Why is Gallery so slow?
Published by Steve Litchfield at 8:30 UTC, July 18th
Q. Why is Gallery on both my Nokia S60 smartphones so incredibly slow? Surely something must be wrong?
A. The theory behind the Gallery application on most Series 60 smartphones is a good one, and being able to browse through (possibly hundreds) of photo thumbnails makes it easy to find the image you're looking for. But how many times have you gone to Gallery and seen that the thumbnails for all your most recent photos are blank? Perhaps you've stared at the screen for a while and started to see some of the thumbnails appearing... slowly. It's all a bit frustrating. But it pays to work with Gallery rather than just complain about it. Gallery can only construct thumbnail images, saving them to its database, while it's actually running. So opening Gallery, moaning because the thumbnails aren't all there and then closing it again really won't help matters.
Instead, open Gallery when you've got a moment and then leave it (in its thumbnail view) running while you get on with your life for a minute or two. When you switch back, you'll see all the thumbnails neatly constructed and in place. And, importantly, even if you close Gallery down and then re-open it, the thumbnails will still all be there, instantly, because they'll have been saved to your smartphone's internal disk.
Having picked up a reputation as being a very slow application, Gallery is actually quite speedy once you've let it build the thumbnails. Opening and decoding many megapixel images isn't a trvial task and your smartphone's processor needs all the help it can get - in this case, your patience.
Categories: Applications, Performance
Platforms: Series 60, S60 3rd Edition
Discussion
Once the thumbnails have been created, my Gallery is REALLY fast. I can "page up/down" through the whole gallery in seconds. And opening an image is a second plus the final rendering and it's done. I find the Gallery to be a bit slow just opening, but nothing that I find offensive. It's one of my favorite applications simply because it organises, edits and outputs just like iPhoto... of course, it isn't as powerful but for a phone, it rocks.
In fact simply storing lots of files even map data of any format in different directories even outside the reserved directories (Photos, Videos, Others) slowed down Gallery.
Unfortunately, Gallery seems to be re-scanning the entire disk every time a disk is ejected, phone is rebooted and sometimes randomly as well.
Perhaps Nokia could add an option to only scan when requested or limit the directories that are scanned :)
Unfortunately, I find I have to reboot the phone (due to battery life) often enough that the slow startup of Gallery is very irritating.
There is a few things I did to make it quicker :
In Filemanager : make folders to store your pictures . And make allso folders in photo Gallery ( preferably the same name as in filemanager for easier handling) . To my opinion this speeds up already .
Download Y-browser and/or Xplore . They give both the ability to make folders or even a single file "hidden" . Hiding folders speeds up too .
The way fastening Gallery the most is deleting most of your files OR turn files , which are not needed , into .zip files !! I have only the experience with Y-browser , that easily does this . But I think Zipmanager and Xplore can do it allso . It is still possible to view the photos in Filemanager , but easier for viewing is Xplore .
Anyway it makes Gallery faster since it doesn't recognize .zip files .
Good luck ! Regards : jApi NL:)