Pictures\.GallerySafe" folder. To access the encrypted photo, you have to "pinch outward" in the app.
No Smart Lock support: I tested and even though the smart lock feature turned on when you paired a bluetooth device, it actually doesn't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The smart lock is really baffling. It prompts to turn on smart lock but never works after that.
tlxxxsracer said:
just use another launcher. google now, nova
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks, that's what i finally did
so i found that there is an option on the desktop settings to 'hide' apps that you don't want to see on the desktop. it will hide the apps, with a password / pin. i'll post a guide later.
I've been using the Honor 5X a bit today so here is a comparison.
Things I prefer on the Vivo XL:
-This is a faster device. Everything about the Blu is more responsive and I don't think it's down to just the 720p display. It seems that this Mediatek CPU is actually pretty decent, games are smoother on it as well. In comparison, Honor 5X is slightly sluggy, not just in the interface, but in apps as well. This is probably due to the EMUI OS on the Honor 5X.
-Blu's UI is actually easier to understand and getting used to, especially if you're not accustomed to MIUI style interface on the Honor 5X.
-I'm not sure if it's due to the screen protector preinstalled on the Honor 5X, but the Blu touchscreen is a bit more sensitive and responsive to touch. Though it's not bad on the Honor 5X.
-The slide up "Control Panel" on the Blu is more useful with lots of options. Hate to admit it, but I prefer this slide up behavior more than Android's default because it's faster being close to your thumb. The notification toggles for the Honor 5X is missing a few options, but not a big deal.
-Blu is thinner and more light weight.
-The USB Type C connector is god sent.
-Removable battery.
Prefer on the 5X:
-Sharper screen that is very bright, its actually brighter than some highend flagship devices. The viewing angle isn't great however, but that is non-problem because it's a phone, not a TV.
-The camera is (only) slightly better. It have a bit more details and much better handle at white balance. Although the Blu camera's tap to focus is faster and more responsive. At this price range, it's not a big difference between the two phones.
-While their EMUI interface takes time to learn, it have some useful features, such as network control for apps. This let you disable data or wifi access for any apps you want, which is a very useful security feature.
-Very nice metal body.
-Finger print scanner, which I don't use.
It's a bit hard to choose which phone I would use as the daily driver. I think that if you go with the Blu, the software is good enough that you don't need to install custom roms. If you go with the Honor 5X, I believe you will need to install custom roms if you want the most out of the performance. I would have to pick the Blu Vivo XL as better value for the money, since it performs better for $50 less, and may last longer due to removable battery and USB Type C connector (more durable than microUSB). Also I like it when companies throw in free phone case and headphones, which is lacking in the Honor 5X packaging.
hamilLewiston said:
so i found that there is an option on the desktop settings to 'hide' apps that you don't want to see on the desktop. it will hide the apps, with a password / pin. i'll post a guide later.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
wheres the guide?
Thanks you for this app

How To Guide Changing your Refreshrate to 90hz.

