31–40 of 109 posts
Not to be a jerk... But this still doesn't address why every Android home screen I've seen (including new 4.0 devices) looks like a laggy piece of shit when sliding around between different screens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the Delegate pattern used in iOS vs Android's Listener pattern when it comes to handling continuous touch events on the main thread, rather than the rendering speed.
i think this is probably the most accurate thing that can be said. thank you for posting this, do you think the linux scheduler subtleties / server-process-optimization may add to this?
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…
Two exceptions: Audio latency. It is impossible to write certain classes of table applications for Android right now, because no priority was given to having a low-latency audio subsystem. Its at least as big a mess as display acceleration.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It blows my mind that people can't understand that scrolling "feels right" is a show-stopper feature for a touch interface. Meanwhile, at Apple, they would have got it right in version 0.1, and Steve Jobs would treated that as prototype quality and made the team do 10 better variations.
Apple makes compromises, too. On the original iPad scrolling can be really laggy (probably only after installing a couple of apps, so you won't notice it in the store). Meanwhile, the current generation of dual core Android phones have hardly any lag issues anymore.
So... laggy sometimes, but still smooth scrolling.
Every Android device I've tried (just tried a couple tablets at a Best Buy this week) have been consistently laggy (response times to swipes) and choppy scrolling.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It blows my mind that people can't understand that scrolling "feels right" is a show-stopper feature for a touch interface. Meanwhile, at Apple, they would have got it right in version 0.1, and Steve Jobs would treated that as prototype quality and made the team do 10 better variations.
Apple makes compromises, too. On the original iPad scrolling can be really laggy (probably only after installing a couple of apps, so you won't notice it in the store). Meanwhile, the current generation of dual core Android phones have hardly any lag issues anymore.
There is still a limit to how much the GPU can do. A recent interesting example of this is tablets built with Tegra 2 -- that GPU can touch every pixel of a 1024x800 screen about 2.5 times at 60fps. Now consider the Android 3.0 tablet home screen where you are switching to the all apps list: you need to draw the background (1x all pixels), then the layer of shortcuts and widgets (let’s be nice and say this is .5x all pixels), then the black background of all apps (1x all pixels), and the icons and labels of all apps (.5x all pixels). We’ve already blown our per-pixel budget, and we haven’t even composited the separate windows to the final display yet.
I find this bizarre. Are all of these drawing operations using alpha blending (using translucency)? If so: is that strictly necessary for the entire area of all of them?
If they aren't using blending, why on earth do they have so much overdraw? The GPU could reduce that to touching each pixel exactly once by using the Z buffer and drawing in front-to-back order.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> OS given a powerful enough phone, the goal has been met, with one (critical!) exception Two exceptions: Audio latency. It is impossible to write certain classes of table applications for Android right now, because no priority was given to having a low-latency audio subsystem. Its at least as big a mess as display acceleration.
From the article: There is still a limit to how much the GPU can do. A recent interesting example of this is tablets built with Tegra 2 -- that GPU can touch every pixel of a 1024x800 screen about 2.5 times at 60fps. Now consider the Android 3.0 tablet home screen where you are switching to the all apps list: you need to draw the background (1x all pixels), then the layer of shortcuts and widgets (let’s be nice and s…
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…
Currently reading this on Galaxy Nexus. No need to throw at wall in my view. Feels much like the iphone 3gs i had before...
I don't know the technical details (though I'd assume hardware acceleration is a big deal), but evidently Apple can achieve a good user experience while consuming far less resources. It's taken Android years, and I probably have to buy a new device.
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…
It blows my mind that people can't understand that scrolling "feels right" is a show-stopper feature for a touch interface. Meanwhile, at Apple, they would have got it right in version 0.1, and Steve Jobs would treated that as prototype quality and made the team do 10 better variations.