From a nerdish perspective, the phone is probably running very fast -- it just seems slow because it's trying to do more than it can do responsively. So, then, to deal with the problem you have to reduce the load. I'm having this problem, too, sometimes, and haven't figured out a good answer. I did just install Advanced Task Killer, which is really designed to deal with this. I think I have (at least) a couple of problems, now.
#1 -- my phone takes
forever to boot. Part of that is probably because I have lots of music on it, and it starts up by scanning all the memory. I wish it would hold off on that until either (a) I do something that requires it to know what the files are, like trying to play music, or (b) wait a few minutes, and pause while I'm using the phone for something else. Another part of the problem with the delay booting up is that I've an amazing number of apps that, for some reason or another, seem to think I couldn't possibly use my phone unless these apps start themselves running immediately when I turn it on.
Advanced Task Killer eventually starts itself up, and then can stop most of them, but only after they have already choked my phone while it's booting up, so it takes a while. Also, Advanced Task Killer has some settings that seem to say that
it knows which ones I should not kill. So far, I'm running it on the safest of the settings.
#2 -- I don't know which of the apps I really need to leave running. I assume some of them are system apps I really shouldn't stop. Others seems to be good apps to have running, but would they really do OK if they started only when I ask them to?
Here's another thought ... my phone really slows down while it's trying to get a GPS fix. I've noticed that some applications that ask for a GPS fix leave the GPS scanning the sky even after I've killed the app. I've decided that any app doing that is just too badly written to be on my phone, so whenever I see an app doing that, I uninstall it. This has been a recurring problem because my GPS usually can't get a fix while I'm indoors, but it just keeps scanning. So, if you see that little radar dish waving around, you might try turning off GPS, to see if that helps.
