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The much awaited windows mobile 7 interface and all other info below
Microsoft is currently developing Windows Mobile 7, the first revolutionary change to its mobile device operating system. Recently, I was given a document by a source inside Microsoft that details the touch and gesture plans for Mobile 7.
Below, you’ll find over 3,000 words detailing my notes from the document. I can’t publish the document here, at least not until after the product is announced, to protect my sources. I will provide the document to trusted journalists in order to share and show proof of this information. If there is anything I leave out, please don’t hesitate to ask and I will try to provide a screenshot or answer.
Windows Mobile 7 will dramatically change the way we use mobile devices. It will emphasize the use of touch on the device, as well as motion gestures created by using the device. It is, absolutely, Microsoft’s effort to beat back the iPhone, and the iPhone is referenced several times in the document.
Windows Mobile 7 will use touch gestures, similar to how the iPhone does. You will be able to flick through lists, pan, swipe sideway, draw on the screen. A lot of emphasis has been put on making navigation easier and doing away with scrollbars, including a new scroll handle that allows for multiple ways of finding items extremely fast.
Windows Mobile 7 will use motion gestures, something the iPhone does not. It will not use an intricate and complicated series of gyroscopes and accelerometers. Instead, it will use the camera on the phone to detect motions and create appropriate actions. You will be able to shake, twist and otherwise manipulate the phone and get things done. The phone will be able to perform actions when placed face down on a surface, and it will know when it is in your pocket or bag.
Windows Mobile 7 will have an exciting locking screen, that will allow you to play around with it, draw on it, shake it and completely otherwise mess with it.
Windows Mobile 7 will have dramatically improved visuals, different from the iPhone and much more similar to the dark and futuristic visuals of Windows Vista. It will feature graphical transitions, subtle effects, and other things to make it more interesting to look at. This is not detailed in the document, but featured in the multitude of screenshots.
Windows Mobile 7 is designed to use the finger, not the stylus, though many devices will be required to include a stylus. It is designed to be easy to use with the hand, including one-handed, and to be fun to use and easy to understand. It is designed to be used on devices with no buttons, few buttons, lots of buttons, full keyboards, and devices without touch screens.
Windows Mobile 7 is clearly designed for better media playback, with screenshots indicating a much-improved Media Player and photo gallery application. There is talk in the document of a games mode. Mobile Internet Explorer runs full-screen web pages in a minimalistic interface, and has “tabbed” browsing, except you can switch tabs by shaking the phone.
The keyboard has been improved, but plans for a full touch keyboard, a la the iPhone, have been shelved until a future version of Windows Mobile.
Below are my detailed notes. Some of it is raw, some of it is very detailed. It is accompanied by screenshots direct from the document which show off other features planned for Windows Mobile 7.
Goals of the New User Interface.
Touch, gestures, scrolling, and direct manipulation. Also, animations, transitions, motion gestures, and codenames “Phosphur” and “Starburst”.
Goal: Finger optimized, best in class touch experience that users are comfortable with everywhere.
Requirements: simple, memorable and fun; consistent, predictable and interesting; natural movements, natural animations and transitions; and enhance the mobile experience, not degrade it.
Goal is to support hardware with buttons, hardware with buttons and touch screens, and touch screen-only devices. The Touch-only devices are specifically referenced as “iPhone compete”.
User experience requirements: consistent UI interaction across the device (up and down should always scroll up and down lists, not something else), should not be overloaded. The new UI will not be opt-in for applications, but required, so old applications will all get it. There will be a “game mode”, where games will be allowed to override the UI requirements and use similar movements for different actions, allowing games to have more complicated controls than the average app.
There will be audio and visual feedback, only where appropriate, like indicating the top and bottom of a list, which objects are touchable, and a “ring of fire” indicating where you press and hold down your finger.
Designed to be used by a finger, without a stylus. Microsoft Research is researching the size of the average fingertip/tap size. Currently, they are working with the assumption of a 7.6×7.6 millimeter fingertip size. The goal is a device that can be used almost entirely one-handed with the thumb of the hand holding the device.
There were plans to implement the Soft Input Panel (the on-screen keyboard) as a finger accessible portion of the UI (like the iPhone does), but it was cut for Windows Mobile 7.
