Is My Note II Defective? - Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II

This is gonna be a pretty long story with photo's. I want to show you my situation as accurate as possible, so if someone can help me with this, that'll be amazing.
Has anyone here been noticing their phone lagging?
Swipe to unlock used to have fluid animations, not anymore. It hardly recognizes my gesture to unlock the device, I have to do it a few times.
Swiping through pages there are lag. Scrolling through App Drawer there is lag, especially in the Widgets section.
This phone has 4 cores and Project Butter, I don't get it. I'm thinking it could be from my SD card? Since it's only 16gb, and a class 4, it's taking longer for the phone to read the information on it? I think some of the apps I have are saved on the card (not sure how, but I think it is).
Anyway, if it's not from the SD card, do you guys have any idea why it would just be lagging like this? Are any of you guys experiencing performance hiccups?
I know I shouldn't be acting this way, but the phones less then a month old, and it should be smoother and faster..
I had 3 different launchers on my phone: Nova, Apex, Go, and I uninstalled all of them. Prior to uninstalling them, I never really set either one of them up, so there were no widgets on any of the launchers on the homescreen.
Here are a bunch of screen shots of the apps that I had on my phone, and how my phone was behaving..
Here are the apps that I have downloaded:
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Here is my Device storage, and I don't understand why I have OVER 5GB of Miscellaneous stuff..
Here are all the apps that are running in the background, some have been running for over 400 hours!
And from all of those apps that are running, I disabled most of them, based on this list [http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-galaxy-s-iii/202816-safe-disbable.html] of Apps that are safe to disable:
I ran a test on Quadrant Standard and my phones getting 37-41 fps in the 2d and 3d rendering. My total score was at 4239, much lower then the HTC One X.
I was at the Verizon store today...
Two Words: Factory Reset.
Man, such a big difference in performance! I think one of the apps that I had installed was causing the lag, I just gotta figure out which one.
After I did the factory reset at Verizon, I did the Quadrant Standard Benchmark, I scored 54xx, and then I scored 62xx with an fps of 55-63, and I got real happy. Fast forward 3 hours and I do the same benchmark, and now I'm scoring at 42xx again with an fps of 40, and I got disappointed. I just don't get it. Is it defective? Is it not defective? I dunno.
The only app I have installed so far is the Quadrant Standard app, everything else is complete stock.
My Device Memory is 386 MB used and 10 GB free.
When it comes to RAM, 760 MB used and 1 GB free.
Inside the Quadrant Standard app, I clicked on System Information, and I got:
CPU
Current frequency: 1,100 MHz
Max frequency: 1,600 MHz
Min frequency: 200 MHz
Cores: 4
Architecture: 7
Memory
Total: 1834220 kB
Free: 289936 kB
Inactive: 266112 kB
GPU (OpenGL)
Vendor: ARM
Renderer: Mali-400 MP
Version: OpenGL ES 2.0
Max texture units: 8
Max texture size: 4096
Max lights: 8
I know I don't have a screen shot, but I noticed that in Quadrant Standard, it says that my Max Frequency is 1,600 MHz, and that my Current Frequency is 1,100 MHz. My friend has the Note 2 also (Different Carrier), and his Max Frequency is 1,600 MHz also, but his Current Frequency is 1,600 MHz too!
Why is my frequency so low? Is that the cause for my phone not performing the way that it's supposed to? Is it a defect? Would I have to get my phone replaced, or would I be able to fix it myself?
I'm thinking of flashing a ROM on it also (never done this before), and I don't know if that will fix the problem or make it worse.
Currently, I still have only one app downloaded on my phone, and that's the Quadrant Standard app, everything else is stock.

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xMoKax said:
Why is my frequency so low? Is that the cause for my phone not performing the way that it's supposed to? Is it a defect? Would I have to get my phone replaced, or would I be able to fix it myself?
I'm thinking of flashing a ROM on it also (never done this before), and I don't know if that will fix the problem or make it worse.
Currently, I still have only one app downloaded on my phone, and that's the Quadrant Standard app, everything else is stock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because you have Power Saving mode enabled. Turn it off and your current freq should be 1,600

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CBConsultation said:
Because you have Power Saving mode enabled. Turn it off and your current freq should be 1,600
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Shouldn't the current frequency be lower if not under a lot of load? I was pretty sure our phones only clocked themselves up to 1600 when they needed to for battery saving reasons like other phone processors and i3/i5/i7s etc. Also, if I'm not mistaken it said that after the reset when it is acting fine.
I'm not familiar with most of your apps so I can't really help you narrow it down much. My best guess is that one of them had a background task to check for an update or something and somehow got stuck in a loop where it was calculating something, though even then unless it used multiple threads you shouldn't have had lag since 3 cores should be plenty for just moving around the interface. Did you try restarting your phone before the reset? And I'd read reviews of the apps as you redownload them to see if anyone has complained about an update doing this, etc.

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flaring afro said:
Shouldn't the current frequency be lower if not under a lot of load? I was pretty sure our phones only clocked themselves up to 1600 when they needed to for battery saving reasons like other phone processors and i3/i5/i7s etc..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, that's right.
That "current frequency" listed in quadrant is never right.
The free app CPU Spy is a good way to read what the processor speed really is.

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jmorton10 said:
Yes, that's right.
That "current frequency" listed in quadrant is never right.
The free app CPU Spy is a good way to read what the processor speed really is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's right and wrong. Typically when not under a load, the CPU cycles down to a lower frequency. But when you start Quadrant, the app automatically ramps up the clock frequency. I did the same test 4x on my device, twice with power savings on and twice with it off. And when power saving mode was enabled, my clock frequency showed 1100. When power saving mode with disabled, my clock frequency showed 1600.
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