I have written a SurfaceView-based rendering system (basically identical to that shown in the LunarLander example) that has some frame rate issues. Rendering is very fast, but in different conditions, the frame rate exhibits serious spikes. The game is noticeably jumpy on my Droid 1, and has some intermittent jumpiness on an LG G2. The most interesting behavior, though, shows up on a Droid Razr M. On that phone, turning on the "Show CPU Usage" developer option, or plugging the phone into the computer for debugging, causes the frame rate to stabilize at a fairly high frame rate, and gameplay is very smooth. I tried plugging into just power, and observed no effect.
This seems like something that somebody with experience would have seen before... any ideas?
Additional information: This jitter goes away when a computer USB (not power) connection is made, even if USB debugging is turned off, or if the connected computer is logged out and is not running ADB or phone drivers.