Tap drills down in a list, but some lists will have you tab once to select, once again to drill down the list. Interface elements will be designed so there is no fear of users making a mistake and missing their target. It will be able to dynamically resize elements of the user interface, prioritizing them and making them easier to hit. Corners, like the close button, scrollbars, icons and the title bar/status bar, will all be able to grow to make things easier on the user.
A stylus will be required on devices meeting certain screen size, orientation, DPI and resolution marks. User interface elements will scale their size and be prioritized in order to make hitting them easier, especially scrollbars, corner elements, icons, the title bar and the status bar.
Touch may be the actual product name as it stands.
Gestures for scrolling (horizontal and vertical), task and menu access, press and hold controls, list items, press and drag, and launching shortcuts. The device will be able to detect finger velocity, scrolling further if the user’s finger moves faster.
They are considering the need for scroll bars when users are scrolling with gestures. Current plan is to show them on Touch devices when flicking through a list, but not show them on button-only devices when scrolling.
When a dialog is longer than the screen and needs to be scrolled horizontally, they are considering replacing the scroll bar with a visual indicator, like text fading off the edge of the screen. Pressing and holding launched the context (right-click) menu, as it does now.
By default in a list, tapping drills down items, but there will be visual and audio feedback if drilling doesn’t occur and the user is merely focusing on an item.
A stylus will be required for device makers to include, based on screen size, screen orientation, and screen resolution.
Microsoft is considering if it needs to support screens and drivers that do multi-touch, but multi-touch is not a base feature of Windows Mobile 7. Multi-finger touch is shown for cropping and rotating photos, but there is no indication if this is software based or requires multi-touch hardware.
Motion Gestures.
There will be various finger motion gestures, used for scrolling vertically and horizontally, task and menu access, pressing and holding on controls, list items, pressing and dragging, and launching shortcuts.
Some UI elements, called Spinner and Pivot, will have a gesture where you swipe them from left to right. In a Spinner, you have a single item with left and right buttons next to it, but instead of hitting the left and right buttons, you can just swipe to change the option.
There will also be motion gestures, where the user moves the device to invoke certain commands. Microsoft Research has a technology concept that uses the device’s camera as a motion sensor, enabling motion control while using the device. This means devices will not need accelerometers and other complicated gyroscopes to get these features, and that existing Windows Mobile devices could be upgraded to full Windows Mobile 7 functionality. These gestures will require the camera to be operating all the time a gesture may be used, which will affect battery life.
There would need to be support for gestures when the device is locked, including slider control, which hints at a similar locking mechanism to the iPhone. It will also support changing screen orientation when turning the device sideways, just like the iPhone does, but using the camera, not a gyroscope.
Windows Mobile 8 will support gestures in the auxiliary screen. Windows Mobile 7 will not.
Gestures shown include in music or a slideshow, shaking the phone left or right to go to the previous or next song or photo, and shaking the phone in order to shuffle it. Here’s an image, which may only be a mockup, or it is showing us what Windows Media Player will look like on Windows Mobile 7, as well as the picture viewer:
As you see, Media Player has an emphasis on album art along with other cool visual elements. Also notice the ever-present battery and signal strength indicators have been placed inside the soft key buttons at the bottom of the screen, saving screen real estate and making them a lot cooler.
Another gesture: When pressing the directional pad down in a full-screen media application, such as a photo application, you can move the device forward and backward to zoom in and out of the image.
windows mobile 7 continue
The web browser will incorporate gestures for back and forward actions. Here’s an image:
Notice the differences in Internet Explorer. The interface is simpler and much nicer, with just an address bar and go button, the web page is a desktop version, just like on the iPhone, and the browser has tabbed browsing, used by gesturing through a series of graphical thumbnails. This is very impressive.
The camera will also cause certain actions based on light sensitivity. For example, if you put your phone in your pocket or in a bag, it will shut off the screen, and can even make the ringer louder or put it on vibrate, as directed. It can also turn the screen on automatically when taking the phone out, trigger the timer on the phone’s camera when the phone is placed face down on a surface, automatically activate the camera flash based on available light, snooze the phone’s alarm when waving your hand over the phone’s camera, taking a picture when anyone walks past the phone (or any other desired action, like making a noise), or remotely connecting to other devices when the phone sees them.
