yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Nexus 9 General] 3's&7's:
I, so far (fingers crossed), have enjoyed a stable n9 LTE for 6 months now (hardware good: no heating, lightbleed of note, etc). I finally unlocked and started testing ROMs / kernels a few months ago.

I'm on DU now (many others great too) and use my n9 as a daily notebook. Lightning fast, ram management is terrific, fast charge time, graphics smooth, and decrypted r/w times are solid.

However, I also had two other n9's (LTE) and they were not the quality of this one. My kids lost it, T-Mobile jump replaced with refurb junk, and I finally traded in (jump) for a little tab-a (again, kids). The refurb n9 lte replacement had a bad USB port which I was told is a new mobo, lightbleed awful, and was super sluggish even for stock 5.1.1.
[Nexus 9 General] tdct12:
I love my nexus 9! I've had it since it first came out, I saw the potential of such a tablet. It is my lifeline in college. At first, I will admit the performance was a bit shakey, but within no time at all I had cynoganmod 12 installed and began to preform as perfect as I could ever ask, and now that I am on marshmellow the performance is only getting better. At first, yes, the battery life was a bit of a let down. With an ElementalX keernal however, it's no problem at all. The charge time is less than cut in half, I don't know why it didn't support 2.1v charging off the shelf. I also have my gpu and cup overlocked as much as as elementalX supports, and it performs so, so wonderfully. I was able to port a linux version of oldschool runescape to my tablet, and it kept me entertained for a good amount of time. I use it, instead of my laptop for essays and papers. I have the free version of microsoft word and the htc keyboard folio (they weren't exaderating when they said the keyboard lasts like 3 months, I don't even understand how it lasts so long) I can keep like 7 different tabs with sources I'm referencing open and the last 2 I've been on tend not to reload. Now with marshmellow my tablet easily lasts more 8 hours of streaming, or 2 days of intermitent use for school. My only complaint is that they made the screen super hard to repair by using adhesive instead of another mechanism to the point where my cracked screen isn't worth fixing :crying: It doesn't matter though, I love my nexus 9, it does everything I hoped it would and more. Great buy :good:
[Nexus 9 General] rolldroids:
Can you please tell how much system ram usage it shows in developer options ->running services?
[Nexus 9 General] NJ_RAMS_FAN:
Using pure nexus rom, I get almost a 1gb free of ram at any given time. But chrome is a ram hog man. Lol.
[Nexus 9 General] tdct12:
System is currently using 611mb of ram. Allthough it can spike as low as around 520 and high as around 768 that I've seen. About 611 seems to be the norm though :D
[Nexus 9 General] maconsultant:
Glad I was able to unload mine @ a decent price. No more early adopter status for me when it comes to Nexus tablets. I didn't bite on the Pixel C as a direct result of the Nexus 9 which was a complete waste of time and money!

Sent from another Nexus..

6p...
[Nexus 9 General] USBhost:
600-700MB system thats normal

my note 3 uses about the same and its arm (ATM its using 633MB in system)

so this is the list

our N9 has

2GB = 2000MB

- 128 = 1872

but we normally have around ~1839MB so we dont get exact amount of 2GB of memory.

now we have 600-700 system and 200-xxxMB in apps, on normal its ~300MB and 700 system

(NOTE system is where all unknown memory goes and apps is where all known memory goes)

so 700 + 300 = 1000MB - 1839 = 839MB

so we basically have around ~700-800MB for the user to use.

all we have is 700-800MB for

file system caches and user apps

conclusion.

that 128MB our unique cpu uses

ate a lot of our memory.

our n9 is not bad its justs needs memory conscious users.
[Nexus 9 General] briand.mooreg:
I have 2 iPad 4th generation tabs in my households, I like my Nexus 9 better.
[Nexus 9 General] whowatchlist:
I have to agree that the software is keeping the device down, but(surprise!) it is a nexus device. A custom kernel helps a lot.

I'm not sure if changing the dpi helps that much. Antutu only showed negligible improvements and on both i got ssbm at the same fps.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Changing dpi isn't supposed to improve benchmarks. It helps reduce redraws (launcher) and page reloads (chrome)

So, another case of real world improvement, not benchmark crap, lol.

