First, are you using debug mode with your physical device plugged in to the USB slot and deploying that way? It will allow you to watch the LogCat output, you can put Log.i() info throughout your code to try to trace it or use the debugger and break points, whichever your fancy. You may see why one device is taking a long time and the other isnt.
As for the tabs and what to do.. I would create a completely new Activity, called SplashActivity or whatever. Separate layout xml for it. Put that as your starting launcher. From there, you would launch your activity that sets up the tabs. I haven't done anything with tabs yet.. is ti required that each tab be a separate activity.. is that the normal way it works (anyone)? I would have thought you could use a single activity and listen for tab changes and set the content view to a new view for that tab, rather than separate activities for each. If you can do that, then you load all your data during the splash screen, then start the tab activity and you are good to go. If it is pretty common or the only way to do tabs is with separate activities, then generally I take the lazy approach. A user may never select any other tab, so why load the data for it up front? That takes up resources. If you have too much data, you could degrade the device performance, and cause android to shut down other running applications (er..running but in pause mode of course). If each tab requires a couple seconds or so to load data, maybe in the tab switching handler, put up a simple alert box with a spinning meter to show something is happening. I'd also look at releasing the previously selected tabs data. From what I've learned, even with 256MB up to 1GB or more ram, you are still very limited in memory because of the potential of other apps running (again, in pause mode while your app is up on top) and consuming resources. You want to try to play nice with the overall idea of multiple apps running as much as possible. Don't forget to release all your resources in the onPause handler for each activity, and handle those events properly. On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Danielle Murkerson <[email protected] > wrote: > Yes this makes sense...I have a question regarding how my app is set up > though...I'm using a tabbed interface where each tab launches a new > activity. So basically the activity that would launch first sets up the tabs > and then starts the activity that is in the first tab...So would I put my > splash screen code in the activity that sets up the tabs, or put it in the > activity that the user actually sees once the tabs are done setting up? > > I'm new to android programming and I've basically built my app from seeing > examples of similar things that I want to accomplish in my app. This came > about because I got the app running perfectly in the emulator...but when I > tested it on two different real devices, it wouldn't load at all on one and > it seemed to work ok on the other. > > It seemed to install correctly on the device that it wouldn't load on, it > just never got past the black screen before the first activity starts. And > then it would take forever to even try and go back to the device's home > screen. So I'm trying to go back and look at my code and see if there is > something I could re-work to make it more efficient or something. > > > On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 3:06 PM, Kevin Duffey <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I was going to suggest something similar to what Kostya suggested. As he >> said, if you're taking time to load things in an onCreate, first you want to >> move it to a thread (AsyncTask). What I do is I've found one of the examples >> out there that sets my launcher to the SplashScreenActivity. In my case, I >> do it just for showing info about the app, author, etc. So I have a timer >> counting down for 15 seconds (which is way too long). If the user touches >> the screen at any point, it then times out immediately. Either way, it >> starts my main activity at that point. As Kostya said, in your case, once >> your background loading stuff is done, start the main activity. This way >> they see your splash screen until all the loading is done. You can even make >> an animated splash screen to help alleviate the amount of time it seems a >> person is waiting. >> >> >> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Danielle Murkerson < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Yes this may be the way to go for me. My main activity has to setup and >>> prepare a couple of MediaPlayer objects to play some streaming audio...this >>> may take a while on a slow connection and I've seen some examples that use >>> the onPostExecute method of an AsyncTask to tell the activity when to stop >>> displaying the splash image. >>> >>> Thanks for the tips...I'll look into this more. >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Kostya Vasilyev <[email protected]>wrote: >>> >>>> 11.02.2011 21:53, Danielle Murkerson пишет: >>>> >>>> Ok...so I would need to use some kind of listener for the between time >>>>> of the app loading and starting? I mean I see this all the time on other >>>>> apps so I was just wondering how they do this? >>>>> >>>> >>>> The distinction, if any, between loading and starting, is entirely in >>>> your code. >>>> >>>> Android brings your process into memory, creates the main activity, and >>>> starts calling its lifecycle methods: onCreate, onStart, onResume, and off >>>> you go. >>>> >>>> If you have a lengthly operation (to load textures in a game, unpack >>>> compressed RSS stream, etc.), then you can: >>>> >>>> 1. have your main activity set its content to a splash image; >>>> 2. schedule lengthy operations on a background thread, AsyncTask (or any >>>> other way that doesn't tie up the UI); >>>> 3. handshake back to the main activity when those lengthy operations are >>>> completed, and present the UI for interacting with your application. >>>> >>>> Item 2 is a good idea anyway, because if you run a lengthy operation in >>>> one of the above lifecycle callbacks (onCreate, etc.), and it exceeds the >>>> time limit allowed by Android, then the user will see the ANR popup >>>> (Application Not Responding - giving the user a choice to kill it or to >>>> give >>>> it more time). >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> Usually you click the launcher icon and then an image is displayed for >>>>> a short time and then the app starts. I assumed the image is used as a >>>>> placeholder while the app finishes loading. >>>>> >>>> >>>> I believe Android just animates a mock-up of the activity, based on what >>>> it can gather from the manifest (the color scheme and the title). This >>>> happens before onCreate. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Kostya Vasilyev -- WiFi Manager + pretty widget -- >>>> http://kmansoft.wordpress.com >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups "Android Developers" group. >>>> To post to this group, send email to >>>> [email protected] >>>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>>> [email protected] >>>> For more options, visit this group at >>>> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Android Developers" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> [email protected] >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en >>> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "Android Developers" group. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected] >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> [email protected] >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Android Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. 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