What causes user interface lag (yank) in Android, and remedies to that

This was meant as a reply in /. about lag in Android durin gaming.

The lags are there, because there are processes in the background doing something.

• Switch off all other running tasks.
• Check the services running in the background, and all the currently running processes to find out, what's going on.
• Switch off the animated main screen background image, and replace it with a still one.

The two things always causing mayhem during normal phone operations, were and are Google Play Services and Google Play Store apps automatically updating in the background at the expense of everything else. There is no notification or wait-until-idle-and-then-some period. On many occasions, I just had to wait until the phone was responsive again, and when checking in settings for apps, the version numbers of these two apps had been bumped up.

Another culprit is synchronisation — of all your data, and especially the sync of all your photos. Switch off sync in almost all the apps you have. Except maybe Google Play, because without sync for that turned on, the Google Play app won't be able to access the store under you account.