I never care about benchmark scores. If its better, then I should see and feel it.
[Nexus 9 General] whowatchlist:
I didn't include the fact that I never get chrome page reloads and my launcher doesn't redraw. And I am pretty sure you don't know what ssbm is.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Super smash bros?
[Nexus 9 General] monsieur_beau19:
Yeah, the first batch of Nexus's (Nexi?) were really crappy from what I've heard. The battery life was absolutely terrible and unforgiving when I first got my N9. I still use my N7 2013 but both are running custom kernels. I have Fire-Ice Kernel on the N9, along with Xposed so that I could use Amplify, greenify and DS battery saver. Turn on battery saving mode and bam, I get an almost 6 hours of screen on time with moderate to heavy usage. A custom rom AND kernel should fix most of the software and battery issues. Other than that, my gripe with the N9 is the Screen bleeding and of course, application optimization. It's ridiculous how I can purchase Dead Space and play it on my N7 2013 but not compatible with the N9. The purpose of upgrading was to play content on a bigger screen. So yeah, I'm slightly disappointed in the N9.

---------- Post added at 04:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:00 PM ----------

I agree. I picked up my 32 GB N9 (White) brand new off ebay for $195. I can't be too disappointed since I didn't pay a premium price like Google wanted us to do. It's worth the $195 rather than the $450 MSRP. I suggest waiting a couple months before purchasing any Nexus devices as to avoid the crappy batches.
[Nexus 9 General] tevil:
I had zero issues with my tab until the last update. Now battery life sucks, and its laggy as hell. Im finally rooting it just to bring back some usability to it. Kind of stinks.

I have an old nexus 7 and this 9. Im looking at the C coming out but does anyone know if google has some kind of rebate program for trading in old tablets? I know apple does.
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
Wouldn't surprise me if your old Nexus 7 (2013) smokes the Nexus 9 if both running 6.0.1 stock :confused:
[Nexus 9 General] monsieur_beau19:
Sadly, N7 smokes the crap out of the N9 in terms of stability, speed and optimization. Also manages ram usage and memory usage better. Google did really let HTC screw this up. The only reason to upgrade is the screen size, the Tegra K1 processor (even though there are some games that won't run on the darn thing) and the UHD display.

Edit: And Boomsound, obviously.
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
Yes, I suspected that would be the case. I would have loved to have seen a SD800 in a Nexus tablet considering the speed of the Nexus 5 vs the Nexus 7 2013. :cool:
[Nexus 9 General] tdct12:
pure nexus, elementalx, no overlcock. Not my pic, but results have been duplicate by others. Totes the worst device ever.

[IMG="for the naysayers"]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/72QqnXYloP-XR8Q-vWcmQKSQkEShiy6OlqHF80QnhBFO1rPMprzPWRxT4Z3S5y7Wk1-J=w1440-h900-rw-no[/IMG]
[Nexus 9 General] nigelhealy:
CM13, ElementalX, rooted, Xposed, F2FS, no encryption, not particularly left to be cold, warm from regular use.
[Nexus 9 General] mtoomey79:
See, I just came from an iPad Air and I think the N9 is by far the lesser device.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
So is that just to start an argument? Or troll? To come into an android development site and talk about the superiority of an iPad?

They both have benefits and weaknesses. There are just so many things you cannot do with apple devices. But enjoy your walled garden, lol
[Nexus 9 General] mtoomey79:
Subjective viewpoint. I left the iPad for all the reasons most Android people do and hoped the N9 would offer a positive experience but so far it's extremely mediocre (battery, lag/stutters, heat, etc.). And last I checked this thread is about the N9 not being a great device.

Enjoy your Saturday. I'm sure someone else on the internet is wrong - have fun correcting them.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Lol. I wasn't correcting you at all. Most of us are a little bored of apple fans making it os battle.

That said, we are all disappointed with the n9's performance. But coming in just to say your iPad was better is an obvious attempt to raise hairs. That's what I was pointing out, not correcting.
[Nexus 9 General] mtoomey79:
Tracking.

Clearly the gold standard for a tablet is the iPad line. Having had the N7 (a couple of them) and now the N9, I find that Android simply needs to step the tablet game up to match iPad. I'm a total Android fan (I experimented with iOS and returned to) and its just upsetting that we can't have a solid tab worth putting up against iTard nation.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Well said. Just FYI, pure nexus has that battery issue. When you're charging , the percentage doesn't read correct until you reboot. Fire Ice kernel fixes that, but it has all SE Linux removed/disabled. Just a heads up.
[Nexus 9 General] nigelhealy:
Thanks. I actually prefer SE Permissive anyway.