Waking Up and the Lock Screen.
Here’s an example of a gesture, shaking the phone to wake it up:
The document says that gestures should be distinct, convenient, easy to use, and they should also be fun and have feedback that responds to the user’s action. They shouldn’t be hard motion, but simple jiggles or shakes, with the screen reacting to the amount of shaking, the number of shakes, that sort of thing.
An example of the screen showing a transition from the device being asleep to awake:
As you see, it’s a very nice and detailed, but subtle graphical transition. Microsoft never cared about transitions before, but it looks like Windows Mobile 7 will be different.
There’s also a part talking about allowing the user to “doodle” on the screen (their word, not mine), letting users draw doodles on the device lock screen, as well as shake the screen to affect the wallpaper (like making water run, or blurring an image). The iPhone’s lock screen is an iconic part of the device, and Microsoft wants to have a cool lock screen without copying Apple, so the plan is to give you fun things to do on the lock screen.
Here’s an image showing the user doodling. Notice the use of two fingers, hinting at software-based simple multi-touch, or perhaps the image assumes the device has multi-touch hardware?
And a screen that has been shook or doodled on:
That makes for a pretty cool locked phone.
Touch Scrolling/Flicking.
Users will be able to flick their way through lists and swipe sideways for certain actions and pivoting views. When scrolling through lists, letters are shown to indicate as the user makes his way through the alphabet, as well as the addition of a scroll bar. There will be a visual bump when reaching the end of a list.
Besides flicking up and down, the user will be able to pivot sideways between different hotlists. The user can swipe to pivot between each, tap a selection in the pivot wheel, or hit an arrow to launch a pivot selector for all available pivots.
An example of pivoting in the Recent Programs menu:
Here’s a screenshot of Outlook’s inbox:
Also shown is flicking and swiping through an unnamed maps application, based on Windows Live Maps, and flicking based on the velocity of the user’s finger. Other types of finger gestures include the use of spinners and sliders, and unrestricted omni-directional movement.
A screenshot of panning in the maps application:
Those arrows on the sides of the screen are shown as being used in all applications, including IE Mobile, to let the user know when they are panning the screen.
When hitting buttons/icons on the screen, the UI will try to prioritize items and determine which one the user wanted to hit, so users who are sloppy with their fingers will still get the desired result. It will use this smart targeting when using your finger, but not when using the stylus, a very smart design decision. When using the keyboard, the letter enlarges and appears above your finger when you hit it, just like on the iPhone. When highlighting text, a zoom/edit box appears above it to show what you are highlighting. When in full page view in IE Mobile, if you hit an area with links it will zoom in with a bubble and help you choose from the links. Observe:
Notice Word Mobile. It has the Office 2007 Ribbon, but it appears to be lifted directly from Word 2007 and far too small to be used on a mobile device. Assume that this was put in for the mockup, and not an actual application screenshot, but also assume that they are going in the direction of a Ribbon-based user interface for Office Mobile.
There is handwriting recognition listed for OneNote Mobile.
An example of a context menu, activated by pressing and holding in an area (like right-clicking on a PC):
Other examples of what Microsoft calls Press N Hold UI elements include an application launcher and a quick scroller (for quickly moving through a list with a scrollbar and the first letter of list items):
Currently, when scrolling down a screen with the directional pad, the selector moves to the bottom of the screen, then scrolls downward one item at a time. In Windows Mobile 7, the list scrolls upwards as the selector moves downwards, acting in sync so that the selector does not reach the bottom of the screen until it reaches the end of the list. This gives the user feedback on how long the list is and where the user currently is within the list.
When the user flicks to scroll within a list, a scroll handle will appear on the side. If the user touches it, the user can drag the scroll handle up and down for faster scrolling. This replaces the scroll bar. The more the handle is moved, the faster the screen will scroll. A screenshot:
Scroll bars in Windows Mobile 7 will never be part of the screen, but rather floating transparent visual elements on top of it. They will only be used when necessary.
