Input lag on Android

[Sumez]

Am I the only ones having problems with this?

Being a little impatient about getting TZ on X360, I decided to try TPA out on Android, and it's practically unplayable!
I never play any other games on my phone, so it's difficult to pinpoint the actual problem, because it doesn't seem noticeable when just flipping the flippers randomly, but when trying to aim a shot, it's suddenly horribly obvious, often resulting in a shot for the left ramp ending up as what looks like a deliberate drain. In several games I even had a hard time breaking the score required to get the "buy the table" prompt.

I'm unsure if it's something about the touch input on my phone causing a lag, either on the software or hardware side, or Androids in general, but I haven't been able to find a single issue on that via Google (except from developers having the issue with their own game). It should be in the pretty high end area of Android phones, a Sony Xperia S, and if other Android devices have no problems running TPA, I'm sure this shouldn't either. Or maybe it's related to this issue? http://digitalpinballfans.com/showthread.php/1660-Android-4-0-4-performance/page2 I do notice some random stuttering/frame drops once in a while, which I'm guessing could be causing similar lag on the inputs.
I even considered the possibility that, not being used to using a touch screen for game input, and having to move my finger unto the surface before counting as a button press, could be the cause, but it somehow seems unlikely, and I never had any problems using the X360's analog buttons for the flippers, which require being pushed a bit before they connect (like real flipper buttons, really).

Any way, the only thing I'm really interested in knowing is, did anyone experience similar issues, and is there a way I can fix it?

 

[Bonzo]

Your phone is way more powerful than mine but I can't confirm the flipper lag issues. Does it happen all the time or only occasionally? If it's the latter, it might be caused by something happening in the background (e.g. the device checking for e-mails). Have you tried using the lower res textures (table select screen/options/textures:normal)? Can't think of anything else.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

My experience is that TPA slows down to a crawl whenever my (very low-powered) phone decides to sync email/Facebook/etc. in the background. There seems to be both a considerable frame-rate drop and an overall slowdown, in which the ball actually moves more slowly. I doubt there's much to be done about it, aside from disabling sync; the problem always passes.

Some people have found that location-based services slow their Android phone down significantly; you might try turning that off in the settings.

 

[Matt McIrvin]

...Anyway, apart from when there are obvious overall performance issues, I haven't experienced anything that specifically manifests as a flipper lag. The touch driver does get in a confused state sometimes in which it doesn't manifest any gestures correctly; this seems to be a system-wide issue rather than a TPA bug.