If you want to change your Refreshrate to 90hz follow this quick guide.
Tested on the latest miui version.
First of all go to the Playstore and download following app:
SetEdit SettingsDatabaseEditor - Apps on Google Play
Provides direct access to the Android settings database
play.google.com
Afterwards go to your settings and change your Refreshrate to 120.
Open the app and find the entry "user_refresh_rate" "120".
Click on the entry, choose to edit and change the number to 90.
Repeat this step with the peak entry and change it to 90hz too.
Close the app.
Voila: you running on 90hz now. In my opinion that's the sweetspot between snappiness and battery saving.
Props to jmikepr:
Unable to make this work. Tried it about a hundred times. Running. EU ROM 12.6
Edit: Got it to work by changing peak display setting and user display setting. Thanks for the tip. 120 hz is overkill. 90hz is perfect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
UPDATE PLEASE READ:
UPDATE FOR EVERYONE!
Changing your refreshrate to 90hz will make some crazy things to your display!
It will get a greenish tint !
Grey will also be displayed really red/brownish
It will flicker even on max brightness!
It will burn in faster - at least my new mi11 u has already some burn ins compared to my mi11 from CN which is like 3 months old now I don't know for sure tho! It's so minimal only my hawk eye can see it anybody else couldn't till now.
Sorry but I just found this out now because my colours looked to differently with low brightness. I also got an exchange device and thought it was just a bad display.
Unable to make this work. Tried it about a hundred times. Running. EU ROM 12.6
Edit: Got it to work by changing peak display setting and user display setting. Thanks for the tip. 120 hz is overkill. 90hz is perfect.
jmikepr said:
Unable to make this work. Tried it about a hundred times. Running. EU ROM 12.6
Edit: Got it to work by changing peak display setting and user display setting. Thanks for the tip. 120 hz is overkill. 90hz is perfect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh good to know! I will at this in the original post.
Anyway to dynamically adjust it based on what's on screen and whether it's moving or not?
speedtripler said:
Anyway to dynamically adjust it based on what's on screen and whether it's moving or not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not right now. Maybe I can find a way - I will let you know.
hotto1996 said:
Not right now. Maybe I can find a way - I will let you know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I read about a way, I think it was from another manufacturer , and it could lower the refresh rate down to 1hz when looking at a still image etc or a page of text etc , something that doesn't need to be constantly refreshed which would obviously be a major battery saver
If I can find the article again I'll post the link
To my surprise, my eyes can't even accept 90hz now. Talk about spoiled.
Great method regardless, thanks for sharing!
linnil said:
To my surprise, my eyes can't even accept 90hz now. Talk about spoiled.
Great method regardless, thanks for sharing!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really haha? I change the animation speeds too via developer settings. For me that's smooth enough!
hotto1996 said:
Really haha? I change the animation speeds too via developer settings. For me that's smooth enough!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm impatient af
I disable all animations in dev options.
I just want to click something and boom, it's on the screen!
Yeah I think so too. I don't understand why everything needs to look fancy. I want a fast and snappy experience
Great stuff, will definitely try this when my Mi 11 Ultra arrives. 90Hz is perfect for me, I don't need 120Hz as I don't play mobile games.
Anyone knows if it'll stay @ 90Hz after a software update? Or it will change itself back to 120Hz?
speedtripler said:
I read about a way, I think it was from another manufacturer , and it could lower the refresh rate down to 1hz when looking at a still image etc or a page of text etc , something that doesn't need to be constantly refreshed which would obviously be a major battery saver
If I can find the article again I'll post the link
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you refer to OnePlus 9 Pro, that has stock dynamic refresh rate...:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1371830276926668801
jericho246 said:
Great stuff, will definitely try this when my Mi 11 Ultra arrives. 90Hz is perfect for me, I don't need 120Hz as I don't play mobile games.
Anyone knows if it'll stay @ 90Hz after a software update? Or it will change itself back to 120Hz?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would just take a quick look after an update. To be honest I don't know tho!
Thank you very much for the solution to change the refresh rate. It works perfectly.
Even if after the upgrade will revert to 120, you can change it afterwards very easy.
Cheers !
How to change refresh rate manually using only default.prop file? Thanks.
One other cool thing I found.
If you set it to 90/90 ( user refresh/peak refresh) like instructed above, i saw that it also drops to 60 when seeing static web browser page content ( for example reading this forum pages ) which is actually pretty cool because it saves even more power this way.
Will test to see if it does the same with the default 120hz but i rear think 120hz is overkill for daily usage.
Only scenario where I can find it useful would be games that support 100hz plus refresh rates .
LE it would seem that the "dynamic" refresh only worked briefly until I clicked on the auto brightness icon in the drop down menu.
LE 2 it actually switching to 60hz when brightness is around and over 80%
Take care and thanks again !
lebigmac said:
How to change refresh rate manually using only default.prop file? Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean?youbcan change the settings in the Meue ofc but only 60hz and 120hz. The file is actually stock, you only changing the numbers and can changed them back any time you want
Best regards
Jhonxs said:
One other cool thing I found.
If you set it to 90/90 ( user refresh/peak refresh) like instructed above, i saw that it also drops to 60 when seeing static web browser page content ( for example reading this forum pages ) which is actually pretty cool because it saves even more power this way.
Will test to see if it does the same with the default 120hz but i rear think 120hz is overkill for daily usage.
Only scenario where I can find it useful would be games that support 100hz plus refresh rates .
LE it would seem that the "dynamic" refresh only worked briefly until I clicked on the auto brightness icon in the drop down menu.
LE 2 it actually switching to 60hz when brightness is around and over 80%
Take care and thanks again !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thx for your reply. Did you already test it out? I was quite busy the last days - sorry for my late response.
Honestly 120hz are kinda gimmick right now. You can feel the difference but it's draining even more battery and like you said as long as there is near to no app supporting it it's just something to be proud of maybe haha
Best regards
Lol you already did test it out . sorry
If anyone find a way to dynamically change the refresh rate please let us know.
For example when watching YT videos maxed at 60hz would be great to scale the display to that resolution ( if it's already possible please let me know )
I saw that the game "The elder scrools: Blades" automatically switches to 60Hz when playing ( haven't tested out with other games because i don't game that much ) .
Also i noted that, if, for whatever reason, the display doesn't change to 60HZ when the game needs it, the game will continuously load and never enter the actual first menu
A quick fix is to increase the brightness over 80% so that the screen is already at 60 before starting the game
Cheers !
Thanks @speedtripler. I just disabled animations in developer options and it's like sh*t off a shovel!
Cheers
Steve

