The only thing about the iPhone I like more than on my EVO is the scrolling. On iPhone, scrolling has a very natural feel, as if governed by a physics engine of some kind. The motion has a distinct realistic quality, as the objects first accelerate and then decelerate. The scrolling seems to have a momentum defined by the speed of the flick.
How can I implement this type of scrolling on Android?
m03sizlak said:
The scrolling seems to have a momentum defined by the speed of the flick.
How can I implement this type of scrolling on Android?
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Click to collapse
You could submit your resume to Google and hope they hire you to re-write their broken scrolling engine. I'm being facetious, but the point is, this is something Google needs to desperately fix. It's amazing they've been churning out Android build after build without a fix to their herky jerky scrolling mechanism. iPhone and Palm's webOS got it right the first time.
What are you guys talking about exactly? I mean I don't have an iPhone, but I was using it a few times and I don't see much difference in scrolling. So this is funny to me, because you are using phrases like "desperate fix", but I don't even see, what to fix ;-D
Scrolling is decent enough as it is, but could use a lot of improvement. The difference between the iPhone and the Google scrolling is that the iPhone scrolling slows down a lot faster if you do a flick. Like if you're at the top of a long web page, say Engadget, and you flick up on your iPhone, you'll only go down maybe 1/10 of a page. Whereas on Android if you flick up on your phone, you'll go sliding down to the bottom of the page lol.
The other thing is, because the iPhone flick slows down so quickly, the phone itself doesn't have to render all of the webpage. It renders only the part of the page that you are able to see. That's why if you go too quickly you get those checkerboxes and grey areas. You don't get that on Android, because the webpage is fully loaded.
Or maybe I'm just talking out my ass...meh.
area5x1 said:
Scrolling is decent enough as it is, but could use a lot of improvement. The difference between the iPhone and the Google scrolling is that the iPhone scrolling slows down a lot faster if you do a flick. Like if you're at the top of a long web page, say Engadget, and you flick up on your iPhone, you'll only go down maybe 1/10 of a page. Whereas on Android if you flick up on your phone, you'll go sliding down to the bottom of the page lol.
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Click to collapse
So different scrolling parameters made it "something to desperate fix"? Anyway I really like this slow deceleration and I prefer not to change it
i find the iphone scrolling extremely annoying. Its like trying to scroll through molasses, just about to get somewhere and it stops. Horrible if you ask me.
iphones logisitics are just different i think, its more hardware than software based...
Prefer smoth android scrolling anyday over sour apples!
Well, Google acquired Bumptop April of this year. They know a few things about UI physics...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jhoWsHwU7w
ari-free said:
Well, Google acquired Bumptop April of this year. They know a few things about UI physics...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jhoWsHwU7w
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Nyce! bumptop looks sweet!
for flicking on homescreen you can try downloading LauncherPro2. it's very smooth and you can even adjust the speed.
iPhone scrolling is definitely smoother but slower than Androids. I love how fast Android can scroll, though. They just need to make it a bit smoother. I couldn't say a fix is "desperately" needed, but anything they can do to smoothen it out would help.
I'm a huge fan of the android scrolling. Fast and smooth, all I need.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
This isn't about iPhone vs. Android. I want Android to improve, and I can recognize a deficiency when I see one. The scrolling is not nearly as fluid as I've used on an iPhone or Palm Pre. When you flick and move or pan a window or menu up and down and it doesn't do it in a very natural, fluid movement. It seems to jump around and almost appears to accelerate to its final point and then abruptly stop as opposed to more gradually decelerating to its final point.
onlinespending said:
When you flick and move or pan a window or menu up and down and it doesn't do it in a very natural, fluid movement. It seems to jump around and almost appears to accelerate to its final point and then abruptly stop as opposed to more gradually decelerating to its final point.
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Click to collapse
Could you record this behavior using a camera? Maybe I don't understand you, maybe I have different point of view on what is "natural feel" or maybe I just don't have these issues?
When I kick something, then first it will move with highest speed, speed of my leg, then it will slowly decelerate until stop or if it will hit something, then it will stop immediately. This is exactly how scrolling works in Android. It isn't always perfectly smooth, but it's natural and intuitive for me.
onlinespending said:
This isn't about iPhone vs. Android.
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Click to collapse
No, it's not. But for some reason people think that their likes are only ones, that one type of scrolling, looking, etc. is just better than others, so they are calling second ones: broken, desperately needing a fix, etc. They totally ignore the fact that there are many people, who have different tastes and they prefer to not change anything in current solution.
Brut.all said:
No, it's not. But for some reason people think that their likes are only ones, that one type of scrolling, looking, etc. is just better than others, so they are calling second ones: broken, desperately needing a fix, etc. They totally ignore the fact that there are many people, who have different tastes and they prefer to not change anything in current solution.