Overall having tried stock, CM13, PureNexus , CM13 seems fastest, PureNexus is more like stock and so from just a comfort factor more likely my preference, I'll let Pure Nexus settle down and make my final choice of it vs CM13.

What the hell has Google done to stock to make it so slow? I think we're suffering Google software problems hitting with something unfortunately in the N9 hardware. I don't have any issues with the year earlier model of N7 2013.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Not permissive, its actually completely disabled. It explains in the fire n ice thread. Pure nexus and fire ice is a good combo, but the se thing stops me. Since its disabled, if you want to try another kernel afterwards, you have to wipe everything. Including format data.

I'm currently running aicp with elementalx. Very pleased with it.
[Nexus 9 General] nigelhealy:
The bad news, I had a cold this holiday weekend.

The good news, I spent it tuning and trying different ROM, kernel and settings tweaks. I am now the proud holder of the fastest Android tablet on the planet.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Nice combo. I couldn't get my Dish Anywhere to work on it. With a sling adapter on my dish network box, I get live TV and all my DVR content on my nexus 9. But it crashes on pure nexus. I'm going to try it again in a week or so.
[Nexus 9 General] Devaster:
With fsync disabled u can get 131 000
[Nexus 9 General] tevil:
nah. I actually cleared caches, rebooted and it went back to normal. I honestly have had zero real issues with this tab and love it. I feel bad cause my GF heard me *****ing the one day it was lagging up and got me the pixel c for a v day gift.

The 9 was still friggin super new and just clearing the caches fixed it. The pixel c is really nice and fast as hell, but hey its new
[Nexus 9 General] oias.heeda:
Mine does. Absolutely smashes the 9.
[Nexus 9 General] nigelhealy:
I got a new N7 for $99 after I got the N9 LTE for $340

The N7 screen is better, crisper sharper brighter, the N9 has light bleed.

Stock ROM, the N7 flies, the N9 laggy.

If I put on a custom ROM the N9 performs well to the level it is appearing as fast as the N7 on stock ROM.

I actually prefer the N7, it is easier to hold, perfect size, I can put it in a pocket. I'm typing on it now, with the N9 there unused next to me. I do use the N9 but its for when traveling and I want to carry the least, as yes its got a bigger screen, but Android doesn't offer any advantage above about 8" and 16:9 or 16:10 is better than these square 4:3 or worse.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
One thing, the n7 screen is not better, crisper, or clearer than the n9. Performance wise, n9 is a slump on stock. But the screen blows the n7 away. By the way, I love my old n7.
[Nexus 9 General] nigelhealy:
In that case I infer our specific N7 and N9 units are relatively different, your N9 has better screen than my N9, and/or your N7 has a worse screen than my N7. All I know as a fact is that my N9 is worse screen than my N7.

---------- Post added at 12:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:12 PM ----------

The N9 on stock, whilst this may be unit specific so some of us have a different view, in my case it responded badly to stock, it was slow to respond to things like hitting home screen. As soon as I moved to something other than stock, I tried CM13 nightly and Pure Nexus, the problems went away. I did though disable forced encryption but I've not gone into deep dive on is this only specific to encryption or something else. I just now if I did all the things to improve performance, it responds back to a decent fast device.

I have more of an issue that the N9 is in no-man's-land of its not got the pocketability of the N7 nor the productivity of a Chromebook. If I have to sit down for any length of time, the Chromebook just is better screen, with keyboard and still good battery life, speakers. My N7 is pocketable and fast. My N9 is neither of those. So a lot of criticism is not specific to the N9 but the form factor and Android. I'd have even worse crticisims of the Pixel C as its even bigger and still Android.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Agreed on the performance of the n9. But it was never meant to be "pocketable". It's a 9" tablet.
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
I have to disagree regarding the screen. The blacks on my N7 screen are far deeper which gives a better contrast. I know the N9 can go far brighter, but this just turns the blacks to greys. :(

I might even go as far as saying that the N7's screen, is the best screen I've seen on an Android tablet. :eek:

Getting back to the 9, the lightbleed and general unevenness of the backlight spoil everything. Doesn't look good when your sitting on the train and the guy next to you has an ipad......:crying:
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Both my n7's have just as much lightbleed.

And for n7 having the best display on an android tablet? You must have never seen the super amoled display on the tab s.

The n7 display is extremely average.

