Main screen refresh rate drops caused by the small rear screen

[Misiek735]

I have a big problem with the fps (hz) drops in the main screen which are caused by the activation of the rear screen.

I have Mi11 ultra Chinese version bought in tradingshenzhen.

Every time the rear screen is active, the main screen starts working at 56 - 57Hz. As soon as the rear screen is switched off, the main screen is back at 120 Hz. The same behavior happen when I activate the rear screen in the camera app.

I own this phone for about 3 weeks, and I had this issue on all xiaomi.eu firmwares which I used until now:
weekly (21.6.16, 21.6.23, and 21.6.30),
latest stable (12.5.10.0).
I did not noticed having this problem on the Chinese firmware when I received the phone (and I was waiting for 7 days to unlock bootloader, etc).

21.6.16 weekly was flashed on a clean phone (all the wipes in twrp, including wipe data and wipe internal memory). 21.6.23 and 21.6.30 was flashed after wipe dalvic.

Before switching to stable after using weekly, I did a full wipe of everything.

What I noticed:
After the clean installation of the latest stable, everything works perfectly.
As soon as I add my Google account, described problem appear.
After logging to my Google account I restored only my contact list, SMS, passwords and call logs (in total it's less than 1 MB of data). At this stage I did not restore any of my apps so the problem is not caused by my applications.
As soon as the Google account finish restoring the data, this problem appear.

So I decided to delete my Google account and I cleaned the data of all the Google apps (including the google services), but the problem did not disappear.
I also cleaned the data of app vault, because some people complained about overall problems with the animations of miui because of this app, but it didn't help.

Back when I was on weekly xiaomi.eu I was twice successful by fixing this issue. The 1st time when it disappeared for a while was when I cleaned the data of the rear display apk, installed busybox through Magisk and restarted the phone.

After those steps it was fine for a few hours, but the next day this problem appeared again.

I was also successful once when I did this:
"Tidy up memory; run Cleaner; remove all Recents; boot into Recovery.
Clear cache and Dalvik; delete /data/system/package_cache/ folder;
Re-install ROM; reboot back to System."

As you can guess, the next day problem appeared again.

The phone was and currently is after bg-dexopt-job.
I also thought that it might appear because of using not original charger -
the baseus 100w usbc cable with the iPad pro 18w charger. But even when I use the original cable and the original 67w charger from xiaomi, as well as the 10w wireless charger from xiaomi, the problem still exist - so it's not the charger's fault.

Doing another wipe / factory reset is not a solution.

Please suggest me what software problem it might be and what I could do to fix it.

Thank you.

 

[12rithy]

Don't worry man, your phone is not damaged by TWRP or charger. I having the same problem after updated to 12.5.10. I think it has to do with Xiaomi adding Rear Display to main setting list and Super power saver mode. Hopefully it will fix in the next update, if bothering you try downgrade to 12.5.4. I had been waiting for Xiaomi to fix Spotify music notification bug introduced in 12.5.7 for 3 weeks and now they introduce another bug. lol

 

[Misiek735]

@12rithy hi again! Did you found some solution? Is it working fine for you everything?

 

[xNAPx]

Did you try this? Go to display settings and set 60hz,now go to apps->manage apps->powee and performance and clear cache and data. Go back to display settings and reset 120hz. It should work now, try and let me know if that fixed. Actually you can also go to developer settings and activate "show refresh rate" to check it out

 

[Misiek735]

Thank you for your suggestion. I followed all the steps to reset the data of the battery and performance app, but it did not solve my problem. I also restart the phone after this operation, and still the phone lags when the rear screen display any information.

By the way, I don't know if this is important, but the option "show refresh rate" stays always on 120hz even when the phone lags by activating the rear screen.
From my experience the option "power monitor" is much more sensitive and it's showing ~56hz when the rear screen is active.

I also tried to downgrade the rear display apk. The latest version is 1.3.5, I tried already 1.3.4, 1.3.3 and 1.1.16 (which doesn't have the super power saving option), but still the phone lags on each of them.

 

[xNAPx]

I'm sorry to hear that, honestly on my global rom I was experiencing some lag and I found out by activating the "show refresh rate" option that the phone was getting back to 60hz when I wasn't touching or scrolling on the screen, and I fixed that using that trick. I thought it could work for you as well, maybe at this point you can try to force the 120hz refresh rate with termux and root, I don't know the exact command thought you can find it by searching on Google. Please try and let me know if that fixed your issue

 

[Misiek735]

@xNAPx Any suggestion which you say is very appreciated, I was already trying everything which came to my mind and I could not discover any solution, so thank you for your time and interest in this

I found the instructions on xda for poco x3. I am not sure if I can post here the link to their forum, but the screenshot explains all the steps.

