TCL NxtPaper 11

[Quoth]

This issue you have with Edge is nothing to do with Android or TCL.

I used, sold and programmed MS Products for decades. I'm realistic, not hating.

You are blaming Android and TCL for MS's poor software.

I've used NT 3.5 to Windows 10. You can "freeze" the system with a user program or even get a BSOD since NT 4.0.

I've used UNIX in 1980s. Android since version 3.0

Linux since about 1997.

Discuss Edge browser for Android in its own thread. It's got ZERO to do with the TCL Nxtpaper 11

The voluntary take up of Edge outside of MS Windows is tiny. I've never seen any browser "freeze" Android, but I've not used Edge. I've used Einkbro, Chrome, Brave, Firefox, Samsung, Opera and some others on Android.

Edge is a browser that's part of Windows 10 and 11. It's not even the original Edge, but now based on Chrome. Chrome works fine on Android (I've tested Android 7 to 13) and the TCL Nxtpaper.

[plusz]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Discuss Edge browser for Android in its own thread. It's got ZERO to do with the TCL Nxtpaper 11

exactly, please save us from your off-topic "wisdom"

[Gormagon]

Originally Posted by plusz

Microsoft gives awesome reading tools in Edge, the reading mode and read aloud, puls now the bing copilot. I use it for reading web content, it's the best browser for that task.

Ok, using a browser for web content makes sense. I wasn't so sure what you meant by "mobile reader" in your previous post.

I haven't tried all dedicated ebook reader apps on android but there must be some that can use Google's speach synthesis. My Meebook has this feature in the build in reading app, the app is quite good, by the way. I tried it once, just to hear what it sounds like, it wasn't that bad. But I really don't like audio books, I rather read myself so I haven't any real use for this feature.

The TCL 40 NxtPaper has a dedicated headphone jack, by the way.


I just installed Edge via Aurora Stroe, out of curiosity to see if it freezes my TCL NP 11. It doesn't. I could visit the mobileread website (which presented me with a cookie choice, which reminded me why it is important to deactivate JavaScript and cookies in every browser I use) and also ask copilot a question (the answer was followed by some ads, won't use it again then).
Edge works when Google Play services are disabled, which is good, some apps don't work with the disabled services.
I haven't tried more with Edge and uninstalled it right away.

Maybe you could specify under what conditions Edge freezes on your NP 11?

[Quoth]

Pocketbook app is best for Android speech.

[plusz]

Funny, it happened even on TCL website. I wanted to read about the phones. Especially this one https://www.tcl.com/ch/de/tcl-for-her just open it and move a bit up and down

Ok, I've done some digging. I enabled developer settings, connected log output to my PC and started adb shell.

Indeed, the phone is not dead when it's frozen. The GPU has problems drawing due to low memory, prints some errors periodically. The log is flooded with lowmemorykiller messages too.

Then I started top, the CPU was busy swapping

Tasks: 607 total, 1 running, 606 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Mem: 3959620K total, 3463176K used, 496444K free, 800K buffers
Swap: 2177784K total, 1055232K used, 1122552K free, 117496K cached
800%cpu 5%user 0%nice 107%sys 238%idle 450%iow 0%irq 0%sirq 0%host
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S[%CPU] %MEM TIME+ ARGS
151 root 20 0 0 0 0 D 24.1 0.0 6:01.81 [kswapd0]
460 root 0 -20 0 0 0 D 11.2 0.0 1:38.81 [kworker/u18:2+kblockd]
4841 u0_a243 10 -10 42G 9.2M 9.2M D 6.6 0.2 1:14.12 com.microsoft.emmx
128 root 20 0 0 0 0 D 6.2 0.0 0:20.99 [kworker/u16:1+kverityd]
1421 system 20 0 6.5G 208K 208K S 4.9 0.0 0:15.88 com.tcl.guard
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 4.9 0.0 0:18.69 [kworker/u16:0-kverityd]
6263 shell 20 0 2.1G 2.8M 2.1M R 3.9 0.0 0:04.05 top

so I checked memory usage

Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.2G 497M 292K 736K
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.2G 498M
Swap: 2.0G 1.0G 1.0G
Eternals11:/ $

I let it go like that but eventually de device rebooted, after ~30 min.