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Click to collapse
+1
The issue I have is people calling it a problem, when actually some (me) much much prefer it over the alternative.
Brut.all said:
When I kick something, then first it will move with highest speed, speed of my leg, then it will slowly decelerate until stop or if it will hit something, then it will stop immediately. This is exactly how scrolling works in Android. It isn't always perfectly smooth, but it's natural and intuitive for me.
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Click to collapse
Well, imagine you spun a wheel that had a fair amount of friction that is fixed at its center (think of the big wheel on The Price is Right show). The moment your hand released the wheel it would decelerate at a constant rate of deceleration until it stopped. The movement would be gradual and smooth. That's not how I would describe the Android scrolling physics now.
Too often you want to flick a web page to move down, and it races all the way to the bottom without any sort of smooth deceleration. In general, the scrolling motion seemingly accelerates even after your finger is released from the screen and it abruptly stops. That is not natural. If there are those that actually prefer this motion, than I'm glad your tastes are aligned with Android's implementation. But even Google was probably not after that sort of physics engine, so I consider it broken. I only want Android to be better than it already is!
One thing you have to consider, scrolling on Android isn't GPU accelerated.
Google considered it when developing the platform, but early hardware didn't have a dedicated GPU, so they decided to go with CPU rendering only. Now that we have high-powered devices with GPUs, they are reconsidering it.
I find it a wonder that they haven't done it yet, but I really expect it to come in 3.0 with the UI overhaul.
Geniusdog254 said:
One thing you have to consider, scrolling on Android isn't GPU accelerated.
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Click to collapse
Well, that it is true. Though I'd argue that the Palm Pre is not GPU accelerated either at the moment, and its scrolling physics are spot on.
But either way. I really look forward to the Android 3.0 GUI overhaul. It promises to be something special.
onlinespending said:
Well, that it is true. Though I'd argue that the Palm Pre is not GPU accelerated either at the moment, and its scrolling physics are spot on.
But either way. I really look forward to the Android 3.0 GUI overhaul. It promises to be something special.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When it was announced android was getting Palm's UI guy I was excited, not because it meant we'd be getting a clone of webos, but it does mean we would be getting the same attention to detail.
I know a lot of techies like to make fun of the art majors but this is one case where you really need them.
I think what he's trying to say is that Android scrolling physics is much faster to decelerate than the ones on the Iphone. I observed it too. I tried scrolling through an article using the iphone and the scrolling ia great. It slowly decreases scrolling speed unlike the android that is much faster to stop the scrolling.
Related
When I click on a text box I start typng and the box disappears. I type in another box and it wont show the whole box, if I navigate to a word off the screen nothing changes it doesn't move to show the word. These things don't happen every time but they happen enough. Like so many of the crappy things about android, if I didn't have an iPhone to compare it to I'd just think it's normal to experience some type of glitch large or small any time I use my phone's for more than a few seconds. I had a 3g and after I saw the I4's display I had to get one but I still have my vibrant and nexus. The incredible disparity between the I4 display and any android display is a whole different discussion. But when I use my 3g or I4 everything just works and looks nice, i don't get booted to the homescreen from the browser randomly. Things just consistently work. Just all those little glitches are so damn old on android. Its been too long to act like android is still new, its becoming the operating system for the masses which naturally implies less standards than the more exclusive apple OS.. My phone still does random reboots. It freezes without even trying to handle much. But the browser just acts like a 3rd party application compared to apple. As i type this im trying to navigate around the zoom icon thats hiding text, the text box is tiny and jerks around when i try to move the cursor. ts not even close to apple but its almost as old and experienced . People who haven't used an iPhone can tell me to go f myself but the rest of u understand. Isn't it ok to hold android to the gold standard that is the iPhone? Can we expect some elements of android and specifically the browser to "just work" as all of the elements of an iPhone do? I want to prefer android butits so far behind apple in terms of operating system that androids advantage in features is almost negaated by the fact that's so unpleasant to use those features. Anyone think gingerbread can really be the big step android needs? Because it needs a ton
ProTip: Get the XDA App if you want to post on the forums.
The browser works just fine for me. The iPhone utilizes GPU acceleration for the UI which is why it appears smoother overall. Guess what? Gingerbread will use the GPU for its UI also. Gingerbread is mostly focusing on making everything with the UI better so just hang on for that.
Hi there guys,
I am new to Android and coming from a 3GS.
Really been looking forward to getting on Android and this was the phone I was waiting for.
There's a couple of issues I've noticed I'm really unsure about and seem odd.
