Users have already started to complain that Nexus 7, the tablet brought to the market by the Google-Asus duo, has a slow performance when its storage is almost full. The slow speed starts to occur when there is less than 3-2 GB free of storage. According to an increasingly active thread on the ProductForums Google group, it seems that the issue is present on the 16GB version of Nexus 7. If this issue will be reported by more and more users, it might work as a favor for newly released Kindle Fire models.
Users complain about slow Nexus 7
One of the users complains that I/O speeds have droppped especially for write processes, which means more time is spent requesting the data than processing it. Apparently, the applications become very slow to load and the interface gets “jerky”. As many users have noticed, a temporary solution seems to be a factory reset, but unless more space is made available, the issue will persist. And even freeing up space will not work for some.
Some more tech-savvy users have ran the Androbench test and found the following results, when compared to Galaxy Tab 7.7, for example:
Galaxy Tab 7.7 16 GB
Sequential Read 31.47 MB/s
Sequential Write 4.54 MB/s
Random Read 7.41 MB/s 1898.94 IOPS(4K)
Random Write 0.21 MB/s 54.64 IOPS(4K)
Nexus 7 16 GB
Sequential Read 6.57 MB/s
Sequential Write 0.63 MB/s
Random Read 1.84 MB/s 473.08 IOPS(4K)
Random Write 0.05 MB/s 15.08 IOPS(4K)
Now compare that to the following data that is available for the 8GB of the Google Nexus 7 – Seq read 23.1 MB/s; Seq write 8.43 MB/s; Random read 4.77 MB/s; Random write 0.32 MB/s. We can clearly see that there’s something wrong going on there, even if this is the data provided for the 8GB model. We’re not yet sure if this is an issue experienced by many users, but I have to wonder – just how many use almost all the storage? So, there’s a chance that this issue will persists, as Nexus 7 owners will start filling up their space.
Minor issue or growing problem for Google?
And Google might be already aware about this, as somebody already posted this on the Android bug list. Currently, this topic has a medium priority. So, basically, if you run out of space on your Nexus 7, the write performance becomes 1/10 of what it should be, even if the file system is cleared down, which means lots of space becomes free. This issue gets more coverage as Tom’s Hardware and The Register decide to write about it, the author of the former article being one of those in trouble. Here’s what Kevin Parrish had to say:
Even after clearing up to 3 GB of space and turning off Currents, the performance is still sluggish. While the sequential read seemingly has improved, the sequential write still remains low. In fact, even the random write speeds are suspiciously low, leaving me to wonder if something is going on in regards to writing to the flash – could this be why downloads are taking so long as other users have suggested?