Xperia X 10 II GPU heavily affected by GPS fix (Pure Maps and other GPS related apps)

[Fellfrosch]

REPRODUCIBILITY: 100% (always)
OSVERSION: 4.5.0.19
HARDWARE: Sony Xperia 10 II - Dual SIM - xqau52 - xqau52 - 1.0.0.19 - aarch64
UI LANGUAGE: Deutsch (user: de_DE, os: de_DE.utf8)
REGRESSION: not specified

DESCRIPTION:

Frame rate is breaking down massively on apps which uses GPS, as soon as they got an GPS fix.

PRECONDITIONS:

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

1.Enable GPS
2.Start an GPS using app like Pure Maps an wait for GPS fix
3. Interact with the App (On Pure Maps, go into settings and try to change some things)

EXPECTED RESULTS:

Frame rate of the apps stays at least, similar to that when no GPS fix there. And everything runs smooth and nicely.

ACTUAL RESULTS:

The GPS using app gets very sluggish. Frame rate is dropping. The apps tend to crash (Pure Maps very often).

MODIFICATIONS:

• Patchmanager: yes
• OpenRepos: yes
• Chum: yes
• Other: none specified

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Further observation: When GPS is running in background and there is a fix, this fix gets interrupted for a very short time when closing another app (or peaking).
Device Owner User: defaultuser
Home Encryption: enabled

---

the initial version of this bug report was created using Bugger 0.9.9+git4

[silta]

I have the same problem since more than a year. Mostly with puremaps on my Xperia 10 II.
Sometimes it appears when using OSM Scout, but not that often.
I have no problems with android apps like HERE Maps or Moovme.

I have no patchmanager or other patches installed.

[Fellfrosch]

I can confirm, that on android apps there is no impact. I can run organic maps without any lagging. This is somewhat ridiculous: native apps struggling with GPS fix and are running sluggish but alien apps run fine.
Further observation: Map rendering doesn’t seem to be the culprit: Moving the maps around inside Pure Maps and OSMScout is quite smooth, even with GPS fix. The Problems are starting when you use the GUI Parts of the app.

[rinigus]

On Tama (XZ2), I cannot reproduce it. After GPS fix and enabling framerate display in SFOS Settings/Development options, I am still getting 60fps and mostly green bar on top. That is when using Pure Maps and either looking at the map or browsing its menus (Search, Settings, and so on). This was done after GPS lock.

So, please report which framerates do you get. Also, is it the same for Pure Maps and other map apps. Pure Maps is using OpenGL acceleration for maps display and it has caused some issues on other mobile Linux platforms due to triggering some kernel/GPU driver bugs. Although, so far, it was not on SFOS.

If you see lower framerate in different map apps, it is probably some issue with the official port. But it would be great to get some values of framerates.

[Fellfrosch]

Hi rinigus, as written in initial post, I have a drop of the frame rate with all GPS using applications, that I have in use.
On OSMScout and GPS info the GPS-fix has just a small impact. max 5 frames. So maybe this is normal.
On Pure Maps the impact is huge:
Settings with fix:

Maps without fix:

Maps with fix:

I never recognized such problems on my Pro 1. But on both of the Xperia 10 II we have, it is the same.

[rinigus]

OK, if it is more in Pure Maps than in OSM Scout, it may have something to do with the too frequent update of GPS and processing done by Pure Maps. I’ll have to recall what was done when the location is updated… Try to disable map matching in Pure Maps (snap position to road) and see if it helps

[Fellfrosch]

having snap position on road activated or not doesn’t make a real difference.
Turning off the use of compass helps a little bit, but not too much.

[Fellfrosch]

I stand corrected the impact on OSMScout is the same as on Puremaps. But it is only there, wenn you are actually navigating, not wenn you just open the app. But as soon as you start routing the problem is the same, even so it doesn’t crash that often.

:

[karry]

During navigation, OSM Scout do quite a lot processing in gui thread. I know about this issue. But it has nothing to do with the gps fix. During normal map browsing I am not experiencing described problem. I am also using Xperia 10.II.

[Fellfrosch]

Thanx @karry for this Information.
So if you are as well using a Xperia 10 II are you experience the same behaviour with Pure Maps. That it runs very sluggish when GPS Position is locked? Are you experiencing as well a lot of crahes, when going in Menu. Or are you just using your own Map App?

By the way… this is all quite strange. All the crashes are gone when I have the frame rate display on. The frame rate looks still quite bad. But the sluggish behaviour is mostly gone and Pure Maps runs quite stable. At that moment I turn the Frame rate view off it’s just like before. Lot’S of lagging and crashes.

[karry]

To share some numbers, with OSM Scout:

• just showing the static map: 57fps
• moving the map, keep finger on screen: 32fps
• moving the map with enabled hillshading: 21fps

It is pretty bad. It is just compositing tiles loaded in gpu memory… I remember that Jolla 1 had better results, I will check it tomorrow.

With Pure Maps, I am not using it too often, but I am not eperiencing crashes.

• without fix (disabled gpx): 55fps
• with fix: 22 fps

[karry]

With android app (mapy.cz) it seems to be really better, but phone is not displaying app frame rate. Just compositor one. Strange.

[robang74]

Why the phone is doing a refresh rate of 60fps when 30fps is enough?

It would save a lot of energy the GPU working at 30fps capped and for my experience a cap on the top performance allows to prepare the next task reducing the risk that on high load the fps fall down.

Can we put a cap to the fps?