Does Android have anything similar to Windows Task Manager, where you can see what is running and the amount of resources being consumed? Something is making my phone run ridiculously slow (and hot, and chewing up my battery) and I’d like to figure out what it is.
Actually, I have a pretty good suspicion I know what it is. I suspect either Avast AV, or Malwarebytes. Or both. When I uninstall them the phone’s performance seems to improve, but then I get all nervous about not having any AV or malware protection and I wind up putting them back on. Until the phone starts acting sluggish again.
The system standard Battery setting menu gives information about what apps have been using power on the system since it was last fully charged. Generally, that’s a pretty good proxy for CPU utilization.
Direct measure of CPU cycles is apparently only available in apps in the Store. However, the primary ones I saw seemed to have bad reviews because they’re ad-ware, either demanding you buy a “premium” key or suffer through advertising in your notification bar (masquerading as actual value-added system notices). And another app running in the background to measure CPU utilization will itself use more CPU.
AV apps are indeed often responsible for slowdowns. If you don’t download a lot of apps and don’t browse through Firefox/Chrome much there shouldn’t be much reason to worry about malware.
If you have a Samsung phone you may have a widget called “Active applications”. That will put a number on your home screen showing the number of active apps and let you monitor CPU usage when you tap it.
I don’t browse much on my phone except here at the SDMB. I’m a paid member so I don’t get ads, but I do follow the occasional link (and on a phone, there’s no way to mouse over to see where the link goes before you click it, so it can be a crapshoot). I used to use Tapatalk to read SDMB, gritted my teeth when they started in with the ads, and when SDMB got their mobile-friendly skin up and running that’s when I switched over to using Chrome. But maybe I need to grit my teeth again and switch back.