Evernote restarts after not using for a few minutes

[Freddykgb 0]

Android 11 and 12, S21 Ultra

This has been happening since I have my phone. Not sure why, and it's annoying.

I often want to make a small note when I'm watching something, but a lot of the time, Evernote reboots when I select it from my list of open apps.

It can't be because of insufficient RAM. So why does it happen?

 

Thanks

 

[Alxa 479]

Welcome to the forums. The behaviour is seen by many users. It seems due to bad programming design (having zero capabilities to handle being in the background, therefore almost always cold starting, no straight sync and so on...). If it really corrupts your workflow I would suggest raising a ticket. 

[Freddykgb 0]

Hi, thanks. Where exactly can I raise a ticket?  

[Alxa 479]

In the EN app go to preferences / support

[ehrt74 240]

Evernote stays open in the background for a reasonable length of time on my phone (pixel 6 pro) and it starts very quickly.

I would imagine there is a bug causing it to crash when it gets pushed to the foreground. 

In general i'm not a fan of the technology v10 is based on. fortunately this should improve over time. if evernote had started their rewrite today, i wonder if they'd have picked flutter or kotlin multiplatform? both now run on the web, android, iOS, windows, OS X and linux with wayland/X server and both do so with near native performance.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

With iOS it depends. If an app in the background blocks a lot of memory, it may get terminated when another app is opened, and the phone runs out of RAM. Then it needs to reload on opening. This is more relevant on older or cheaper devices that have less RAM memory.

[matej1990 185]

On 12/5/2021 at 2:27 PM, Freddykgb said:

Android 11 and 12, S21 Ultra

This has been happening since I have my phone. Not sure why, and it's annoying.

I often want to make a small note when I'm watching something, but a lot of the time, Evernote reboots when I select it from my list of open apps.

It can't be because of insufficient RAM. So why does it happen?

 

Thanks

This should not be happening. I guess ONE UI battery saving features are kicking in and killing Evernote.

I would first try to do this: Lock the app in RAM
To lock an app in RAM, start by opening it. While it's open, either press the recent apps button or perform the recent apps gesture to get to the Overview screen. Now, tap the icon at the top of the app's card and choose "Keep open for quick launching."
Here is a link to a GIF of how to do it: https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/lock-apps-memory-your-samsung-galaxy-0276787/

This way you pin the app inside the RAM (it's always opened in the background) and avoid any battery optimizations. Then either leave it that way or put Evernote on battery optimization whitelist: https://dontkillmyapp.com/samsung

[Alxa 479]

Thank you @matej1990 tried both suggestions together (lock app and disable all battery optimization). Tested on two Samsung devices (A50 and TabA). After some time (minutes) in the background Evernote cold starts when called again from android home screen. I would not mind if that would not last 5-10 seconds each time, real bad UX since EN10.

[matej1990 185]

My suggestion was for S21 Ultra because this phone has more than enough RAM, so the problem I think is with battery saving measures.

A50 and Tab A are different story since both of these devices have much less RAM compared to S21 Ultra. I'm pretty sure RAM (and other not top end specs) is a problem with these 2 devices. EN 10 simply needs a lot of power since it is a bad written app. It's not optimized app and needs brute force to work as fast as other apps on my phone. As I said somewhere in these forum I recently switched from Pixel 3 XL to Pixel 6 Pro. It is a really big difference how EN 10 behaves now. First start is fast enough, navigation feels snappy, it will stay opened in the background, opening of the notes is fast, scrolling is smooth,... Sure I wish it would be even faster (it is still the slowest app on my phone), but at least now I'm using the app more than on my old phone.

The best you can do on A50 and Tab A is to uninstall all the apps that you are not using. Stop every app background process that is not necessary. The point is to make as much resources available for EN 10.
If there is no difference I recommend installing v8. Good old not resource hungry v8.  I would still be using it, but I can not tell you how many times I have clicked on "update all" button in Google Play Store and forgot to cancel the EN update... 😑 I simply gave up.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

It is not badly written. It is just the design: It runs inside of a framework, and the framework handles the interaction with the OS and the device. Surely it needs more resources than a native app.