- Scrolling (no live wallpaper) if I go to an email with a bunch of pictures, or an app such as tweetdeck, the scrolling on the Atrix is really poor. Not smooth, very blocky etc… I do the exact same thing on my 3GS and it's smooth as can be. Is this an Android issue? This seems really odd and annoying…
- Mobile browser rendering. For example I bring up Techcrunch, renders perfectly in my 3GS, in the Atrix the text is too small and poorly formatted (if I increase size it's too big), the page border goes off the screen etc.. I've tried Opera, not much better. Holding the same page side by side my 3GS is far more readable than my new Atrix. That is not making me happy…
Any ideas on this guys? I'll note I am new to Android so if you want to point me to a 'read this' for tips on Android that'd be understandable.
But I'm somewhat disappointed that for extremely common functions the usability *appears* to me (after 24hrs) inferior to my old iPhone…
Thanks for any pointers / insight…
I am coming from an iPhone 4 so I completely hear what you are saying. I had tried many Android devices in the past and always ended up back on iOS due to how Fluid it was in comparison. The Atrix / 2.2 still have some areas like that but overall I feel it is pretty smooth. The browser definitely leaves something to be desired (no pinch to zoom? Really?) but I'm diggin it so far!
Good to hear at least it's not just me! I'm somewhat surprised given the OS is reasonably mature that they've not nailed this yet...
Will be interesting to hear any other's thoughts on this...
(I spent many years on Windows Mobile, and had a love hate relationship with it, maybe a bit unfair to say this soon, but starting to already see some parallels: great OS, super powerful and customizable but still not nailed on the usability front...)
crawlgsx said:
I am coming from an iPhone 4 so I completely hear what you are saying. I had tried many Android devices in the past and always ended up back on iOS due to how Fluid it was in comparison. The Atrix / 2.2 still have some areas like that but overall I feel it is pretty smooth. The browser definitely leaves something to be desired (no pinch to zoom? Really?) but I'm diggin it so far!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no pinch to zoom in mobile view of webpages. So if you go to cnn.com, its mobile page, m.cnn.com will come up and there will be no pinch to zoom. But at the bottom of the mobile page if you click on full site, the full site will come up and there you can use pinch to zoom. Hope this helps.
give dolphin browser a try, (will add pinch to zoom)
also try selecting "fit web page to screen" and that should take care of your issues as far as too wide goes. 2.3 is slated to release for this phone so patience maybe a virtue here.
Immix said:
There is no pinch to zoom in mobile view of webpages. So if you go to cnn.com, its mobile page, m.cnn.com will come up and there will be no pinch to zoom. But at the bottom of the mobile page if you click on full site, the full site will come up and there you can use pinch to zoom. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was about to say, i just pinched to zoom just fine haha
crawlgsx said:
I am coming from an iPhone 4 so I completely hear what you are saying. I had tried many Android devices in the past and always ended up back on iOS due to how Fluid it was in comparison. The Atrix / 2.2 still have some areas like that but overall I feel it is pretty smooth. The browser definitely leaves something to be desired (no pinch to zoom? Really?) but I'm diggin it so far!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No pinch to zoom? You must be on a mobile site as they generally don't support pinch to zoom as they don't need it. Web sites certainly do pinch zoom very smoothly.
Immix said:
There is no pinch to zoom in mobile view of webpages. So if you go to cnn.com, its mobile page, m.cnn.com will come up and there will be no pinch to zoom. But at the bottom of the mobile page if you click on full site, the full site will come up and there you can use pinch to zoom. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried full sites and they still did not pich to zoom.
I have gone to Firefox mobile, really like it so far.
crawlgsx said:
I tried full sites and they still did not pich to zoom.
I have gone to Firefox mobile, really like it so far.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're kidding right? This phone has full multitouch support, including the webkit browser. Go into google maps and try multitouch/pinch zooming there, if it still doesnt work then your phone is broken.. .or you're just "holding it wrong"
I do notice quite a few apps do not fit the screen. Some, off the top of my head are OnStar and Groupon. The default browser seems to be off as well, if you go to Adobe.com, it comes out all screwed up.
For the time being, I'm using Mobile FireFox. Even though you cannot get the Flash Player Add-On for it yet, at least the pages look somewhat decent.
for the iOS users having trouble with the browser, I highly suggest dolphin. Pages render nicely for me, pinch to zoom and overall fluid. The stock browser is good but it can be better.
dcmccall said:
Hi there guys,
I am new to Android and coming from a 3GS.
Really been looking forward to getting on Android and this was the phone I was waiting for.
There's a couple of issues I've noticed I'm really unsure about and seem odd.
