New teracube 2e - no push notifications? & serious lag and apps freezing

General Bug reports
#1

Just switched from Fairphone 4. Phone was slower but I was a change from 6gb to 4gb RAM. However, my new Teracube 2e has serious lag. My most ‘intensive’ app is Words With Friends, and it lags and freezes pretty frequently, and has to be closed. Same with Instagram. Microsoft Solitaire actually crashes at least once every day I play it.

What’s worse is that I don’t get any push notifications if an app is closed. So if Messenger is closed, I won’t get alerted to any new messages as it won’t check in the background. Same with Instagram, Words with Friends, WhatsApp…

Texts are the worst, as they won’t ever receive the message if the app was closed when it came - I’ve had a few text verifications and I needed to open the app and then resend each time, or it never appeared. I even tried to get a 3rd party texting app to fix that, but no change.

I’ve checked notification settings and as far as it is aware, it should be retrieving them. My next attempt will be to look into my VPN or Avast but that’s clutching at straws because why would they prevent all background push notifications?

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#2

Do you get the same performance issues with Avast disabled or uninstalled?

As far as the notifications, you have to disable battery optimization on any apps you want to run in the background. Each app has its own setting for that. If you go into Settings and search for “optimization” the Battery Optimization settings should come right up.

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#3

Welcome!

Sorry for the frustration.

Can you tell us what version of Android you are on currently?

Also, Battery Saver and Data Saver can delay notifications and other background activity significantly.

As for lag, it will be slower than the FP4 (about FP3 performance), but it should settle in after a few days after being set up.

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#4

I’ve just uninstalled it - fingers crossed that helps

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#5

Hello, thanks for the prompt reply!

The battery is far better than that of the FP4 and I’m able to keep it well-charged and on wifi, so I don’t think it’s needed to use either Battery Saver or Data Saver.

I’m on Android 11.

The lag is getting a bit better, thankfully, as you say - I knew it was a RAM ‘downgrade’ as it were, but the trade-off was worth it IMO. Was alarmed about the lag, that seemed too steep a change, but that seems okay, phew. The continued lack of calendar notifications, however, along with any form of messaging, is unfortunate.

Just uninstalled Avast at ZeroAbility’s advice, so we’ll see if that makes a difference. It seems to suddenly find days-old notifications when I restart it (completely forgot to check Telegram, oops), which got my hopes up, but then they all stop again, sigh.

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#6

You can try two levels of fixes:

  1. In Settings, under DuraSpeed, turn it ON (counter-intuitive), and allow-list every program you want to be kept alive longer.

  2. In the individual app’s settings, disable Battery Optimization.

These two combined should keep things open in the background unless the device is under really heavy resource contention.

#7

Apparently I already had Duraspeed on and running for several apps (such as Instagram) that I’m still not consistently getting notifications for. Turned it on for others, such as my 3rd party texting app.

I can’t find an option inside each app’s setting for battery optimisation. I can see a section about what the battery use has been since last charge, which stubbornly shows as 0%, but nothing else that talks about battery. I did find Battery Optimisation in Settings, within Special App Settings, and the separate apps listed within it, so I’ll fiddle with that today, thank you. Fingers crossed this does it.

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#8

Nope, that’s not done it. Already missed three Words with Friends notifications that came in within the last hour. One was 18 mins ago, and I’d definitely changed all the settings by then.

Obviously not the most important notifications in the word, but I did change both settings for it, so it’s indicative of how others will work.

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#9

Update: I get more notifications now than I used to, but I still randomly miss things for no reason. I’ve had no notification for Messenger posts today and I missed a confirmation-number text once more. I get no calendar appointments at all. I set a daily alarm to check on a couple of messaging apps, but it’s less than ideal to set alarms to remember to open them all, and with too many apps open (so that it’ll find them in the background), the phone just freezes and won’t, for example, load webpages - as is to be expected of any processor running too many tasks.

Is there any sure fix for this, please? Missing all my calendar appointments is getting a little wearing; I’ve already failed to join an important call.

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#10

In each app’s settings, click the battery usage entry and make sure it is Unrestricted.

#11

Thank you for the response. Unfortunately, that’s not something that appears as an option for me, either within the individual app settings or searching elsewhere in Settings. “Battery Usage” as a search term in Settings simply brings up a graph of overall usage since last charge, and the menu option within that of “show app usage” doesn’t display any additional data or options. Poking around, the closest Settings option would be the Special App Settings-> Battery Optimisation, which I already amended after your earlier suggestion.

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#12

Hi, it’s been over ten days and I still don’t know what you meant by this, sorry.

My notifications are somewhat better though not wholly fixed, but my battery now drains in well under a day. I also have apps frequently freezing or crashing mid-task. Firefox needs to be restarted once or twice a day because it gives up and just refuses to load anything beyond a blank white screen. I know (or at least suspect) this is all due to having the tasks set to run constantly in the background, and I know that that solution isn’t even 100% working, and I’m somewhat at a loss.

Please could you - or anyone else - tell me if there is some further solution, or at least an explanation of how to implement the previous solution on my version of Android?

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#13

Are you willing to use a Beta level release?

In our Android 13 Beta 2 release, DuraSpeed has been completely removed and background apps should not be paused as often.

It also has the better battery management of Android 13 vs earlier, and it is much easier to put apps to Unrestricted, like how I instructed you prior for time-critical apps.

If you would like to try the release, it is here:

Please read the full release notes carefully and decide if you would like to try this early to see if it addresses your issues better.