Next I tried to monitor memory usage, whilst opening the TCL website.

Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.6G 133M 13M 20M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.6G 152M
Swap: 2.0G 151M 1.9G
1|Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.7G 26M 33M 2.0M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.7G 28M
Swap: 2.0G 570M 1.5G
Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.6G 172M 32M 1.2M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.6G 174M
Swap: 2.0G 490M 1.5G
Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.5G 193M 16M 1.6M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.5G 195M
Swap: 2.0G 548M 1.5G
Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.7G 66M 23M 1.9M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.7G 68M
Swap: 2.0G 589M 1.5G
Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.5G 280M 11M 2.1M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.5G 282M
Swap: 2.0G 579M 1.5G
Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.6G 95M 37M 2.2M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.6G 97M
Swap: 2.0G 621M 1.4G
Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.4G 289M 11M 1.0M
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.4G 290M
Swap: 2.0G 735M 1.3G
Eternals11:/ $ free -h
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 3.7G 3.2G 521M 236K 732K
-/+ buffers/cache: 3.2G 521M
Swap: 2.0G 1.0G 1.0G
Eternals11:/ $

When it reach 1GB of swap usage the screen freezes and a lot of issues are being logged.

I've never experienced such situation with Android device. I remember having Samsung phone with 1GB RAM, where apps where often crashing, but not freezing the phone. Seeing swap here really intrigued me. TCL is advertising for some phones things like 8+8GB RAM which means using swap partition, but they don't specify that for this tablet. Anyway, I was wondering what if I disable the swap, but I couldn't. swapoff requires a device as parameter, but I was not allowed to read the swap config. Then I've read that this could be a compressed RAM in fact, so I also tried to disable it with no success as well

Eternals11:/ $ cat /proc/swaps
cat: /proc/swaps: Permission denied
1|Eternals11:/ $ ls /dev/block/zram0
/dev/block/zram0
Eternals11:/ $ swapoff /dev/block/zram0
swapoff: failed to remove swaparea: Operation not permitted

Well, but I've learned what's the limitation of this device, so I went over my installed apps and removed things which works in background, mainly mail and IM clients. It helped a lot. That one TCL website is still freezing it in msedge (but not in chrome), though I haven't found any other case so far. I think there's something wrong with the firmware configuration, maybe it starts cleaning the memory too late (after too high threshold) so it can fall into a trap when apps use all memory leaving too late for the garbage collector or lowmemorykiller etc to work properly.

I guess I'll use it then for the main purpose I bought it: to read books and online news.

EDIT:
If anyone is curious, I haven't seen the swap using more than 1GB. I've tried 2 or 3 times. Half full swap makes UI freeze, and it's a point of no recovery.

[Quoth]

The problem is Edge, not Android or TCL. Start a Thread on Edge for Android and you'll get more help.

I wrote earlier that this was a GUI issue caused by Edge. You now proved it.

[plusz]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I wrote earlier that this was a GUI issue caused by Edge. You now proved it.

I proved crystal clear that it's an OS issue, read with understanding, but never mind I have better things to do

PS. I'm using Edge on Hisense Q5, and Samsung A52, none of these systems ever freeze

[Gormagon]

@plusz

That all seems a little bit odd with your problems with the Edge app on the TCL.

Have you tried deleting the cache for the Edge app under Android settings (not [only] in the browser settings) and/or deleting the whole app and reinstalling it?

I also noticed when I downloaded Edge for testing via Aurora store that there a various versions on offer. Maybe you could try another than the normal Edge version and see if it works.

Since often excessive JavaScripts can affect a processor I wonder if your Edge app behaves the same if you disable all JavaScripts for testing purposes. But first I would try emptying the cache and/or reinstall the app, since some websites show nothing without JS. Although that's often a reason just to close the tab for me…