No experience on Android, but on iOS apps that are backgrounded only have a small set of actions they are allowed to perform. Given the power of modern smartphones and goal to get users through the day without charging, cutting background apps off is a logical choice.

[Alxa 479]

5 hours ago, matej1990 said:

A50 and Tab A are different story since both of these devices have much less RAM compared to S21 Ultra. I'm pretty sure RAM (and other not top end specs) is a problem with these 2 devices. EN 10 simply needs a lot of power since it is a bad written app. It's not optimized app and needs brute force to work as fast as other apps on my phone.

Exactly my understanding of bad programming, too. Releasing a software which is designed on a foundation that literally excludes average devices is actually bad. I can open a note with 30 screen shots and some text in it in OneNote App within around 2 seconds (cannot time it correctly, it is too fast😄), Evernote gives me around 60-70 seconds to display the note... that is bad! Fortunately the average user base reflects this pretty well to Evernote in play store commenting and rating (already down to 3.4 btw). I wonder if/when they overcome to tackle the transition of the time critical code out of the sluggish framework.

[matej1990 185]

13 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

It is not badly written. It is just the design

Ok, then it is a bad design. The point is EN 10 on Android is a bad app.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

Simple to solve: Uninstall, good bye.

The same app (as well embedded in a framework) works fine on iOS. Maybe has more to do with specific Android setups - not all Android users seem to see the same.

[matej1990 185]

Why should I uninstall it? It's working much better now that I have a new (more powerful!) phone. The problem is it is a bad app if you don't have a top specs phone.

Even iOS version is not that good. Similar/same issue as here with the OP?

 

[PinkElephant 8,091]

EN runs OK (slower than on newer hardware) on a 2014 iPad Air and a 2015 iPhone 6S+. This is as old as it will get, because iOS 13 is the minimum requirement.

EN drives a unified mobile app. The unfortunate result for iPad users is that the specific properties of the iPad are not supported. Basic use is no issue, multitasking is out of scope. 

We iPad users should make EN aware of our wishes by using the feedback option, or by support tickets.

 

[ehrt74 240]

On 12/14/2021 at 9:43 PM, Alxa said:

Exactly my understanding of bad programming, too. Releasing a software which is designed on a foundation that literally excludes average devices is actually bad. I can open a note with 30 screen shots and some text in it in OneNote App within around 2 seconds (cannot time it correctly, it is too fast😄), Evernote gives me around 60-70 seconds to display the note... that is bad! Fortunately the average user base reflects this pretty well to Evernote in play store commenting and rating (already down to 3.4 btw). I wonder if/when they overcome to tackle the transition of the time critical code out of the sluggish framework.

I use OneNote at work and on the web it's ridiculously slow. Evernote is much faster. I've never tried the OneNote Android app, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's also a wrapper around the JavaScript base.

The android app will get faster with time, if developers of the base technology and Evernote themselves carry on working on it. A note-taking app running in a framework on a device with 8 64 bit cores and 12 GB of ram isn't necessarily slow (of course JavaScript is not a compiled language, so the interpreter has to do a lot more work, but even so, every phone that has been made in the last ten years is a supercomputer).

To some degree the art of writing performant code is becoming more specialized. Evernote's backend, for example, is immensely performant and I imagine they run large numbers of automated performance tests against new features and code changes. The UI, not so much. End-users tend to want features first and performance second. Also performance optimisation often comes at a cost, and that is specialisation and greatly increased maintenance costs.

The way I see it, if the price of using Evernote on a mobile device in 2021 is to have a modern, powerful device, then I'm willing to pay it, provided Evernote in 2025 also runs fine on the powerful device from 2021. Hardware always gets faster. As long as the software doesn't get hungrier faster than the hardware gets faster, things will be ok.