Live data from Hacker News

How about some Android graphics true facts?

plus.google.com

41–50 of 109 posts

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#41
post #9

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...

So you're basically saying a brand-new phone with 3 times the specs feels much like an almost 3-year old iPhone? Amazing!

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#42
post #30
post #5

It appears to me that this article is trying a little bit too hard to paper over the poor UI performance of Android compared to iOS or WP7, and making up excuses for less than optimal drawing performance. It doesn't say _why_ GPU rendering isn't much faster than CPU rendering on Android, it doesn't say why using OpenGL adds 8 MB to the RAM overhead to a process (something I can hardly believe by the way), it glosses…

>It appears to me that this article is trying a little bit too hard to paper over the poor UI performance of Android compared to iOS or WP7, and making up excuses for less than optimal drawing performance. I'm surprised that many people are still bashing UI responsiveness/performance. I've held and played with many devices (including, but not limited to, iphone 3 and 4) and I can't really say what's bothering so many…

"I'll just go out and say that it's a non-issue for mainstream user."

Might also be why the "mainstream" is primarily using Apple iPads/iPods/iPhones vs the myriad of Android devices available.

What bothers people is that when you swipe from screen 1 to screen 2, there can be a > .5 second delay. It doesn't feel remotely "natural" for something that you're physically touching and supposedly interacting with.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#43

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.

How can you say "4.0 devices" (plural) when there is only one announced 4.0 device, which is stunningly smooth in the video and in actual use?

I think you're just repeating the meme of "lol Android graphics are bad" which hasn't been true for at least 2 years, even with relatively weak phones (like the Optimus X)

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#44
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It appears to me that this article is trying a little bit too hard to paper over the poor UI performance of Android compared to iOS or WP7, and making up excuses for less than optimal drawing performance. I'm surprised that many people are still bashing UI responsiveness/performance. I've held and played with many devices (including, but not limited to, iphone 3 and 4) and I can't really say what's bothering so many…

"I'll just go out and say that it's a non-issue for mainstream user." Might also be why the "mainstream" is primarily using Apple iPads/iPods/iPhones vs the myriad of Android devices available. What bothers people is that when you swipe from screen 1 to screen 2, there can be a > .5 second delay. It doesn't feel remotely "natural" for something that you're physically touching and supposedly interacting with.

>Might also be why the "mainstream" is primarily using Apple iPads/iPods/iPhones

I don't believe the reason for that is UI responsiveness (also, I don't agree with your 'primarily' assessment, but let's not chew on that). In my opinion, the differences are so small that UI performance just isn't an issue. There are other areas where iDevices are noticeably better compared to every competing device.

>What bothers people is that when you swipe from screen 1 to screen 2, there can be a > .5 second delay

Hm, I don't remember that ever happening to me in the last ~2 years with two devices that I've used most: nexus one and motorola defy. But ok, I grant you that it can happen. So what? I've also seen an iPhone freeze completely.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#45
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It appears to me that this article is trying a little bit too hard to paper over the poor UI performance of Android compared to iOS or WP7, and making up excuses for less than optimal drawing performance. I'm surprised that many people are still bashing UI responsiveness/performance. I've held and played with many devices (including, but not limited to, iphone 3 and 4) and I can't really say what's bothering so many…

"I'll just go out and say that it's a non-issue for mainstream user." Might also be why the "mainstream" is primarily using Apple iPads/iPods/iPhones vs the myriad of Android devices available. What bothers people is that when you swipe from screen 1 to screen 2, there can be a > .5 second delay. It doesn't feel remotely "natural" for something that you're physically touching and supposedly interacting with.

>Might also be why the "mainstream" is primarily using Apple iPads/iPods/iPhones vs the myriad of Android devices available.

Which mainstream? Last time I looked Android market share was substantially higher than iOS.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#46

Hardware rendered vs software rendered??? :/ It's all just software. The only thing that matters is how fast it is.

Downmodders: Can you explain why?

My point is, software is rendering the graphics. Either it's software running on one chip, or it's software on another chip. That's irrelevant. What matters, is how fast the graphics are rendered.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#48

Hardware rendered vs software rendered??? :/ It's all just software. The only thing that matters is how fast it is.

Downmodders: Can you explain why? My point is, software is rendering the graphics. Either it's software running on one chip, or it's software on another chip. That's irrelevant. What matters, is how fast the graphics are rendered.

There is a big difference between hardware and software rendering. Software rendering has you plotting each pixel individually and writing to the framebuffer. Hardware rendering uses specialized APIs and hardware to dramatically speed up drawing and transformation functions.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#50
post #25

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.

It's a definitional thing. "Works" at (say) Microsoft or Google means "produces a correct result at the end" whereas it means something quite different at Apple. The most egregious example I've seen of this is the way Mac OS filtered mouse movement data from the beginning, but it still doesn't feel right on Windows (and wasn't even in the ballpark until around Windows 98/NT4). (And, by contrast, the Amiga had pretty…

You say that as if that was a fact but in reality is nothing but your opinion.

I can barely stand the, in my opinion, horrible mouse acceleration in OS X and knowing apple I can imagine that they feel that giving me the option to disable it isn't user friendly.

Post reply on HN