Poor performance overall [Android / Android Auto]

Voters 5

Done

A	Kevin Chernoff

I have just used ABRP for a major trip for the first time with live data and android auto support. While the app was invaluable, the experience was quite frustrating due to a variety of bugs/crashes and also due to poor performance of ABRP overall in this configuration.

We tried running ABRP with Android Auto on both a Sony Xperia XZ1 compact (Snapdragon 835 with 4GB RAM) and a Pixel 6 (8GB RAM) and in both cases we had to reboot either ABRP or the whole phone multiple times a day due to app eventually slowing to a crawl or stopping working entirely. Even with a fresh reboot the performance is pretty sluggish, but it was mostly usable as long as I didn't launch anything else (such as a web browser) on the target phone. Starting any other apps would cause more frequent hangs/issues only resolved by a reboot.

The issues are bad enough that it would drive me to use another app for this sort of functionality if one existed; I don't know if there are memory leaks or other issues with the app itself, the android auto implementation or other aspects, but spending some development time on optimization would do a lot to make the app more pleasant and reliable to use.

2022-01-07 -

Activity Newest / Oldest

Kevin Chernoff

Unfortunately, I just returned from 4 days of road tripping and was excited to try out the improvements, but once again had bad enough issues with ABRP's Android Auto implementation across two phones (same ones as last time) that I had to give up on using it almost immediately and buy a car phone cradle at our first charging stop and run/display ABRP directly on the phone display instead.

It was similar to my issues last year (very slow, hanging for seconds/minutes, frequent crashing), if perhaps somewhat worse even. On my end, the only functional difference was that I'm now using an OBDlink CX with the built-in BLE OBD functionality (which was a pain to get initially connected and also disconnected itself occasionally) rather than via Torque Pro (in order to remove the internet round-trip dependency on getting live car data, which did work nicely when it wasn't hung up), so I'm not sure if the problems are related to overhead from that component, or other app changes that are still making it difficult to successfully run the Android Auto UI on anything but very high-end hardware.

Comparatively, running ABRP only on the phone with the screen constantly on and instead running the Google Maps display on Android Auto (simultaneously casting from the same device), which conceptually should be more work for the phone than just driving the Android Auto display with ABRP and the phone screen turned off, worked an order of magnitude better. ABRP still hung and crashed/closed itself occasionally (Google Maps on the projected Auto display never did) but it was less of an issue to just re-launch/restart it on the phone, and if I couldn't get it going again for a leg it was not the same panic as I still had navigation to the next charging stop working via Google Maps (just no live charge predictions).

I also attempted to run "just" the Android Auto ABRP interface without also launching/interacting with the app on the phone, but I couldn't seem to get this to work in any meaningful way; you can't properly set/configure anything, and nothing seems to sync or run unless it's also talking on the phone - trying to use a second phone linked to the same account to remote-control the route and push changes doesn't seem to work either, the two phones don't seem to "sync" their state at all.

Bo_ABRP

We have done a number of improvements over the last couple of months when it comes to performance; our test phones run a lot cooler now. Let us know if you have any further feedback!

Gerald Kowalsky

On my first trip using ABRP (4.2.4), running on a Samsung Galaxy Fold3 my battery dropped from 97% to 43% in the first hour of use. I had the phone on the wireless charge tray and switched to a wired connection at this point and over the next hour, the charge basically held/gained a few percent.

Starting the trip we must've had about 10-15 instances of the app failing to start navigation. During this time we had just crossed an international border and data to the phone was very very poor, once we got further away and the phone had a stronger data connection the route navigation started. There were two to three Wireless projection faults while driving that resulted in a reset of AA but when it came back (without user interaction) the music and route continued. I haven't had this issue with other navigation apps.

We noticed a lag of roughly 1km between the vehicle position and the position in the app. In reading the forum I will switch to the ABRP map and see how my second day works out.

Bo_ABRP

Status changed to: Done

Katya_ABRP

Status changed to: User Feedback

Katya_ABRP

Hi Kevin & other voters,

As it's been a couple months since this report was submitted and we've since released several updates - how do you feel the performance is currently?

Are you still experiencing the same issues as previously?

/Katya

Stefan Bäckman

Hi
In general I don't have any big problems with the performance. Maybe it's due to shorter trips. When I drive a longer distance I feel the app is getting more and more buggy. Maybe my use of the phone and app is causing the problem. On longer trips I usually have to replan the route several times and I disconnect the phone back and forth during charging due to using the phone to pay for stuff. It feels like there is a memory leak or something similair.
I almost always use Spotify/Google Podcasts at the same time (via AA of course). Right now I am using a Pixel 6 phone but also used Oneplus 9 and Huawei P20 with the same behavior. I replaced the old P20 due to lack of wireless AA and performance (but maybe it was due to buggy ABRP...?). I also have the phone connected to an OBD2 adapter for the battery information and live consumption.

I would be glad to help but don't really know how to take performance logs or other kind of troubleshooting.
/Stefan

Thomas Knaller

I found out that this issue usually occurs when Android Auto first starts Google Maps and then you start ABRP - then both run simultaniously, both accessing GPS etc.

What helps for me is killing Google Maps from the Phone screen as soon as ABRP is started - which is only required after Google Maps started for once. After that it should be fine even after Phone Reboots & Android Auto reconnects.

Samuel_ABRP

Thanks for that observation, very valuable. Indeed Android Auto consumes a lot of memory (even confirmed by google) so that other apps that also consume a lot of memory, like the camera, will cause stability issues. We also noticed, that wireless Android Auto seems to be a bit more laggy than the cable version, which could also have an impact on the stability.

Also from other posts i saw that you use ABRP and AA in parallel, which causes also double the resources to be used.

Kevin Chernoff

Thanks for the extra info. I'm using wired AA in my case so that avoids one additional complicating factor, but next time I do a long trip I'll attempt to just run the AA interface and see if that works out better.

That being said, performance for ABRP is never "super snappy" for me even when just running the app or webpage so some optimization could still improve the experience overall I think.