1844967 - Major performance issue with tabs tray rewrite on Galaxy Tab S4

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Fenix :: Tabs, defect, P2)

Description

[knipesteven]

Steps to reproduce:

Trying to scroll the Tabs Tray or perform a swipe-to-delete with "Enable Tabs Tray to Compose rewrite" turned on, (as it is by default now).

I'm using an android tablet, Galaxy Tab S4, model SM-T830, Android version 10 and have ~35 tabs open. I was not able to reproduce this issue on my phone, it seemed to work perfectly fine there.

Actual results:

The tabs move as expected but are extremely stuttery/laggy, feels around 10 fps. Also sometimes I was getting a high battery usage warning about the app until I disabled the rewrite.

Expected results:

Scrolling should stay visually attached to my finger's position rather than jumping between positions and lagging behind, as should a tab during a swipe-to-delete.

Comment 1

[Lorand Janos]

Hi!
I can confirm this behavior with a Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 with Android 9 as the closest device to the one this issue was reproduced with.

The build I reproduced this issue on: Fenix Nightly 117.0a1 from 2023-07-24.

I tried to compare the mentioned behavior with Beta 116.0b6 where the mentioned actions seemed noticeably faster and more liniar.

I've used 35 opened tabs as in the description for both builds.

Also compared with Chrome where the behavior is as expected.

Comment 2

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Noah, do you know of any tabs tray changes in Nightly 117 that might have regressed the tabs tray animations?

Comment 3

[Noah Bond [:007]]

Based on the OP's primary comment, this is in regards to the Tabs Tray rewrite. Since the rewrite is only in Nightly (and will not ride the conventional release trains), testing in Beta or Release will not be super useful here because that will just be testing against our original, XML-based Tabs Tray, which we can do by disabling the rewrite's secret setting.

I'll take a look at this bug soon.

It's interesting that it could be unique to tablets, so I'll be investigating that area.

Comment 4

[knipesteven]

As requested in the Matrix chat, here's a profile I tried to make of me scrolling the tabs tray with the rewrite enabled: https://share.firefox.dev/3q5Im44

In comparison, here's one with the rewrite disabled: https://share.firefox.dev/3YhzbtV

Haven't done a profile before so I hope I did it correctly. If you'd like any additional info/if I did this wrong, please let me know.

Comment 5

[Noah Bond [:007]]

Confirmed that this is appearing on my Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ as well.

I reproduced this by using a script to open 70+ tabs, having their thumbnails fully loaded, and scrolling through the Tabs Tray. It's most noticeable with the tablet in landscape.

My current hypothesis is that there is still some underlying performance issues (even after Bug 1815579) with the thumbnail bitmap loading + rendering (possibly in the context of a LazyVerticalGrid) in Compose. The thumbnail is being loaded and rendered via the ThumbnailImage Composable.

Comment 6

[BMO Github Automation]

Attachment: [mozilla-mobile/firefox-android] Bug 1844967 - Improve performance of tab thumbnail loading in Compose (#3031)

Comment 7

[Noah Bond [:007]]

EOD update: I may have had a breakthrough, and I've opened a draft PR (linked above) before I leave for the weekend. I've left my findings inside the PR description.

The CI is running right now, and it'll make some downloadable APKs in case anyone wants to give the changes a go. Alternatively, the PR branch can also be cloned locally.

Comment 8

[BMO Github Automation]

Authored by https://github.com/MozillaNoah
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/commit/a415402dcdaf57c6d71889d696e7a9de496f2850
[main] Bug 1844967 - Improve performance of tab thumbnail loading in Compose

Comment 9

[Mira Lobontiu (Android QA)]

Attachment: az_recorder_20230816_175516.mp4

Hello all!
We've tested on the latest Fenix Nightly 118.0a1 build from 8/16 with Lenovo Tab M10 (Android 10), and Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 (Android 9), and these are the conclusions:

• we had over 35 tabs opened, with various contents, fully loaded,
• scrolling through some of the pages presented glitches,
• swiping from page to page was not done smoothly, the previous opened tab was displayed briefly before the opened tab is loaded - as it can be seen in the video,
• some pages reloaded entirely,
• the scrolling position was not preserved on some pages.

This behavior was not reproducible on a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (Android 9) phone.
I'll remove the qe-verify+ flag.

Comment 10

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)]

Checked on Galaxy Tab S8+, the performance becomes much better (thanks!), but the scrolling animation looks not smooth... That may make users feel "slow".

Comment 11

[Noah Bond [:007]]

- scrolling through some of the pages presented glitches,
- swiping from page to page was not done smoothly, the previous opened tab was displayed briefly before the opened tab is loaded - as it can be seen in the video,
- some pages reloaded entirely,
- the scrolling position was not preserved on some pages.

Hey miralobontiu,

Since this ticket was specifically for issues with the tabs tray in regards to the rewrite, I think it makes more sense to consider this ticket closed, if you feel that the reporter's issue has been sufficiently resolved. Let's open new tickets for the above issues discovered, as some of these look like existing issues and/or more related to better handling the tablet experience, in general, and not bugs directly related to the Tabs Tray rewrite.

Comment 12

[Mira Lobontiu (Android QA)]

Thank you, Noah!
I've filed Bug 1849343.
I'll close this one as verified.