- Scrolling (no live wallpaper) if I go to an email with a bunch of pictures, or an app such as tweetdeck, the scrolling on the Atrix is really poor. Not smooth, very blocky etc… I do the exact same thing on my 3GS and it's smooth as can be. Is this an Android issue? This seems really odd and annoying…
- Mobile browser rendering. For example I bring up Techcrunch, renders perfectly in my 3GS, in the Atrix the text is too small and poorly formatted (if I increase size it's too big), the page border goes off the screen etc.. I've tried Opera, not much better. Holding the same page side by side my 3GS is far more readable than my new Atrix. That is not making me happy…
Any ideas on this guys? I'll note I am new to Android so if you want to point me to a 'read this' for tips on Android that'd be understandable.
But I'm somewhat disappointed that for extremely common functions the usability *appears* to me (after 24hrs) inferior to my old iPhone…
Thanks for any pointers / insight…
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IMHO, these are issues of Android OS, not necessarily the phone (emphasis on IMHO). Keep in mind, I had an iPhone 3G for 1.5 years and then a Nexus One for almost a year. I now have the Motorola Atrix. The scrolling is better on the Atrix than the N1, but still not like my iPhone 3G was on iOS 3.0. All the same applies to the web browser too. I do use Dolphin HD Browser, but at full zoom on a standard (non-mobile) page, the text looks "pixelated" on this Atrix.
I still really like this phone!
crawlgsx said:
I am coming from an iPhone 4 so I completely hear what you are saying. I had tried many Android devices in the past and always ended up back on iOS due to how Fluid it was in comparison. The Atrix / 2.2 still have some areas like that but overall I feel it is pretty smooth. The browser definitely leaves something to be desired (no pinch to zoom? Really?) but I'm diggin it so far!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Get the HTC Inspire, smooth as butter. Looking like I made the right choice getting it instead of the Atrix, plus I saved $100.
novaIS350 said:
You're kidding right? This phone has full multitouch support, including the webkit browser. Go into google maps and try multitouch/pinch zooming there, if it still doesnt work then your phone is broken.. .or you're just "holding it wrong"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pinch to zoom worked fine for me in everything EXCEPT the browser. I tried a bunch of different websites and attempted to go to full version although that failed a bunch of times. Firefox mobile works flawlessly so I'd say problem solved for me. I also get sync which is nice anyway.
Hey all - I am VERY loath to ask any of these questions, as I pride myself on doing research and figuring things out for myself, but I've come to the point where I just need to ask this community. I purchased the Gtab as part of the Woot fiasco, and immediately replaced stock firmware with Vegantab. From a general perspective, it works fine, with all the know quirks. However, this is my first Android device. I've been modifying windows phones and working with jailbroken iphones and other fiddly things with computers for a long time, so I'm not faint-hearted at tweaking. Anyway, my questions are these:
Given the hardware this thing sports, the performance ROTS. Is it because the OS is just not polished? It's slow to shift from screen to screen. It often delays in recognizing my touch when trying to scroll icons that it thinks I actually am trying t launch an app. In general, it just feels inferior in speed and snappiness of, for instance, iOS (I understand it is much easier to have a single platform to put an OS on and optimize it). I get the program not responding screen, wait or close way too frequently for my tastes.
Then there's the fact that every app installed seems to want to run itself in the background at all times. I'm constantly using the task manager to kill everything, which frees up a ton of RAM and then the tab runs better for a little while. I can't seem to find a way to prevent these apps from doing this. There is probably something very obvious that I am missing, but Facebook should not just decide on its own to run in the background when I haven't launched it.
Any thoughts on any of these things, or can someone point me to an obvious FAQ that I'm missing that answers all my questions?
In theory Android OS should free up RAM as you need it. Google will swear up and down that task killers are unnecessary, and the user doesn't need to manage background processes. That said, I have advanced task killer widget on my home screen and use it whenever things get a little sluggish. I don't use the Facebook app, but most apps have the option in the in-app settings to disable background updates. There are task manager apps that claim to prevent other apps from launching at start up, or kill them automatically, but these will usually end up eating more resources than they save.
As far as home screen switching, I'm not a fan of the stock froyo launcher on a tablet this size. It always seems that the device is expecting a much larger swipe that should be necessary to switch home screens. I use Launcher Pro and it feels faster and more responsive than the iPad 2 for going between home screens.
The scrolling/ inadvertent selecting issue I can relate to. If your coming from iOS, there is this an expectation that the device will always tell the difference between a scroll and a tap. That expectation isn't unreasonable, because Apple is stellar at making scrolling interfaces feel perfect. They have whole sessions at WWDC about implementing scrolling lists into apps. Android on the other hand requires a more deliberate scrolling. Android has gotten a lot better over time, but it often requires a much more deliberate scrolling action by the user. "Flicking" like on the iPad usually doesn't register perfectly for me.