A filmstrip view is shown, with the music filmstrip clearly showing a Zune icon with the option to purchase the song:
There are many pages showing other UI elements, including radio buttons, Spinners, sliders, text entry boxes, combo boxes, drop down menus and such, that I have left out. If anyone desperately wants to see them, let me know and I can add screenshots.
There’s a list of gestures that are being explorer and may or may not make it into Mobile 7, including a gesture to dismiss an on-screen notification by shaking it off the screen, a gesture to automatically take you to a Smart Search notification panel, turning the phone like turning a key to unlock it, Pivoting by gesturing the phone sideways, moving through lists by shaking the phone up or down, switching the camera into black and white or other modes by shaking it down, adjusting camera aperture and shutter speed by rotating the camera, sending a file by “tossing” it to another device.
I left out most of these, but if there are any more you want to see, just let me know and I will try to accommodate. Here’s the camera gesture, just because the UI is so cool:
There’s a list of list view options that are likely cut, including expandable/collapsible headers in grid view (I also didn’t cover grid view), a carousel view (sort of like a vertical pivot), scrolling one item at a time with touch, accelerometer gestures.
Windows Mobile 7 will ship in 2009, according to the document. This makes sense with the Mobile 6.1 point release that is coming around now. Hopefully, Bill Gates will announce Windows Mobile 7 at CES tonight, but if not, you now have advance notice of what is coming next year. Microsoft clearly has a lot planned to make Windows Mobile 7 the revolution it needs to be to compete with Apple, and Mobile 7 is going to bring some cool and excitement to Microsoft’s smart phones.
welcome to yesterday
A quick link to the same old story would have saficed...
this sounds so familiar...
hmmm thx for the "new" information i wouldnt have known if it wasnt for u thankyou
Did they say how many times a day it would crash and reboot itself?? lol
Sorry, I was being rude to the original poster! Thanks for the informative highlights of WM7 and I look forward to all future threads concerning this subject.
**Note** I aim saying this under direst from my wife who thinks I'm being rude....
mchapman007 said:
Sorry, I was being rude to the original poster! Thanks for the informative highlights of WM7 and I look forward to all future threads concerning this subject.
**Note** I aim saying this under direst from my wife who thinks I'm being rude....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The documentation is really huge.... i will have to sit and sort it out ..!
if you want a peek through this , visit http://www.htcclub.net/en/shownews.php?ID=294
i just wanted to help the homies right here ...
let me know who needs further clarification
SpringfieldXD45C said:
Did they say how many times a day it would crash and reboot itself?? lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well i will ask them and let you know... how many times exactly it will ... crash ...
i have a feeling these new gestures will take using (read: failing to use) the phone while drunk to new levels!
constantly using the camera as a light sensor is going to be just great for battery life......
This is a small (growing) list of the apps that I use daily on my Evo, and that I couldn't imagine living without. I have installed and deleted hundreds of apps, and have spent over $200 in the market on apps that I don't need, so hopefully someone out there in internet land will find this helpful.
I'm going to start this off with the most important app I have and the best purchase I have ever made with regards to the Evo (aside from the Evo itself): LauncherPro Plus.
LauncherPro is in my opinion the best home replacement app available today. I have tried many others including but not limited to ADW, Better Home, DxTop. I used to be a big fan of Sense, and I still like it compared to the stock launcher, but it really can't touch LauncherPro. With LauncherPro, you can completely customize your phone's interface, from the number of homescreens, to custom docks, and everything in between. What I really love about it is the scrollable dock, with the ability to assign whatever apps you want as shortcuts, along with assignable swipe actions. For instance, I have my notifications bar hidden, so I assigned the swipe from the app drawer to drop my notifications down. A swipe from my camera icon opens up the gallery, a swipe from the dialer loads my call history. LauncherPro is extremely stable, I haven't had a single force close from it in over a month (there have been many updates since then), and the dev is incredibly responsive so any issues get cleared up relatively quickly. There is a free version available in the market, but the paid version includes Sense-like widgets (people, calendar, bookmarks, messages) and is available from LauncherPro for $2.99.
Apps-
Swype- I seriously HATED this keyboard when I first tried it. Now I can't live without it.
