Android 4.3 Hits the Nexus 7

Well, as fate would have it, after my disappointment with my Nexus 7 and its declining flash memory performance the latest version of Jelly Bean in the form of Android 4.3 actually includes support for TRIM. This capability was lacking in prior versions of the operating system unless your rooted your device and used various lagfix solutions.

Anyway, TRIM is activated when the Nexus 7 has more than 80% battery left when off the charger (or at least 30% remaining if on the charger) and the screen is turned off for an hour which means that you should not see any performance degradation when you are using your tablet during the day. Apparently, TRIM is activated once per twenty four hours

Anyway, I upgraded my Nexus 7 to Android 4.3 yesterday after the update downloaded overnight so I will see if that makes a significant difference. What isn’t clear is if TRIM will work if the storage is encrypted (as I have not put my corporate e-mail account back on it) so I will need to do some further research prior to doing that.

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    • Howard on August 5, 2013 at 08:37
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    Hi Boyd,

    I also have a Nexus 7 (original) I can’t say I have noticed any major slowdown as I only have about a dozen apps installed however I have just updated to Android 4.3 as well. I will see if there is any performance increase by satisfying the above requirements for TRIM to run.
    I will report back, thanks for the info.

    1. Will be interested to hear how you go 🙂

      Before I wiped my Nexus 7 a few weeks ago to unlock the bootloader and root is it was terribly slow and I reckon the encryption had something to do with it (everything including free space is encrypted which effectively means the drive is always full to prevent loss of security). I also loaded up my Nexus 7 with video podcasts as well which were several hundred megabytes each and were deleted after viewing – without TRIM I would have used up all the truly free flash storage in a month or so.

    • Howard Greenhill on August 6, 2013 at 08:36
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    OK left the Nexus on with a black screen for 3 hours last night, which should have given TRIM a chance to run and do the garbage collection.
    I must say that unless I’m imagining it , boot times do seem a little quicker as does the general responsiveness.
    The change isn’t huge though, I will do some more tests and report back.

    1. Thanks for the update! My N7 is still going strong but will still leave corporate mail off it (I have plenty of other devices that have access).

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