Multiple reports on Tor Browser for Android (14.5.x) being slow
History: around 6 month ago we started to notice some number reviews on Google Play where users say that Tor Browser for Android (TBA) is being slow. We made a template offering users to change tor circuit or use a bridge.
Now: Somewhere in the end of April - beginning of May we started to get much more reviews about TBA being slow. That resulted in the app rating that was steadily growing for several months in a row to drop from 4.416 the app had in April to 4.407 as per 4 June.
I've made a list of reviews mentioning TBA being slow for May. I did not include comments from the users who are probably in the censored regions (China, Russia, Iran) as they may have other issues and I only included the reviews clearly mentioning that the internet speed is slow in TBA.
So in May we got 45 reviews saying that TBA is slow. How slow? Users mention, that it takes 5-15 minutes to load a page.
Most of the users has English as their device language, but there are users with Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese etc. TBA versions are mostly 14.5.1 and then 14.5.2. Android versions are mostly 15 and 14, but there are also 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and even 5.1.
What caught my attention is the disproportionate number of Samsung users - 28 out of 45. Second place is Motorola - 5, third one - Realme (4). Also there are Nokia (2), Lenovo (1), TLC (1), Xiaomi (1), Vivo (1) and Redmi (1).
The most affected models are:
- Samsung Galaxy S23 (4 reviews)
- Samsung Galaxy S21 (3 reviews)
- Samsung Galaxy S24 (2 reviews)
All other phones are different, but 4 out of 5 motorolas are from the G family.
Note: the issue exists in TBA Alpha as well.