Why do electronic devices like phones and computers seem slower initially after they reboot?
In: Technology
On any given operating system there are tons of background services and threads each doing its own little thing. For example, on my Windows 10 computer there’s a little thing called the Windows Search Indexer that continually monitors file changes on my computer and updates a search index or database so that when I search for bread.recipe.pdf, it doesn’t have to take 10 minutes to find it, it already knows where it is and that its a PDF and it contains a bunch of keywords in it. Anyways, when the Search Indexer launches, it fires off some helper processes that go off and start double checking every file to make sure its index is still up to date from last time. But these processes are hogging my disk and some of my RAM and CPU, and all I want to do is play Minecraft. Meanwhile there’s 200+ other processes that all need some CPU and disk access for whatever they’re trying to do.
All of these processes clamouring for a little slice of CPU and disk access all add up. Some OSs like Windows 10 can _background_ some of these things or do a “delayed start” which means they tell those things to wait a while until the computer is less busy or only permit them to do things when the computer isn’t busy at all (like if there hasn’t been a key or mouse input in say 5 minutes, which is a good indication you’re off doing something else.)
Modern phones and computer usually delay loading some things in order to boot up faster. The slowness after a reboot is due to all the extra stuff loading in the background.
perhaps because they have to load all your programs from secondary storage to main memory and that takes time. secondary storage is permanent i.e. it can survive the computer being turned off while main memory is not. however it’s slower than main memory.
They are loading things back into memory, on top of connecting to servers to see if there’s updates or anything going on. But loading things back into memory takes time and resources, your phone may get a bit warm during this. This is why Apple does not recommend killing apps to free up memory, because iOS will already automatically kill apps to free up memory as needed. By killing them yourself you’re just forcing them to be loaded back into memory all over again when you open the app again. If there’s apps running in the background that you don’t want running in the background, you can kill them to stop that but you should just revoke their permissions to run in the background instead of just trying to manually keep track of that. iOS even starts to ask you every now and then “are you sure you meant to let this app run in the background?” for new apps, they know people just click yes to everything to get a new app going.
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