Is file access on Android really that slow?

Report · Aug 22, 2011

Hi, while developing a mobile app to run on both Android and iOS platforms I noticed that, while running on Android, media file loading is extremely slow. Not only slow, but it seems to almost freeze the entire app while loading media files packed within the app. The same doesn't happen on Windows while testing or on iOS devices, even slower ones. All media types seem to be affected (tryied with audio, video and picture), so I believe it is some sort of general file access problem. While testing, I noticed that loading three pngs of about 1024x768 pixels freezed the app on a Galaxy Tab, making it unresponsive, for about 3 to 4 seconds!

Is file access on Android devices really this slow? Is there a workaround?

Report · Sep 03, 2011

Hi there. I got the same problem. Bump

Report · Sep 04, 2011

Bad news: It hasn't gotten any better on air 3.0 beta 2. I looked around on google and this is clearly an Adobe problem.

I may have to abandon my android port of my project because of the rediculous lag for loading sound files.

Report · Sep 05, 2011

Online file access is faster than local file access. Give that a try as stuipd as it is.

Report · Sep 07, 2011

Not the case here... Medialoading take the same time on each device and is even a bit faster on Android Galaxy tab (the old one) than on the ipad 2.

Are you doing anything else than loading the file? Where is the file you try to load? What is the size of the file?

Report · Sep 09, 2011

I'm using standard media loading, like the Loader class for picture files, and streams for video and audio. The file size really doesn't matter, the app just stop for some time when I start any loading. Testes on Motorola Droid and Samsung Galay Tab...

Report · Sep 07, 2011

Vote for my bug here:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2960585

Thanks

I have uploaded a file that proves that when there are large directories the system slows down significantly. Replace a large directory with a small one and the situation improves.

Report · Sep 08, 2011

You and I are having problems while others are not.

Have a look at this link:

http://blog.daveburrows.com/2010/08/26/how-to-speed-up-the-samsung-galaxy-s-so-it-flies/

We both have the Galaxy Tab and they did something funky with their file system that is making everything slow when there are a lot of files. The only way to fix it is to root the Tab and I won't be telling my customers that they need to do that. So much for android. It is just not worth supporting. I will save myself a lot of grief by selling my Galaxy Tab and tossing my Android Port.