One thing you may notice on the G Tables is that pinch and zoom is wildly unreliable when pinching on the same x or y axis. I'm pretty sure this is a universal issue with the screen. It has trouble recognizing multitouch input when the points of contact are on the same axis. Pinching at an angle is the only way I can zoom reliably.
brettdwagner said:
In theory Android OS should free up RAM as you need it. Google will swear up and down that task killers are unnecessary, and the user doesn't need to manage background processes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's like automatic garbage collection, isn't it? Really useful, but sometimes you want to explicitly free things.
There is a way to kill foreground apps on Android. Settings > Applications > Development > Stop app via long-press, will kill the foreground app if you "long-press" the Android back key. Background apps you can either kill using task-managers or not start at all using tools like Autorun Manager from Market.
One thing you may notice on the G Tables is that pinch and zoom is wildly unreliable when pinching on the same x or y axis. I'm pretty sure this is a universal issue with the screen. It has trouble recognizing multitouch input when the points of contact are on the same axis. Pinching at an angle is the only way I can zoom reliably.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I've noticed this too. Pinch-to-zoom at the same y-axis is hopeless. Same x-axis works okay, but, at an angle works best.
I actually appreciated your post. You knew the limitations of hte device before buying it...you didn't comment on the atrocious screen (and accepted what was to be)
The biggest downfall with the G-Tablet itself was it's software. You admitted that you immediately flashed VeganTab. When I bought mine, it came with TNT Lite, to which I then immediately also flashed to Vegan 5.1.1. I never experienced the stock rom, and actually considered myself lucky, due to the reviews I've read.
I think that some of our issues may actually be due to the fact that we're using software that wasn't specifically designed for OUR devices. Yes, they are all android, yes, they should all work fine, and do, at times, but if using a froyo or gingerbread rom, we're using software designed for phones. I haven't tried the Alpha version of HC (BOS) yet, but even in Alpha stages, people are raving about it, even with it's limitations.
I just recently started using Brilliant Corners. In the flash process, I had to have Stock 4349 (1.2 stock firmware) on the system. I can honestly say that it really wasn't that bad. The response seemed a tad better, I never got the "Forceclose : Wait" option when a process was "thinking." things would just pop up. I can only think that as bad as it is, it manages itself better than some of the ports and mod's we are using, simply becuase they were MADE for the G-Tablet. Yeah, it's ugly, and you can do half of what I can do on BC.
What I find intolerable at times is that Angry Birds: Seasons (only that one, no others) will have really choppy graphics. I haven't found a way to fix it, I've overclocked, though I didn't think that would help, I've uninstalled, and installed, I've recovered backups, etc...alas, rebooting will fix it...it's weird. Not one other game will do that, except for AB:S.
What I find intolerable at times is that Angry Birds: Seasons (only that one, no others) will have really choppy graphics. I haven't found a way to fix it, I've overclocked, though I didn't think that would help, I've uninstalled, and installed, I've recovered backups, etc...alas, rebooting will fix it...it's weird. Not one other game will do that, except for AB:S.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It works for me, although the birds do take off on their own from time to time. Have you tried downloading from a different source? I pulled my angry birds from Amazon. I'm running Vegan-Tabs 7.0.0
Please don't be offended, as I do believe your question is being asked in good faith. However, I have to admit that I haven't experienced any of the problems you're describing. I've had an iPod Touch since gen 1, and I haven't noticed any difference in the responsiveness. My g Tablet responds the same to flicks as it does to slower swipes, without interpretting them as taps.
I also haven't experienced the slow downs you're referring to when running multiple background apps, though that may have to do with the particular apps you have.
I have not had an issue with zooming in and out by pinching along either the x- or y-axis
Finally, I at least don't feel like the swipe to change screens is excesssive, but then again that could be personal taste or because I'm using a Gingerbread-based ROM.
The one issue I do have is with the on-screen touch keyboard. I feel sometimes that it fails to register letters if I type too fast; I haven't had this issue with iOS, but at least I think I can get used to it, and for serious typing I'll probably use a physical keyboard.
Incidently, I'm using Cyanogenmod 7, which seems to be the "pet ROM" of these forums, for better (it's a solid ROM with a large developer community) or worse (it's not nearly as innovative as mods being developed by some "other users" *ahem*roebeet*cough). I'm not saying this is the reason why I have not experienced these issues; maybe they aren't so striking to me or maybe I've been lucky?
EDITTED: Most typos are due to annoyances with using an on-screen keyboard with the g Tab.
