Tip: Location access may be another cause of Nexus 7 lag
Ever since the Android 4.2.1 update landed on the ASUS Nexus 7, there have been wide and varied reports of major lag all across the internet. In response, there have also been numerous different suggestions for fixing the problem induced by the update, including disabling Google Currents sync, clearing caches, and deleting multiple user accounts. However, even these methods didn’t eliminate lag for everyone, and many users were left still suffering with a slow tablet.
A new suggestion that has emerged for users still having trouble is to disable Location access in the Settings menu, especially on WiFi-only devices. Based on the past fixes, this probably won’t work for everyone, but there are a few users reporting success on Reddit, and some posts on XDA to the same effect. Since I don’t use location services on my Nexus 7 anyway, I went ahead and disabled the setting. I wasn’t experiencing lag to begin with, but so far turning off the setting hasn’t negatively affected the user experience.
Fortunately, I haven’t yet had any trouble with my Nexus 7 lagging, but if it ever starts to have a problem, I’ll already know what settings might help. In addition to turning off location settings, some threads also mention clearing up extra files to leave space on the flash memory. Whatever the cause of the problem, there are at least some ways to try to fix it. It seems odd that a singular problem could have so many different potential causes, but hopefully it is something that will be cleared up soon.
[Reddit]