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How about some Android graphics true facts?

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Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#71

Post by mrich »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #55
mgkimsal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat agreed. It can be laggy, but on mine it rarely is (but it does happen). However, it's never consistently choppy when scrolling. 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.

Actually the first time I used an iPad I was blown away by the smoothness of scrolling in web pages, and it still holds up really well today IMO

Yes, because the scrolling is very well supported by hardware. But you will notice the slowness when you are zooming in/out of pages (the font smoothing takes about half a second). But Apple got it right compared to Android, and you are right that even today the iPad holds up well, considering its hardware (reminds me of the C64 which was able to smoothscroll because of hardware support, while the PC didn't manage it at that time)

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#72

Post by CountSessine »

jan_g wrote: post #44
mgkimsal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 peop…

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.

That's funny. I use a Nexus S on a daily basis, and compared to my primary phones I've used over the last 3 years (iPhone 3GS, 4, and now 4S), the touch screen is awful.

The incontrovertible truth is that every mainstream Android device on the market, including the newest SGS2's, have this annoying 500ms/20 pixel touchscreen 'slop'. And it's annoying as hell. It makes the touchscreen and all the widgets feel slippery. It ruins the built-in android keyboard (I can type at 40+ words per minute on the ios5 touchscreen keyboard, and I need swiftkey if I want to type that fast on android).

Ignore this all you like. Those of us who want something better know where to get it.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#73

Post by kalid »

nextparadigms wrote: post #58
D_Drake wrote: post #13

So, in summary, "We have hardware acceleration, have had it for a long time, but it isn't the reason android interfaces are almost universally clunky. We actually have no idea why that is." 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.

A lot of the 2011 phones should be updated to Android 4.0, and the ones who bought them in 2010 will upgrade next year to Android 4.0 phones.

http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphan...

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#74

Post by mgkimsal »

CountSessine wrote: post #72
jan_g wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 peop…

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. That's funny. I use a Nexus S on a daily basis, and compared to my primary phones I've used over the last 3 years (iPhone 3GS, 4, and now 4S), the touch screen is awful. The incontrovertible t…

But you're forgetting the other big screen criteria people have: "not from Apple". Once you factor that in, the Android platforms all fare much better. :)

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#75

Post by beatle »

babebridou wrote: post #66
beatle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Garbage collection in Android is another performance bottleneck. ICS "fixes" this by allowing the garbage collector to run on a different thread but imo that's a kludge.

You're beating a dead horse alright, but it's the wrong one. Garbage collection has never had anything to do with poor UI performances, and everything to do with making poor code stutter. When the GC starts hitting your framerate, it means you are creating far too many objects and far too frequently. Before ICS, android implemented the incremental GC that runs more often but for "negligible" sub-1ms lengths. If you a…

Users don't distinguish between poor UI performance and"code stutters". The "negligble" sub-1ms stutters are a real problem in practice. and it's not just limited to poor code. Sometimes, no matter what you'll see GC being called, there's no way around it. There are background threads that are doing all sorts of things, which very well might be getting GC'd. Theres also a lot of things you can't reasonably avoid, like allocations from Iterators, etc. There are literally thousands of forum and blog posts discussing this online.

Garbage Collection very slow on Android with latest stable line http://groups.google.com/group/v8-users/browse_thread/thread...

How can I avoid garbage collection delays in Java games http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2484079/how-can-i-avoid-g...

Avoiding garbage collection for smooth 2d animations Options

http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thr...

Image tiling on Android, garbage collector slows down http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7916021/image-tiling-on-a...

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#76

Post by alexkcd »

babebridou wrote: post #28
atnan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turning on hardware acceleration doesn't cause all Android views to be FBO-backed. You still need to toggle the layerType to LAYER_TYPE_HARDWARE on each view, as far as I'm aware. I think the G+ post is a little disingenuous in that regard. Google suggests toggling between LAYER_TYPE_NONE & LAYER_TYPE_HARDWARE pre/post animations. This need to actively manage view cache behaviour probably leads to developers being un…

If you want to enjoy both smooth scrolling and responsive input method in a webview, you need to juggle between those layer types. LAYER_TYPE_HARDWARE enables smooth hardware-backed scrolling but glitches badly when the soft keyboard is visible (no resizing/panning of the webview, multiple seconds of delay between key type and text updates inside textfield forms). LAYER_TYPE_NONE makes scrolling in the webview unbear…

There must be a different underlying issue there. Showing a keyboard view should have no performance implications on a web view. Similarly drawing text into a texture tile should not take "multiple seconds of delay".

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#77

Post by foobarbazetc »

mrich wrote: post #29
divtxt wrote: 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.

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.

The number of apps you have installed has no significance what so ever on scrolling.

Just FYI.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#78

Post by foobarbazetc »

rieter wrote: post #67
w0utert wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It has a much higher resolution than iPhone 3GS. In fact, it has six times more pixels.

That's irrelevant, since the GPU does all the heavy lifting.

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#79

Post by [deleted] »

gareim wrote: post #70
gareim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look again, because iOS has greater market share than Android does. But it's a moot point anyways, because one OS is limited to a few devices that sell at high price points and the other is used by tens of manufacturers and hit low, medium, and high price points. Actually, because of that, it makes iOS's market share even more impressive.

What did I say that was wrong? The guy had the idea that Android has greater market share than iOS, I stated my belief that he was wrong, and then I got downvoted. Some of you guys are too trigger happy with your downvoting buttons. If you're going to downvote, at least explain why so everyone is wiser in the end.

[deleted]

Re: How about some Android graphics true facts?

#80

Post by untog »

gareim wrote: post #70
gareim wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look again, because iOS has greater market share than Android does. But it's a moot point anyways, because one OS is limited to a few devices that sell at high price points and the other is used by tens of manufacturers and hit low, medium, and high price points. Actually, because of that, it makes iOS's market share even more impressive.

What did I say that was wrong? The guy had the idea that Android has greater market share than iOS, I stated my belief that he was wrong, and then I got downvoted. Some of you guys are too trigger happy with your downvoting buttons. If you're going to downvote, at least explain why so everyone is wiser in the end.

I think people probably want you to cite some sources for what you're saying. Because pretty much every article I've read says that Android has a significantly larger market share:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-15/tech/30400455...

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