Tablet has been fine to me. Screen responsiveness is on par with iphone/ipad/my htc evo screen.
Vegan tab rom is fresh...all .my functions work sure my wifi drops out after sleeping for a while (yes changed sleep settings) but hey I spent 250 not 500 and I have flash sd and usb....all of which I use everyday.
Thanks for all the responses. I rather expected to get somewhat of a range of replies from "I agree with you" to "you're crazy, mine is fine". To be very clear, I'm not trying to rip on the device at all. I knew I was rolling the dice a little and I know that Android really hasn't matured for a Tablet just yet (in my eyes).
I guess I've sort of had my questions answered to some degree.
scyld - I'm not offended in the least. I have an iphone 4 and many of my coworkers use iPads every day. They are definitely more responsive (to me). However, the stock iOS wasn't on my iPhone. Now that I have it jailbroken and can control which apps suck up memory, it behaves flawlessly. What I believe to be the scrolling/flicking issue is actually that the OS interprets spaces IN BETWEEN icons to be part of those icons, where Apple's OS does not. If I tap between icons on the Gtab, it will launch the one closest to my finger. iOS will not do this. That alone may be why the scrolling seems to be more accurate. I may well try Cyanogen. I mostly don't care about bells and whistles - just responsiveness and usability.
I wasn't aware that Google used the same line about memory usage that Apple swears - in fact, my friend and I stopped in the Apple store because she was having a problem with docking her iphone in her car... The tech ran a scan and told her incidentally that she was out of app memory and told her how to 'kill those pesky tasks' by tapping the little red minuses on all the apps in the app dock. I couldn't stop laughing.
I guess what we're dealing with is the result of an open source open hardware landscape. By having such a fractured base of developers, manufacturers, varying hardware specs, etc, it is much harder to optimize any particular build for any particular device. I did use the stock firmware for a few days and simply found it too limiting. Not to mention the lack of a market, etc. Apple's success is in large part due to the way it's app store works. Every device has it. The app warns you what it will work on and what it will not. Application updates tell you what the update fixes or adds (which Market does only very rarely). I appreciate that there are multiple markets for Android, but they should stick to some established rules for the information given.
I'm writing a novel - sorry - All this being said, I love the idea of Android (and hate iTunes with a passion) and I'm looking forward to a generation or two down the road of the tablet ROMs. I'll give the other ROMs a shot and see if there is improvement. I really appreciate the developers work on the platform thus far. I'll keep reading and messing with settings, tips, tricks to improve what I can.
I mean perhaps not as smooth as ios but better than this honeycomb crap lol
broken1i said:
I mean perhaps not as smooth as ios but better than this honeycomb crap lol
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Click to collapse
100% it runs smooth as butter on the Galaxy Nexus and that's only two cores. ICS with the hardware acceleration and 4/5 cores should be super fast.
ICS will be a significant improvement across the board on everything. IMO this honeycomb is already as smooth as IOS and I own an Ipad to constantly compare it to some people report lag, most report it being super fast. I never had any lag issues since I got this on 12/22.
You'd be surprised what one or two crappy apps set to "quietly load" on start up can do to android, even with 4 cores or my sgs2 overclocked to 1.6ghz. #1 culprit running/lagging in background, engadget app. I have no problem running it, but with a desktop widget once you run and hit back or home without "killing" it it'll take 80% cpu for no reason for god knows how long. With my gs2 my pocket starts cookin a bit as engadget is one of the only apps that bug-pegs it at 1.6ghz long term, even with the screen off, lol. And yes i see the irony, though the engadget app isnt alone. I've just learned to kill that app and remove what i dont use regularly (titanium is great for this).
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
Until android rewrite the UI it will never be as 'smooth' as IOS.
IOS have a seperate layer for the UI as soon as you touch the screen all processing stops (apps would never finish installing, web browser would never finish loading) and continues as soon as you remove your finger.
With android loading continues regardless of if your touching the screen or not, so it then has to try and do both things at once hence the lag when an app is installing or web page loading.
4 cores when utilised properly with ICS will help though
well gang it will be here on the 12th, can't wait.
kevinm2k said:
Until android rewrite the UI it will never be as 'smooth' as IOS.
IOS have a seperate layer for the UI as soon as you touch the screen all processing stops (apps would never finish installing, web browser would never finish loading) and continues as soon as you remove your finger.
With android loading continues regardless of if your touching the screen or not, so it then has to try and do both things at once hence the lag when an app is installing or web page loading.