Smart Keyboard Pro Great multitouch keyboard, very fast with great word correction. I've tried them all, this one is my favorite. I even like it better than the Droid X multitouch keyboard that I was in love with back on 2.1
JuiceDefender- JuiceDefender still works well for non-rooted phones. It turns off your antennas when you're not using them. Simple, but extremely effective.
Spare Parts- All this app does is give you access to hidden settings on your phone. It's extremely useful for checking what apps are using the battery the most (partial wake usage). This app combined with System Panel gives you all the tools you need to track down pesky apps that might be preventing your phone from sleeping properly and killing your battery. I don't really mess with any of the other settings or use it for anything other than battery and usage statistics.
AppBrain- The best way to keep track of all your apps. Sync your app list to your desktop. Now with OTA market installs.
MeCanto- Music streaming service that streams YOUR OWN music so you don't have to store it locally on your Evo. It starts out streaming from your desktop but also uploads your music to their servers so you can listen without leaving your desktop on. Sound quality is way better than you would expect.
Pandora- Free, sounds better than Sirius, and turns me on to a ton of bands that I wouldn't have found otherwise.
MovieFone- I love going to the movies so this app is indespensable for me.
RingDroid - I used it to make my ringtone, Tom Araya's scream at the beginning of Angel of Death \m/. Use it to turn any song into a custom ringtone.
SystemPanel- Waaay more than a just a task manager, use this to track down problematic apps and battery issues. Has a steeper learning curve than all other task managers, but is well worth it once you figure it out. An absolute necessity, right behind LauncherPro.
EasyTether- For sharing your internet connection with a desktop/ laptop. One time fee of $10, works like a charm.
Chrome to Phone- By far one of the coolest features of Froyo. Send websites, maps, youtube videos OTA to your phone from your desktop with the press of a button.
Dropbox- App for online backup, storage and file sharing.
Widgets-
SiMi Clock- Very nice, semi minimalist clock. I really hate the Sense flip clock and it's imitators, this is a great looking alternative
SiMi Folder Widget- I used to use Folder Organizer but this one is much nicer. Has less features than FO but it has everything that I need and I think the folders look a heck of a lot nicer than FO.
Beautiful Widgets- Awesome replacement for the stock HTC flip clock. Has many different skins, a smaller clock widget, and also comes with various toggle widgets that I don't use because I prefer...
SwitchPro- Toggles for all the various antennas and many other things. Great way to consolidate many toggles into a smaller slot on your phone, many different options for customization.
System Info Widget- Great widget that displays your system info at a glance. Battery, temperature, RAM, ROM, SD card geebees.
Gauge Battery Widget- Battery meter modeled off a fuel gauge from a car. Just as awesome as it sounds.
Android Agenda Widget- I like it better than all the other calendar widgets out there and it's free.
Visual Bookmarks- There really isn't a great selection of bookmarks widgets out there, so I settled on this one. It's free, it does what it's supposed to do and has zero issues.
Games-
GalaxIR Star- Awesome fast paced multiplayer RTS.
Armored Strike- Cool Worms-like multiplayer game.
Robo Defense- Hands down the best tower defense game on Android.
Dante: The Inferno- VERY polished action/ puzzler based off the first book from Dante's divine comedy. My current favorite game.
Iron Sight- Like Armored Strike except in 3D and no multiplayer yet.
SpeedX 3D- Really cool game with accelerometer based controls. Hard to describe, you're flying through a tunnel trying to avoid colliding with blocks and other obstacles. Great time waster.
Homerun Battle 3D- Just getting into it, I can see why this is one of the most popular games for Android.
Hyper Jump- Cool twist on the stale jumping game genre. Little Big Planet style artwork, great control. Fun game to play when you only have a few minutes.
Radiant- Awesome updated Space Invaders style game with great retro style graphics.
Meteor Blitz- Really cool asteroids style game with awesome graphics, and great control.
Assassin's Creed- Altair's Chronicles- Great Gameloft action/platformer with some of the best 3D graphics I've seen on Android. Control is surprisingly simple.
SpaceSTG- Awesome single player space RTS that is like a cross between GalaxIR Star and OGame.
