Avast killing my tablet

[REDACTED]

Hi,

I recently obtained Asus Transformer Tablet TF201. As with all my smartphones and tablets I installed all apps I'm using in everyday use, among them Avast Mobile security. From first day my tablet was rather slow, constant freezing. I've read somewhere about "Pimp my ROM" so I even tried that, made few tweaks and overall performance was a little better (10-15% speed up). I disabled or uninstalled some of Asus bloatware (Zinio, Asus email, weather, etc). This also improved performance but it was still very slow and unresponsive. I must mention that I don't have a lot of applications installed, those are

FileExpert
XMBC
BSPlayer
SmartVolumeControl+
IMDB
Ebay
Pimp my ROM
SD Maid
Gmail
Gmaps
CamScanner
Drive
Fb
Evernote
LinkedIn
Teamviewer
Viber
Boom Beach
AVAST MOBILE SECURITY & ANTI THEFT

Few days ago I spoke with my colleague who has the same tablet and he is very satisfied with it's speed. Only difference is, he is not using Avast.  So i removed Avast, OMG my free memory jumped from 18-23% to 40 - 43%!! Tablet was ultra fast and responsive. I tried to install ONLY Anti-theft and it was slow again so I again removed it. Next try was Avast Mobile Security WITHOUT AT. It was somewhat slower, bearable. 

I'm using avast on my Galaxy S4 and I didn't notice my phone was slow, maybe because S4 has more power and if I removed it from phone maybe I would notice a difference. Avast is installed since first day so I didn't have a chance to notice any difference. My wife's Huawei Y300 is slow and I always thought it was because of being mid-range phone but after I removed avast it, BUM, something totally different. I installed it again because I need protection on all my smartphones....on tablet it would be nice to have it, but not at expense of performance.

Regards.

[REDACTED]

Well, on ours TF201 with generic ROM from Asus no performance problems are detected; it depends, how the kernel is dealing with buffers and services running in backround (that is a part of avast mobile apps). Can you please advise some more information about tablet (like OS, version, kernel version, build number and avast version)? I assume you have rooted it - can you post something like top while avast is running? Thanks.

[REDACTED]

Hi,

For now all I can tell you is that I'm using latest official Asus Firmware V10.4.2.18 WW (Android 4.1). Device is UnLocked and SuperSU is installed. Kernel and build version I will provide later when I get home. Avast version was latest BETA installed last night but I have performance issue since day one (2 month ago).

Regards.

[REDACTED]

Ok, thanks, the kernel is the most interesting part..

[REDACTED]

Full tablet info:

Android version: 4.1.1
Kernel version: 3.1.10-00002-g599d0cf
Build number: JRO03C.WW_epad-10.4.2.18-20121122

Top command:

Code: [Select]

User 11%, System 11%, IOW 3%, IRQ 0%
User 35 + Nice 1 + Sys 35 + Idle 236 + IOW 11 + IRQ 0 + SIRQ 0 = 318

  PID PR CPU% S  #THR     VSS     RSS PCY UID      Name
  425  0  11% S    86 617520K  57556K  fg system   system_server
 3014  0   4% R     1   1088K    508K     root     top
 1860  0   1% S    54 532760K  54736K  bg u0_a21   com.avast.android.mobilesecurity
25100  0   1% S    21 503532K  38240K  fg u0_a5    com.android.systemui
29692  0   0% S    12 472308K  26980K  bg u0_a88   com.avast.android.antitheft
This is after latest Avast Mobile Security and Anti-Theft version (4.0.7873) installation, configuration and reboot. My shields are configured to run on installation and writing only.

Regards.

[REDACTED]

After two days after Avast installation I had to remove it again because my tablet was not usable until I restart it. I use my tablet only in the evening to stream tv show from my Mede8er. During the days it is in standby mode. After I turn it on it is so slow that I need to reboot it with power button. After it boots up it works like a charm. This doesn't happen when avast is uninstalled. I also noticed that my RAM is around 20-25% free when this slow ups occurred, it feels like storage IO is issue here. There is no scan running in background (I've set up automatic scan every second day at midnight).

For now it is removed, I will continue to check tablet performance without it.

Regards.

[REDACTED]

Thanks. We will be very happy to see the top output when the tablet is frozen. There is some conflict between keyboard connector and mobile security (app race), which can cause such problems.