4 cores when utilised properly with ICS will help though
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How do you explain the Playbook running so smooth with everything truly running in the background?. Its as smooth as iOS. (RIM actually got something right) Android lags because its badly optimised compared to iOS, QNX, WebOS and others. ICS is a step closer to getting there but not yet, it is smooth but not 'as' smooth.
recklesslife85 said:
How do you explain the Playbook running so smooth with everything truly running in the background?. Its as smooth as iOS. (RIM actually got something right) Android lags because its badly optimised compared to iOS, QNX, WebOS and others. ICS is a step closer to getting there but not yet, it is smooth but not 'as' smooth.
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Maybe the playbook had the UI rewritten. I got my information from an interview with a lead android developer and they explained what I said above. Android was developed to compete with symbian and blackberry at the time then when iphone came out, android rushed it to market but at that point the UI was already flawed.
I'll try and find the source but it was from a while ago now. Doesn't mean android isn't as fast as ios, far from it, its just the UI experience
p.s. It wasn't my interview it was just one I found on the web that I was reading, think it was on engadget at some point.
kevinm2k said:
Maybe the playbook had the UI rewritten. I got my information from an interview with a lead android developer and they explained what I said above. Android was developed to compete with symbian and blackberry at the time then when iphone came out, android rushed it to market but at that point the UI was already flawed.
I'll try and find the source but it was from a while ago now. Doesn't mean android isn't as fast as ios, far from it, its just the UI experience
p.s. It wasn't my interview it was just one I found on the web that I was reading, think it was on engadget at some point.
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If you come across it, please PM it to me. Sounds interesting.
Playbook is amazingly smooth even compared to my Prime.. anyways enough about that, not a RIM sales man lol.
Hoping ICS does take advantage of the 4 cores.
Found the article on google+ i'll paste the relevant bit here:
Going Forward
Android UI will never be completely smooth because of the design constraints I discussed at the beginning:
- UI rendering occurs on the main thread of an app
- UI rendering has normal priority
Even with a Galaxy Nexus, or the quad-core EeePad Transformer Prime, there is no way to guarantee a smooth frame rate if these two design constraints remain true. It’s telling that it takes the power of a Galaxy Nexus to approach the smoothness of a three year old iPhone. So why did the Android team design the rendering framework like this?
Work on Android started before the release of the iPhone, and at the time Android was designed to be a competitor to the Blackberry. The original Android prototype wasn’t a touch screen device. Android’s rendering trade-offs make sense for a keyboard and trackball device. When the iPhone came out, the Android team rushed to release a competitor product, but unfortunately it was too late to rewrite the UI framework.
This is the same reason why Windows Mobile 6.5, Blackberry OS, and Symbian have terrible touch screen performance. Like Android, they were not designed to prioritise UI rendering. Since the iPhone’s release, RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia have abandoned their mobile OS’s and started from scratch. Android is the only mobile OS left that existed pre-iPhone.
So, why doesn’t the Android team rewrite the rendering framework? I’ll let Romain Guy explain:
“...a lot of the work we have to do today is because of certain choices made years ago... ...having the UI thread handle animations is the biggest problem. We are working on other solutions to try to improve this (schedule drawing on vsync instead of block on vsync after drawing, possible use a separate rendering thread, etc.) An easy solution would of course to create a new UI toolkit but there are many downsides to this also.”
Romain doesn’t elaborate on what the downsides are, but it’s not difficult to speculate:
- All Apps would have to be re-written to support the new framework
- Android would need a legacy support mode for old apps
- Work on other Android features would be stalled while the new framework is developed
However, I believe the rewrite must happen, despite the downsides. As an aspiring product manager, I find Android’s lagginess absolutely unacceptable. It should be priority #1 for the Android team.
When the topic of Android comes up with both technical and nontechnical friends, I hear over and over that Android is laggy and slow. The reality is that Android can open apps and render web pages as fast or faster than iOS, but perception is everything. Fixing the UI lag will go a long way to repairing Android’s image.
Beyond the perception issue, lag is a violation of one of Google’s core philosophies. Google believes that things should be fast. That’s a driving philosophy behind Google Search, Gmail, and Chrome. It’s why Google created SPDY to improve on HTTP. It’s why Google builds tools to help websites optimize their site. It’s why Google runs it’s own CDN. It’s why Google Maps is rendered in WebGL. It’s why buffering on Youtube is something most of us remember, but rarely see anymore.
But perhaps the most salient reason why UI lag in Android is unacceptable comes from the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Modern touch screens imply an affordance language of 1 to 1 mapping between your finger and animations on the screen. This is why the iOS over-scroll (elastic band) effect is so cool, fun, and intuitive. And this is why the touch screens on Virgin America Flights are so frustrating: they are incredibly laggy, unresponsive, and imprecise.