Heavy Gunner- Use your thumbs and the accelerometer to control gun turrets, shooting down what I think are supposed to be alien ships. I love this game.
N.O.V.A- Bad ass futuristic first person shooter, very similar to Halo.
Glyder 2- Relaxing flying game where you pilot your character around a MASSIVE open word collecting crystals and power ups. Reminiscent of Pilot Wings for the N64.
Fruit Ninja- iPhone best seller now on Android. Cut flying fruit in half with your sword be swiping the screen. Sounds really stupid but it is HIGHLY addictive.
Mini Squadron- Holy crap this game is amazing. Another iPhone best seller. Dogfighting with cute little planes. Multiplayer as well.
Angry Birds- The iPhone bestseller is now available on Android for FREE. Quite possibly the most addictive Android game I have played yet.
Sinister Planet- A little gem of a space shooter. Controls are a little difficult at first but once you get used to them the game becomes extremely fun. Very challenging game.
Reckless Racing- Top down racing game. Awesome controls, and some of the best graphics I've seen on my Evo
SteamBirds- Turn based, top down dogfighting. Highly polished and highly addictive.
Armored Defense- New TD game. A little tricky at first but a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.
Defensoid- TD game with cool retro graphics.
Grave Defense- post apocayptic/zombie themed TD
Gun Bros- Cool dual stick shooter
Tank Hero- Fun little tank game. Try bouncing your shots off walls.
Rocket Bunnies- Awesome time waster. Pilot your rocket bunny from planet to planet picking up your friends while avoiding baddies. This might become my new favorite game. (Thanks dirkyd3rk!)
Air Attack HD- Top down shooter, like 1941 but with a significant graphical overhaul. Awesome graphics, great gameplay.
*For Rooted Phones ONLY*
Wireless Tether- Exactly what it says, and it works great.
Titanium Backup- Still learning how to use it, but it did help me remove all the pre-loaded Sprint apps that I don't need.
AutoStarts- Startup manager, lets you disable apps from loading at startup, and many other conditions. Its amazing to see what causes some apps to load. For instance, IMDB is set to load when the the phone's storage is low, crazy. It also helps explain why certain apps reload themselves after killing them and now you can prevent that from happening. I now have over 220 mb of RAM available after startup.
Juice Defender- Disables data connection based on profiles that you set, increasing battery life dramatically. Can also throttle CPU but I use SetCPU for that.
SetCpu- CPU overclock/ underclock that automatically adjusts CPU speed based on profiles that you set. Works very well with Juice Defender to save battery and increase performance.
ROM Manager- Great tool that lets you download ROMs directly and flash them straight from the app. Reduces the headache of having to manually boot into recovery to flash ROMs. It has other great tools too, like ROM backup/restore, flashing different recoveries, and updating your ROM all through the app.
Root Explorer- File manager for rooted phones. Allows full R/W access to entire system including system and data folders.
Hot Reboot- Quick reboot like Desire HD. Just reboots your ROM and not the entire phone. Great way to free up memory and to fix sluggish performance. I recommend doing it once a day to keep your phone performing at its best.
Remote Desktop- Awesome way to access the file structure of your phone from any browser on your computer. Can send and receive sms as well.
PicMe- From the same developer as ShootMe. Does screenshots but within your computer's browser instead of directly on the phone. Much quicker and easier to use this for caps than ShootMe.
Quadrant- The standard for benchmarking. Be warned though- A higher benchmark score does not always translate to better real world performance.
Check back often as this list is constantly being updated. Feel free to ask me any questions about any of the apps I've listed.
Also, if anyone has any app recommendations, feel free to post them and maybe we can compile a combined list of the XDA EVO forum's favorite apps.
reserved
10char
...and one more
Apps:
Folder Organizer- Lets you organize your apps into categories, then lets you put them up as widgets/shortcuts, and when you click on it, a popup with all the related apps comes up. Epic to say the least
Jam11- relatively good app for streaming music from iTunes onto your phone anywhere.
Flikie Walls HD- Great wallpaper app.
Vlingo- Like a better version of google voice search, because it also integrates more commands and is more accurate
Games
Gameboid- GBA emulator..