Question Is there way to get the screen to stay at 144hz?

I love this phone, but there is one huge annoyance, there doesn't seem to be a way to make the screen actually run at a sustained framerate.
I have it set to 144hz in the menu, but it routinely drops to 60fps or 120fps depending on the app
This normally isn't a big problem, except nova launcher only runs at 60fps and so scrolling the app drawer is incredibly bad.
Pokemon Go also only runs at 60fps...and since the game operates at 1/2 vsyn, the effective fps is only 30, which is atrocious compared to the 72fps it runs at on the ROG6
Don't confuse Screen Refresh Rate and Frames Per Second. Totally different things.
jwoegerbauer said:
Don't confuse Screen Refresh Rate and Frames Per Second. Totally different things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I mean... Not really
Obviously the screen always runs at a refresh rate of 144hz because it isn't a VRR display(as far as I know that doesn't exist on phones)
So what you are changing in settings is always the frame rate that the phone is rendering at.
Your phone should ALWAYS be rendering at the frame rate you select in the settings menu... But this phone doesn't seem to do that, and it's annoying because it makes the usage experience worse than every other phone I have
BigDog87 said:
I mean... Not really
Obviously the screen always runs at a refresh rate of 144hz because it isn't a VRR display(as far as I know that doesn't exist on phones)
So what you are changing in settings is always the frame rate that the phone is rendering at.
Your phone should ALWAYS be rendering at the frame rate you select in the settings menu... But this phone doesn't seem to do that, and it's annoying because it makes the usage experience worse than every other phone I have
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most of the reviews I've read/watched confirm what you've said. When you set 144hz, it runs that way in the default launcher and all the menus, but when you open certain apps, if they don't support 144hz natively then they just don't run at 144hz. The reviews seem to indicate that the developers of said apps need to enable support for 144hz.
So I was poking around the settings, and entered developer mode. There's an option to force the screen to stay at 144hz at ALL TIMES. It's called LOCK REFRESH RATE. I was able to confirm this works because there is also an option to SHOW REFRESH RATE which displays the screen refresh rate in the upper corner of the display. Before I locked the refresh rate, I used the show refresh rate function to view the refresh rate using different apps. In the phone menus, and app drawer, and google feed, etc the phone would remain at 144hz. But when opening some apps like Chrome for example, the refresh rate would drop to 120hz, etc. However, when I LOCKED the refresh rate in the dev options, the screen refresh rate stayed at 144hz in EVERY app and scenario I was in. It does state that this will drain your battery more rapidly when selecting to lock the refresh rate in the developer options. FYI

How To Guide Redmi Note 10 Pro - System animation frame drop in 120hz [MIUI 13.0.5] - Potential fix

I was experience a lot of droped frames, lagy animations when opening control center, or when using android auto or normal day to day usage. I was really frustrated with my experience.
But one day I was trying to fiddle some settings to find the main problem. And I figured out that resolution scaling can be an issue. So I changed the Text size to L. And voila, It improved so dramaticaly. The animations are smooth, overall experience has been great. Yeah the large text feels kinda weird for a couple of days but if you consider the result. Its worth the compromise.
I really advice you to try this. Just change the Text size to L and restart you device once.
Hope it helps.
Cheerio.

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