A laggy UI breaks the core affordance language of a touch screen. The device no longer feels natural. It loses the magic. The user is pulled out of their interaction and must implicitly acknowledge they are using an imperfect computer simulation. I often get “lost” in an iPad, but I cringe when a Xoom stutters between home screens. The 200 million users of Android deserve better.
And I know they will have it eventually. The Android team is one of the most dedicated and talented development teams in the world. With stars like +Dianne Hackborn and +Romain Guy around, the Android rendering framework is in good hands.
I hope this post has reduced confusion surrounding Android lag. With some luck, Android 5.0 will bring the buttery-smooth Android we’ve all dreamed about since we first held an HTC G1. In the mean time, I’ll be in Redmond working my butt off trying to get a beautiful and smooth mobile OS some of the recognition it deserves.
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Source: https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
If you read the top of that article. He even admits he was wrong. His article was debunked by a google engineer. (There is a link to it in the post)
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
kevinm2k said:
Found the article on google+ i'll paste the relevant bit here:
Source: https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
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that was an excellent read. that was a nice history lesson on Android. Thanks!
edit: I read the Google engineer article that debunked this one before. A certain member here loves to always bring it up to help prove his point..lol
I still believe its true, it does kind of make sense when you think about it, plus google aren't really going to turn around and say "oh yes our UI is badly designed and needs to be re-written".
from my novice experience, the user interface performance seems fine. My first tablet so I don't have anything to base it off. It's about as quick as my old Core 2 XPS laptop running Windows 7.
It would be nice one day to have a buttery smooth experience though so hope ICS helps with the cause!
kevinm2k said:
It would be nice one day to have a buttery smooth experience though so hope ICS helps with the cause!
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I'm sure with ICS you will have an I Can't Believe It's Not Buttery experience.
With the ability to unlock the bootloader comes the ability to install custom roms which means smoothness.
I've seen that happening exactly like that on my phone.
ICS
While on the subject and trying not to go to far from the OP. Have we got any ETA from ASUS themselves about when we can expect ICS on the Prime?
I get mine on the 12th of this month and dont want to spend too long with crappy Honeycomb.
geinome said:
While on the subject and trying not to go to far from the OP. Have we got any ETA from ASUS themselves about when we can expect ICS on the Prime?
I get mine on the 12th of this month and dont want to spend too long with crappy Honeycomb.
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Well your in luck because Asus said they will roll out it starting on the 12th.
geinome said:
While on the subject and trying not to go to far from the OP. Have we got any ETA from ASUS themselves about when we can expect ICS on the Prime?
I get mine on the 12th of this month and dont want to spend too long with crappy Honeycomb.
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ICS comes out worldwide on the 12th January.
Hi All
Googling around showed me that i'm not the only one seeing rather choppy web browsing experience. Zooming in and out, scrolling, etc.... Opera seems to eliminate some of those issues, but wouldn't you think this quad-core beast should perform better than an older dual core iPad2?
Whats your take?
Update: ICS didn't help the observation a bit...
P.S. -> i'm not complaining..its a solid machine otherwise, i'm just trying to see if the big-old collective mind of the internet generates a simple solution.
descriminator said:
Hi All
Googling around showed me that i'm not the only one seeing rather choppy web browsing experience. Zooming in and out, scrolling, etc.... Opera seems to eliminate some of those issues, but wouldn't you think this quad-core beast should perform better than an older dual core iPad2?
Whats your take?
Update: ICS didn't help the observation a bit...
P.S. -> i'm not complaining..its a solid machine otherwise, i'm just trying to see if the big-old collective mind of the internet generates a simple solution.
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Try Dolphin FTW. https://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.mgeek.TunnyBrowser
If I pay attention, I might notice that the stock browser isn't perfectly smooth. However, in terms of just using the thing, I'm finding it perfectly fine. I think Google could certainly tighten things up a bit, but it's nothing I'd feel the need to complain about.
Google plans on merging "Browser" with Chrome, so it will get better.
grumblers said:
Try Dolphin FTW. https://market.android.com/details?id=mobi.mgeek.TunnyBrowser
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Dolphin wasn't too much better...Opera was the most dramatic improvement for some reason.
What about Force 2D HW Rendering switch thingie under developer's options? Any ideas if that would improve anything? didn't seem to for me, but i'm not sure if it supposed to.
agreed
browsing is definitely choppy, noticed it switching from using my moms ipad for a week, also my homepage tarted bugging out about an hour ago,whenever i tiuched the menu icon in the lower right corner half the screen would turn black first then it would show the menu and as far as typing goes ipad>TFP ipad is wayyyyyy easier to type on also video quality is bettr on ipad, gaming is obviously better on TFP, TFP is seriously not all its cracked up to be