The guide says that the default option for "ro.vendor.dfps.enable" should be true, but for me it was false. I set the value "true" to enable the dynamic refresh rate - so I did the opposite to the tutorial purposes.

Also, by writing the next command "ro.vendor.smart_dfps.enable" I received the response "currently not set, or the value could not be retrieved". Strange... but I also saved it as true.

After reseting the phone the stutter is gone, when both of the screens are active everything works smoothly!

For the testing purposes, I tried to recreate the problem to know if those two commands are the issue causing the hz drop of the main screen. I deleted both of those custom values which I edited, and I restart the phone.
The values of both of the commands were the same as I described before editing them, but even that the phone still works fine and the hz drop of the main screen is not happening. I really don't understand why...

For now on I will just keep those two commands as true to activate the dynamic refresh rate and see in a long time of usage what is the phone's behavior.
If the problem will appear again, I will again edit those values to (for example) switch off or switch on the dynamic refresh rate.

Just for the record, and this is just my own though which might not make any sense...
It could also be that the solution of this issue is "connected" to resetting the data of the battery and performance app as you wrote before, as well as later editing those two commands. It might be that the solution is connected of doing both of those steps.
I also think that the "cmd package bg-dexopt- job" has something to do with the data of the battery and performance app. In my opinion resetting the data of the battery and performance app in reality deletes the data what the command "cmd package bg-dexopt- job" did to the phone. I mentioned in the 1st post of this topic that my phone is after "cmd package bg-dexopt- job".

But as I said, it's just my opinion not covered by any detailed technical knowledge of what this "cmd package bg-dexopt- job" command exactly do to the phone and what exact data is deleted for the battery and performance app. I just somehow see it relevant as a part of the solution, no idea if it's true.

If the problem will appear again I will inform about any changes here.
Thanks again!

 

[xNAPx]

Sure thing buddy. Honestly I believe that the command dexopt-job activate an adaptive refresh rate
May I ask what do you mean by "after resetting the phone" how you reset the phone?

 

[xNAPx]

I realized that during whatsapp cloud backup while the rear screen was in use, even on the global 12.5.4.0 rom the phone was lagging. How is your phone now? Are you forcing the 120hz?

 

[Misiek735]

@xNAPx

By saying "reseting the phone" I meant rebooting the phone, sorry.

Unfortunately your suggestions helped only for ~one day. The phone just suddenly started to lag at some point during the day when I activated the rear screen.
I already tried the same steps as before - to delete the data of the battery and performance app and to activate or deactivate dynamic refresh rate by terminal. The phone still lags, doesn't matter what step I repeat...

Currently I forced 120hz but it doesn't help.

 

[Karpfenhai]

Guys, I hate to say this, but I cannot confirm or reproduce any of your issues

Sent from my Mi 11 Ultra.

 

[Misiek735]

By the way, what I also noticed but its not related to the rear screen is the animation lag when you choose different notification effect.

Please go to settings - notifications & control center - notification effect.
There are a few options -
None, light up screen, Rhythm, Pulse, Starlight.

To see the option starlight you need to swipe to the left.
If you choose Rhythm you can see that the swiping animation start working in 60 hz. But as soon as you choose any other one (pulse or starlight) the animations there are smooth.

@Karpfenhai I really don't know what to tell you. I am struggling a lot with this problem and I have no idea what can cause it.

 

[Misiek735]

I didnt change completely any setting in my phone. Again, the lag disappeared... This system lives his own life, behaves randomly however it wants.

 

[xNAPx]

@xNAPx

By saying "reseting the phone" I meant rebooting the phone, sorry.

Unfortunately your suggestions helped only for ~one day. The phone just suddenly started to lag at some point during the day when I activated the rear screen.
I already tried the same steps as before - to delete the data of the battery and performance app and to activate or deactivate dynamic refresh rate by terminal. The phone still lags, doesn't matter what step I repeat...

Currently I forced 120hz but it doesn't help.