But the n7 is still the best bang for buck out there.
[Nexus 9 General] Moomoomania:
The lightbleeding on my Nexus 9 tablet after getting it repaired 3 times is so insignificant now that it is so much better than prior to getting it repaired. You don't see it unless you're booting it up from off and you're in a pitch black room. When I watch videos at night via VLC/YouTube, you can't see it unless you're squinting. I recommend anyone to get theirs repaired.
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
Sorry, best LCD display on an android tablet. :o (Forgot about those samsungs with there OLEDS.)

I've not had any lightbleed or blotchy backlight issues on the 4 Nexus 7 2013's I've bought. Either I'm lucky or you are not. :angel:
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Would definitely not describe myself as "lucky". Lol.
[Nexus 9 General] the.teejster:
Thanks for the tip !

I was starting to notice lag more often than not with my tablet. Saw your post and cleared the cache and the tablet is back to normal once again.

Word of warning to others...Clearing the Cache takes a LONG TIME.. I'm talking 10 - 15 min during which time you might think it's frozen and be tempted to reboot it.. DON'T... Just wait it out and be patient.
[Nexus 9 General] nigelhealy:
Odd.

There's more than one way to clear cache. I reckon you've got a bad /cache filesystem if its both slow and needs clearing and if its slow to clear. Go into Wipe, advanced and change it to something else then change it back. e.g if on ext4 change to say ext3 then change to ext4.

That then does a filesystem make which doesn't delete files it simply rebuilds a blank inode list. You should find that much faster and possibly fix also the cause of what you have of creeping full cache performance lag.

There is also the fastboot method. Fastboot erase cache should be the slow method, fastboot format cache should be fast. You can also take a stock image and untar unzip and then do a fastboot flash cache cache.img.

Each tablet has a unique history of flashing using different methods and some could be in an unhealthy state as a result.
[Nexus 9 General] Lethalgorman:
I see this also, my Nexus 9 is the worst Mobile device you can buy. Laggy and redraws all the time. My Nexus 7 still works better then the Nexus 9 ever did . My teenage son refuses to even use it.
[Nexus 9 General] voyager_s:
Well I've only had mine for three days now. The first unit I got was a refurbished and had a known clicking issue in the bottom speaker. I returned it two days ago. Bought a brand new one and no problems so far.

The design is awesome. Feels really nice and I actually like the new aspect ratio. I came from a galaxy tab pro 10.1. That was great hardware ruined by terrible Samsung software.

But anyway the nexus 9 is very good performance wise. It does get warm sometimes but its fine. So far so good. The battery life is nothing special I've found. Getting about 5 hours screen on time, with manual low brightness settings.
[Nexus 9 General] lmulli:
Lovely tablet, great form factor, but it annoys me with all the lags and screen freezing! My Nexus 7 (2103) doesn't lag or freeze ever, but I find it too small now for my needs! Just ordered a Shield K1 as an alternative, which should hopefully work well and no doubt promote my N9 back in to its box and into a drawer somewhere!
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Try flashing the new Dirty Unicorns marshmallow build. Makes a huge difference.
[Nexus 9 General] the.teejster:
As an FYI,

I am and always have been fully stock so I don't think the majority of options you mention below apply.

I cleared the cache through stock recovery.

If I have issues again I can try the fastboot options you mentioned below.

Thanks !
[Nexus 9 General] NYCHitman1:
Shield K1 has the same hardware specs as the Nexus 9 -- just an FYI.

You're better off just waiting for the Shield X1, which will have similar specs to the Pixel C.
[Nexus 9 General] the.teejster:
I don't think the shield K1 is running 64 bit Android (or forced encryption ?) and I think that's where the biggest difference lies.
[Nexus 9 General] NYCHitman1:
True, it is 32-bit. However, 64-bit isn't the problem for the K1 chipset. It's the fact that it mishandles memory. This has always been the case with every Tegra chipset I've ever used.
[Nexus 9 General] Rolloro:
For the people that have ram/lag issues, try:

- wipe cache in recovery

- make sure that you never have more than one tab in chrome!!

I think that will workaround until it gets fixed.
[Nexus 9 General] Lucke:
by far the worst tablet i've ever owned... but even worse (or maybe a good thing) is that i'll NEVER buy an HTC product every again.

everything on this tablet is subpar. Google really screwed up by partnering with HTC and their cheap (child) labor and then over valuing the price of this thing.

i love the size and feel of it, but that's about it when it comes to long term usability as a 100% stock device.
[Nexus 9 General] LeonKnight12:
I just bought this from Amazon I received perfect tablet no light bleeds but still having heating issues. Heat seem to be on and off on 6.0.1
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
I love the form factor of this tablet and always listening :victory:

On the other hand, I getting sick of crappy performance. I may give it a last chance by installing a custom rom or CM13.