Psx4droid- Psx emulator
Super Tumble- weird puzzle game where you delete support from under a star to try to get it safely on a platform below
Amtalee- Definately one of the most intense puzzle games ever in which you flip around a tower of blocks on a map to fall into a hole. Sounds easy? Get ready to scream in frustration.
Zenonia- Basically an intense Zelda clone
Widgets:
Battstatt- A great word battery meter; displays your battery level remaining in a text string
Audiomanager Pro- Lets you set sound profiles, perfect for students/buisness people'
You can access the battery history option of spare parts through launcher pro via the activities option under add to homescreen.
I was using launcher pro plus for a time but have since gone back to sense. Yes launcher pro is a nice stable launcher but I had to use extra apps for widgets.
Switchpro widget is a good app but it bugs out sometimes when trying to turn on/off mobile data.
Right now my current apps are:
Tasker (replaces ALOT of other apps like switchpro, juicedefender,battery loggers)
Current widget
Temp+cpu v2
Root explorer
TIB
Astro
Wireless tether
Tempmonitor
Tasker is my favorite to date and the most powerful.
What the crap?! I had no freaking idea that Gameloft made Android versions of all these games. Just switched from iPhone a few weeks ago and I was having H.A.L.O. and Dungeon Hunter withdrawals....THANK YOU .
Why the heck aren't they in the Market? Or am I just a n00b...
abn.geek said:
What the crap?! I had no freaking idea that Gameloft made Android versions of all these games. Just switched from iPhone a few weeks ago and I was having H.A.L.O. and Dungeon Hunter withdrawals....THANK YOU .
Why the heck aren't they in the Market? Or am I just a n00b...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They are dumb, not you. They aren't in the market.
Welcome to the winning team, by the way.
Hey nice list guys. I'll add some of my favorites as well.
Apps:
Zombie Booth: Take a picture of someones face and it will transform them into an animated zombie! Pretty neat experience.
PowerAMP Music Player: A very neat and nice graphical music player for android. Has a built in equalizer and tons of nice features.
Games:
Unblockme Free: An addicive puzzle game where you move pieces out of the way in order to move the red piece outside.
Totemo: Another puzzle game where you get rid of little heads in a specific number order. Graphics are pretty good for a android game.
N.O.V.A: A halo like clone for android. Online multiplayer included as well as a single player campaign. Nice experience for those looking for a quick death match.
Firehouse scheduler: if you work shift work it is a must have app put in one rotation and it automatically fills in the rest also syncs with google calender so you don't have to manually transfer all that info.
Sent from my warmed up evo
BUMP!!
Added Reckless Racing, SteamBirds and Armored Defense to OP. If you haven't tried those games yet, TRY THEM.
ROM Manager
Absolute System
Cache Cleaner
SetCPU
LauncherPro
Xda-dev
My-Cast Weather (by Garmin)
Pandora
GikSoft Screenshot
Engadget
Sent from AOSP's no nonsense froyo ROM / HERO200
great thread!! Keep up the good work... Now if I could only get my apps to download from the market...
Collin_Ph battery tweak
Absolute System Root Tool
Cache Cleaner NG
LauncherPro+
skAmped battery widget
Xda-dev
My-Cast Weather (by Garmin)
Pandora
GikSoft Screenshot
Engadget
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
Apps:
Rom Manager
SetCPU
aLogcat
OS Monitor
System Panel
AK Notepad
Alarm Klock
ASTRO
Cache Cleaner NG
Dropbox
GPS Status (for clearing GPS history [faster lock times])
Handcent
Linpack
MyBackup Pro (Must have, worth the 4.99$)
Pandora
Rom Gripper
Gameboid
SNESoid
Root Explorer (Best tool ever)
Shazam
Speed Test
Terminal Emulator
TweetDeck
WinAmp
XDA
Widgets:
Circle Battery
Simi Clock
Simple Text
Minimalistic Text
Thanks for the list
Angry birds
Swype
Chrome to phone
Ad free
Titanium backup
Those are absolute must haves for me
Via fresh-evo
Apps: On end call
Games: Slice it, throttlecoptor, moron test.
