Keyboard lag on Nexus

[Paddypix]

It's hard to describe this problem. When I'm typing on my Nexus 10 it starts out OK, but then after a few words it suddenly freezes and the words stop appearing. I can keep typing and sometimes, but not always, the words suddenly appear (complete with many errors because I haven't been able to see what I'm doing). Sometimes it just freezes and doesn't start again. Could it be something to do with the installed onscreen keyboard and is it possible to download an alternative?

[Workingman]

Sory Liz, it's a pain. My initial thought was that it is a resources problem - too many things trying to do too much all at the same time - a lot of them in the background.

However, a bit or research shows that it is a common problem for some Android devices. I found this article with an app that might fix things. It could be worth a try.

[Paddypix]

Thanks for that Frank. It looks a bit scary for a newbie like me. The app is for rooted devices which doesn't apply to my Nexus and some of the comments would make me afraid to risk it. The lag comes and goes and seems to happen more on forums rather than when I'm just surfing. Looks like I'll just have to suck it up!

[Workingman]

Well, doing a bit more reading and all the answers seem to be pointing to either booting in safe mode and trying to figure out what is running, and when, and then to keep disabling things to see if the problem goes away, or...................... the quick way.

Saying "to Hell with it" and doing a factory reset - a bit like a fresh install of Windows when nothing seems to be working! There are details here with instructions on backing up your personal data.

It does look like too many things all trying to do things at the same time and using up CPU cycles as well as loading up your RAM with junk.

There are times when even people like me go the 'sod it!' route. We save as much personal stuff as we can then go back to a pristine OS and start again.

[Suff]

Hi PP. My first thought was spelling correction. I see this with IE on some forums from time to time. I did a bit of checking and it seems that this was noticed on ICS (Version 4.0) of Android when typing in Landscape.

The suggestion was to

Head into Settings>Language & input> and uncheck the box for “Spelling correction.”

Also you might want to try typing in portrait and see how that goes. If it fixes the problem, then you know you have the issue.

[Paddypix]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll look into backing up and factory reset but I'll try the spelling thing first as it looks less scary.

[Workingman]

What's to lose. Liz, it must be worth a try?

Spelling check is one of those background services eating up resources and turning it off might help. It will be interesting to see if it does.

When I was looking into this I found references to keyboard lag going back to 2009. I also note that KitKat 4.4.2 also suffers. It is not a a new thing. It also happens to keyboard apps such as SwiftKey.

[Paddypix]

I tried to fix it by downloading Swiftkey. Probably just made it worse. It's on charge at the moment so I'll try it later. It needs charged every day so I could probably get rid of many apps that are draining the battery so quickly.

[Paddypix]

Just reporting back. I wimped out of the factory reset because such things scare me. I disabled both the spell check and the Google voice typing which I never use anyway, and so far the typing lag seems to be cured, fingers crossed that I'm not tempting Fate. The tablet itself if still fairly slow to start up etc, but I'll live with that in the meantime until I give it more thought. Thanks for the help gentlemen.

[Paddypix]

Wish me luck. I've bitten the bullet and am in the middle of a factory reset.