Android Chrome BrowserComponent crazyness

[Marisole Aromatherapy]

Hi,

As you may be aware, Chrome on Android has lowered its bar with each consecutive update in the past few weeks

A look at its store page reviews will reveal the extent of this

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.chrome&hl=en_GB&showAllReviews=true

The last update (25th of August) made it so that my BrowserComponent that hosts a D3 V3 canvas becomes extremely unresponsive. I have tested updating from the previous Chrome version to this one and so I am sure that this is the cause

Funny enough, the same thing occurred to my Samsung browser after the update. Which seems logical given that it probably runs on chromium. However, after contacting Samsung, they told me to clear the cache and that fixed it. Applying the same solution to Chrome doesn't solve the issue

My app's BrowserComponent seems to be tied to Chrome for rendering. This is a kind of desperate attempt at getting help. I know that it's not CN1-related at all. But if anyone can offer any help or a tip I'd greatly appreciated

Thanks

Javier

PS: to test this "bug", you can try opening the below with Android Chrome and then with a different browser. On Chrome, the dragging should be really slow. If it isn't and you've got the latest update, please let me know

https://bl.ocks.org/willzjc/a11626a31c65ba5d319fcf8b8870f281

[Marisole Aromatherapy]

Perhaps there won't be an easy answer to this. I ran some more tests that have just made this even trickier to understand. Current hypothesis is that Samsung is messing with Chrome on purpose to make its browser stand out. But this in turn seems to affect BrowserComponents too. I might be wrong. I wish I had a non-Samsung device to test with

[Marisole Aromatherapy]

Apologies for the spam. Uninstalling Samsung Browser fixed Chrome's performance, but not so for BrowserComponent. Weird. I won't spam anymore, promise

[Shai Almog]

Do other native apps that use browsers on the device suffer from similar degradation in performance?

Generally the embedded browser performs worse because of OS restrictions but if other apps do a better job of this we might have things we can do to improve.

[Marisole Aromatherapy]

Interesting tip, the embedded browser of other apps show the same performance degradation. Chrome has started to run slow again

Other browsers tested run ok: mozilla, opera, brave

Seems like an OS thing then. I will email Samsung again

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[Shai Almog]

It might be the issue with their gaming classification again or something weird like that... These guys are a pain...

[Marisole Aromatherapy]

Finally found the root cause... the source of the problems is an update to the app "Android System Webview" that was pushed on the 25th of August (I assume with the latest Chromium code). The issues go away after uninstalling all its updates. You can see your current version in Developer Options -> System Webview

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[Steve Hannah]

This is probably related to the fact that browsers have started to throttle requestAnimationFrame calls, so that it no longer is guaranteed to be called before every frame.

https://mattperry.is/writing-code/browsers-may-throttle-requestanimationframe-to-30fps

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Steve Hannah

Software Developer

Codename One

http://www.codenameone.com

[Marisole Aromatherapy]

I tested the animation in the link with the buggy version of Chrome (85) and it ran smooth.

I have verified that the low fps happens with versions >=85. I also tested beta, dev, and canary versions of Android System Webview and saw the same issue. The thing I don't know is the scope of affected devices. If anyone reading this feels like giving a hand and has a non-Samsung Android device feel free to test the following chart and let me know if you can drag smoothly: https://bl.ocks.org/willzjc/a11626a31c65ba5d319fcf8b8870f281 

Version 84 and previous versions are fine

I have logged a bug with Google

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1125525#c3

Hope they fix the issue, there isn't much more I can do

Thanks :)

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