If nothing works, I'm tempted to go back in time and pick up an LG V500. :eek:
[Nexus 9 General] weapons777:
Another very disappointed user. Gets hot. Laggy. Poor battery life. Expensive for specs.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON A NEXUS 9.
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
Make sure you update to marshmallow and wipe cache in recovery (even stock recovery).
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
The performance is still crappy with a clean 6.0.1 and cache wiped. :crying:

I had enough yesterday and took the plunge on CM13. The performance seems about twice the speed :victory: but it still fails the chrome tab refresh test. :(

I think we all need to face facts and accept that 2GB Ram doesn't cut it when you have a 64-bit OS, (which is larger than its 32-bit counterpart,) a SoC which mismanages Ram and a browser that eats Ram for breakfast. :mad:

I was also tempted to dump the 9 for the shield but there are also reports of the shield also failing the chrome refresh test. :rolleyes:

I'm sorry if I'm sounding so negative here but this is an expensive device and I was expecting Nexus 4/5 levels of performance.
[Nexus 9 General] kacang87:
i think ram are not the main problem.if you flash cm13 with pico gapps,there are no problem at all so far.with custom kernel it make more snappy and good memory management..you can try for that
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
Thanks kacang87. :highfive:

I'm a noob to this flashing/gapps/kernels game so I'm sorry if some of my questions are a bit basic:-

- Can I uninstall Gapps then flash Gapps Pico?

- If I install Gapps Pico and need for example Google Sheets, can I just install that from the play store?

- Which Kernal would you recommend?
[Nexus 9 General] kacang87:
1. no because you cannot uninstall gapps..better you start with fresh rom(wipe system,data and cache)

2. of course you can

3. depend on how you feel comfortable..right now I use elementalx 4.09
[Nexus 9 General] madbat99:
I'm running the latest dirty unicorns weekly build. It flies. 10 tabs open in chrome, no reloads. Responsive the way it should be.

Stock on this thing is a joke, for the price.
[Nexus 9 General] kacang87:
too sad its not support lte..if there are instruction howe to insert lte module n build rom, then atleast i can try
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
I've now been running CM13 for a few days. You can still push it over the edge by running Chrome with large websites open but I've switched to Habit and the performance is what it should have been on day 1.

I would recommend either selling the N9 if you want to stay stock or take the plunge and root/rom.

If others can fix the N9, why can't Google? (Or should that be, can Google be bothered?)
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
Just an update on the whole lack of RAM situation. I've now got hold of an old LG v500 and last night I flashed CM13 on it to match my Nexus 9. The v500 has a Snapdragon 600 and 2GB Ram but is only 32-bit.

What I've noticed straight away is that the system is only taking around 350mb on the v500 compared with nearly double that on the Nexus 9. Both tablets are running pretty identical apps and have the same things disabled. In real world usage, the extra 3-400mb the v500 has to play with equates to around 6 large tabs open in chrome.

I'm going to run both tablets for around a week and then sell one. With nothing open, the Nexus 9 is a bit smoother. Will be interesting to see which one performs the best with a ton of things open.......
[Nexus 9 General] NYCHitman1:
Don't worry. I'm slowly changing my mind and contemplating bringing back LTE support.
[Nexus 9 General] nigelhealy:
Why did they bother building a 64bit OS which makes the memory footprint of the exectubles in memory larger and not pair it with an extra GB of RAM...

The Pixel C 64bit has 3GB, my OnePlus2 64bit has 4GB. Given how the N9 was not budget priced, its just weird they made such a false economy saving of 2GB.
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
Totally agree. :highfive:

This v500 is not even needing to use tricks like zram to operate reasonably. I'd love to know if the 5x's problems are also down to a lack of RAM. :confused:
[Nexus 9 General] jlvlawrence:
I have the 5x and the nexus 9. The performance on the 5x is way better than the nexus 9. RAM management is also a lot better.
[Nexus 9 General] Masteryates:
Thanks for the info jlv :highfive:

Are you on Stock or a custom rom? How much RAM is your system taking up after a reboot? How was the 5x before the MHC19J update?
[Nexus 9 General] jlvlawrence:
Stock ROM on both devices.