Thank you for your reply,so this solution you found doesn't work, in my case it was working but then I had the same issue you do. There other command to execute to force screen refresh rate I'll try to find them and report

 

[xNAPx]

Ok I found the commands, these need to be run in adb shell (might work in terminal eith root as well,but don't know)

settings put system peak_refresh_rate 120
settings put system min_refresh_rate 120

There might be another command also but not sure,I only read somewhere about this one

settings put user_refresh_rate 120

But search better for this command please

Also there is an option to deactivate in developers settings called

Logger buffer size which needs to be set to off

Please use these solutions and let me know (might need a reboot as well)

 

[Misiek735]

Thank you!
I set up peak and min refresh rate commands by the terminal and I rebooted the phone. Right now the lag disappeared, so this command helped. The question is for how long...

The "settings put user refresh rate" can be easily adjusted with the app SetEdit, under the "system table" option we can find "user_refresh_rate" with option already set up to 120hz. I read somewhere that some people like to change this value to 90 to save the battery a bit, but some other users reported that always on display has difficulties to work properly and the screen is burning out quicker. So seems that it's saver to use 120hz instead of 90hz

The "logger buffer sizes" as well as "select log level" was already off for me, I changed it quite long time ago because this setting help for example with youtube to work with a higher refresh rate.

 

[xNAPx]

Very nice,so you solved the issue with the latest solution,great! How did you run the command? Adb or terminal?

 

[12rithy]

Guys, I hate to say this, but I cannot confirm or reproduce any of your issues

Sent from my Mi 11 Ultra.

Try play a song in Spotify, then activate music control on rear display. This is how I get UI stuttering.

 

[Karpfenhai]

Try play a song in Spotify, then activate music control on rear display. This is how I get UI stuttering.

How do you activate music controls?

Spotify runs but there are no controls, screen on or off doesn't matter.

Hmm

Nevermind, controls appeared but there is no impact on performance or fluidity...

Weird


Sent from my Mi 11 Ultra.

 

[xNAPx]

Thank you!
I set up peak and min refresh rate commands by the terminal and I rebooted the phone. Right now the lag disappeared, so this command helped. The question is for how long...

The "settings put user refresh rate" can be easily adjusted with the app SetEdit, under the "system table" option we can find "user_refresh_rate" with option already set up to 120hz. I read somewhere that some people like to change this value to 90 to save the battery a bit, but some other users reported that always on display has difficulties to work properly and the screen is burning out quicker. So seems that it's saver to use 120hz instead of 90hz

The "logger buffer sizes" as well as "select log level" was already off for me, I changed it quite long time ago because this setting help for example with youtube to work with a higher refresh rate.

Hello, any update on this? How did you run the commands?

 

[Misiek735]

@xNAPx hi! I am sorry for answering after such a long time, I did not feel well after taking the covid vaccine.

Until now everything was just a temporary solution, works max 1 or 1,5 day and the animations again start lagging. Repeating any of the solution which we spoke in this topic does not work for the second time, I tried everything for the second time.

The commands "settings put system (...)" I modified with the app SetEdit. By this program you can modify the values of all of the commands what you mentioned: peak, min and user refresh rate.

 

[xNAPx]

Hi, thanks for your reply.
Does the lag start again after reboot or simply after some time? I was thinking if you have root on your phone to run the commands via terminal emulator, it may do some difference.

 

[Misiek735]

The lag appears just randomly during the day at some point. When it works I do not modify any phone settings, I do not install any root requiring apps as well as I do not use terminal to change some of the commends.
I just activate the rear screen from time to time to see if the lag happen, and after activating the rear screen after many times during the day it just at some point decides to lag.

By activating the rear screen I mean double tapping on it.

 

[xNAPx]

Try please if you can the adb shell from PC since you don't have root, and let me know if it makes a difference. Do you know how to? If you don't I can guide you step by step

 

[Misiek735]

Oh I am sorry, we didn't understood each other.

My phone is rooted, I always have it because without root I would be not able to modify any of the settings what we are writing about in this topic.
I wrote "I do not install any root requiring apps" because I meant that when the phone was working well after applying your solutions, I did not modify any settings of my phone anymore. I was just letting you to know that when the problem with the lag was solved, I did not update any app / install any app / modify any of the settings of my phone.

For example, when I modified the min_refresh_rate with the app SetEdit (requires root), after the reboot I noticed that the lag dissapeared - so from that moment I did not change anything in my phone, I just used is as normal phone (calling, checking facebook etc), but even that after one day the lag without any reason suddenly appeared again. Repeating any of the solution doesn't work at the moment.