11–20 of 109 posts
[offtopic] Isn't saying "true fact" redundant? Unless it's true , how can it be a fact ? [/offtopic]
"When you refer to something as a fact or as fact, you mean that you think it is true or correct."
See also: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fact
Although, the Wikipedia disagrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact#Etymology_and_usage
Android's graphics problems are not due to a lack of hardware acceleration. They're due to poor architecture. The reason iOS is so silky smooth is because each view in UIKit is backed by a CoreAnimation layer which will be a pixel buffer in hardware. This means that if you move a UIView in iOS, no new rendering needs to be done of stuff that was "uncovered" by moving the view since each UIView has the full contents o…
(Further reading: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.htm... )
Edit: Also, I missed where she said that in her post: "Starting with 3.0, if you set the flag in your app saying that hardware accelerated drawing is allowed, then all drawing to the application’s windows will be done with the GPU. The main change in this regard in Android 4.0 is that now apps that are explicitly targeting 4.0 or higher will have acceleration enabled by default".
Unfortunately only the the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has Android 4 and I'm not sure there's anything other than a few tablets that have Android 3?
I don't use any apple products but I get tired of Google touting how much better 4.0 is when most people are locked into phones running 2.2 or 2.3 for years into the future.
It's all just software. The only thing that matters is how fast it is.
Those are some nice technical details and it’s right to correct them when someone gets them wrong. They ultimately, however, don’t matter†. If scrolling on one device makes me want to throw the device at the wall while on another device I don’t even notice that I’m scrolling, then that’s a problem. I’m looking forward to trying out an Android 4.0 device to see whether I still want to throw it at the wall. That’s the…
Android's Webview unfortunately requires a rewrite from scratch. It just doesn't work as soon as the webview is more than a static page. Css Animations don't play anywhere near fast enough, there are furious hardware acceleration glitches whenever the touch keyboard pops up, touch events are slow as hell, etc.
The article only touches the surface of the problems with the Webview component. At this point we don't care about scrolling. since one pretty much has to hack a custom Webview component just to avoid all the hardware glitches, display artifacts, buggy input handling, terrifying variations of performance from device to device...
Just put any newest and fastest Android phone with dual-core CPU next to iPhone, or even worse WP7 which essentially works on two years old hardware, and everyone can see the difference. I don't care if it's software or hardware, I'm not interested in excuses about the work in the GUI thread. What I'm care is - the phone is something I touch. If I don't have immediate response to my gestures, the device is useless to me. As simple as that.
Is this a defense for Android's poor responsiveness (often blamed on a lack of hardware acceleration), or is there some other context I'm missing? Doesn't this make Android look even worse? I.e., "Android already has hardware acceleration but still doesn't seem to perform very well" means any hope of flipping some magical GPU acceleration switch and instantly fixing the problem is gone.
I'm really, really sick of hearing Google engineers saying that there's nothing wrong with Android rendering. No offense, but post like this one makes them looks like idiots. Just put any newest and fastest Android phone with dual-core CPU next to iPhone, or even worse WP7 which essentially works on two years old hardware, and everyone can see the difference. I don't care if it's software or hardware, I'm not interes…
The post is relating facts about "how graphics rendering works on Android", it says so right at the top. I see absolutely nowhere that it says anything like "there's nothing wrong".
Those are some nice technical details and it’s right to correct them when someone gets them wrong. They ultimately, however, don’t matter†. If scrolling on one device makes me want to throw the device at the wall while on another device I don’t even notice that I’m scrolling, then that’s a problem. I’m looking forward to trying out an Android 4.0 device to see whether I still want to throw it at the wall. That’s the…
I've had the chance to enjoy dual-core android phones (Atrix, 2.2) & tablets (Xoom, 3.1). The difference compared to single-cores is gigantic, everything is super smooth, on the level of the iPhone/iPad as far as responsiveness goes for apps and home screen. I have to say that if the goal is to have a superb OS given a powerful enough phone, the goal has been met, with one (critical!) exception: Android's Webview unf…