I’ve never felt any need to root or put a modded ROM on my phones, but I think I might be to that point. The phone has become almost unusable because of the delays in response, which often add up to stacked commands and errors.
Hangs can also be from corrupted files on the disk. For some reason, there’s a problem where the storage driver runs up to 100% CPU if it gets stuck. A full system restore and wipe may overcome this problem, as, essentially, the files (outside the /system partition) will be reset.
And, yeah, you can also flash the OS to replace even the /system partition. Don’t know if it’d be better to use a custom ROM or to just reflash the one you currently have.
I’d still suggest a factory reset. If you got a new phone you’d have to start over setting everything up anyway, so why not just restore your existing phone to like-new software/OS setup?
Here is a page with instructions: Hard Reset your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 | NextPit Forum
All fixed, and thanks for all the suggestions.
A reset got rid of the ratchety delays and freezing. I was reluctant to do it because I have four or five years of data and app accumulation and didn’t trust the restore process, so it was a long day of backing up the data and phone stuff, then holding my breath and hitting reset.
No problems. Reset, automaticaly started reloading all my apps. A few hours of cleanup and reconfiguration, plus DLing a few apps that didn’t by themselves, and it’s all cleaned out of grit, old data, obsolete apps and such. It’s no speed demon like some newer models, but it keeps up with my pokes and strokes and taps and that’s good enough. (ETA: with very much the same load of apps and photos and so forth, I have something like 4GB more device ROM. That’s a hell of a lot of “grit”!)
The app restoration was… interesting. About six apps didn’t restore (NY Times, Google Earth and Translate, a few games). Stupid Zombies 1 and 3 loaded; 2 did not. Flow Frenzy Bridges restored; Flow Frenzy did not and appears to be gone from the Play Store. (So I installed two sibling versions instead.)
The real surprise was… Flappy Bird. It was my understanding that this was withdrawn from the store and if you reset your device it would not restore. I hate the game, hate everything about it… but I was pleased to have it on my phone for hating purposes. And yup, there is its, restored.
Anyway, thanks again to all who contributed useful suggestions. If the device slows down again, I might go wacky and try CyanogenMod, but for now plain old KitKat is doing just fine (again).
As my mother used to say, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Galaxy S3 here.
Anyone have any experience w/ installing Nougat?
The folk on the Cyanogen forums who have tried to squeeze a Nougat build onto an S3 are reporting minor problems like no wifi, no camera, no SIM recognition.
http://www.cyanogenmods.org/forums/topic/galaxy-s3-cm14-cyanogenmod-14-nougat-rom-i9300/
I mean, if you are happy to install operating software that has been tinkered about with by random strangers off of the internet, good luck!
Well, considering that (at least for me, and I suspect for most people) stock Android itself is operating system software that has been tinkered about with by random strangers off the internet. Since I’m personally acquainted with exactly zero Alphabet employees. And I’ve chatted with CyanogenMod developers, so they’re less random and strange than most. But YMMV.
No one here is sufficiently geek-iconoclast to write their own mobile OS from scratch, I think, so we’re all going to have to depend on the kindness of strangers.
Great, glad you got everything reset and restored ok for the most part. Unfortunately the best suggestion to avoid future slowdowns is don’t install too many apps. 
Or just be willing to reset periodically.
I don’t mind resetting in general; the usual slovenly habit of not having ever backed things up sufficiently to do it quickly was the hurdle here.