Collin_Ph battery tweak
Absolute System Root Tool
Autokiller Memory Optimizer
Battery Icon Mod
Cache Cleaner NG
Desktop Virtualizer
LauncherPro+
Xda-dev
My-Cast Weather (by Garmin)
Pandora
GikSoft Screenshot
Engadget
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
_MetalHead_ said:
MeCanto- Music streaming service that streams YOUR OWN music so you don't have to store it locally on your Evo. It starts out streaming from your desktop but also uploads your music to their servers so you can listen without leaving your desktop on. Sound quality is way better than you would expect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Audiogalaxy also rocks!
don't forget mobile defense....
Yes, it is still in beta, but I've had it from the beginning, and it is a major life-saver.
I'm sure that once they come out of beta, this list will still be here, so I'm putting it in.
Check it out https://www.mobiledefense.com/session/new
Hello, all.
I've got a confession to make: I like apps. A lot. To an unhealthy degree. I've got a huge stash of apps on my phone, and an even larger collection of .apk backups waiting to be reloaded whenever I feel like it. I love finding new apps to try out, and deciding which ones are worthy to be added to my collection. A lot of the apps that I find and want to try out are paid apps; without finding many thorough reviews on them, I don't know whether they are worth my money - but I can't stand the thought of missing out on the Next Big Thing. And so I buy them, download them, install them, and test them out anyway. If it's an awesome app and well-worth the money, I tell my friends. If it is money that could be better spent on another app that I've tried before, I tell my friends that, too.
Unfortunately, not all of my friends are interested in my opinion on apps. They only listen to me because of my rugged good looks (my theory). This makes me sad, because I spend a lot of time (and money, in some cases) trying apps out - someone else needs to benefit from that time (and money) as well. Until someone decides to pay/reimburse me for all the apps that I evaluate, the next-best thing I can do is offer up reviews to the community of any apps that I have found particularly useful. This is the driving force behind my desire to make this thread.
I will be running down my list of currently-installed useful applications and entertaining games. I will include screen shots, AppBrain links, and as much detail as I can muster up. My hope is that the rest of the community may find some benefit from these reviews - and who knows, maybe you'll find a kick-ass app you'd never heard of.
I'm open to questions, ideas, requests, suggestions, and pretty much any other type of communication or input that could be provided. I only ask that you be respectful - both of me, and of the app developers. And if this list helps you find a neat paid app to try out, please do support the developer(s). Piracy is bad, mmmmkay?
Enjoy!
-codesplice
Credit where credit is due: All screenshots are made using the free ShootMe app.
NOTE: Now that the Android Market has a shnazzy new web interface, I'm going to change the primary links for apps to reflect this. I will add the AppBrain links as a secondary, and hope to add direct market links at some point once I find a site to reliably provide this information. Stay tuned!
Reviews:
Minimalistic Text (Widget)
Clutch Pad(Multitasking App) UPDATED 2/24/11
CircleLauncher (Widget)
Swipe Pad (Multitasking App)
Keyboard Manager (App) UPDATED 2/23/11
Shift Puzzle Game (Game)
ElecroDroid (App)
Hella Umbrella (Game)
Digital Wall (LWP)
Shortyz Crosswords (App)
Elixir (System Info App)
Google Authenticator (App)
Zeam (Launcher)
Lookout / WaveSecure (Mobile Security App double-feature)
If you don't want to subscribe to this thread, you can follow me on that twitting thing, as I will post updates about new reviews there.
Minimalistic Text (widget)
App Name: Minimalistic Text (v.2.1.3, @AppBrain)
Developer: Devmil
Price: FREE
There is quite a handful of text-based widgets available on the Market, and a lot of them are very nice. There are widgets for displaying the time as text, the weather as text, the battery level as text.... but this is one widget that does it all. Just about every aspect of the widget is configurable, from the text alignment and rotation to the font size and colors to even the format for different types of data. You've got several options for the display type, whether you want to use digits or words or even a bar (for days of the week or percentage of battery charge). There is also an optional "blur" text effect which works wonderfully for making accented text appear to be illuminated. To top things off, this widget also functions as a plugin for Locale or Tasker and can be used to display variables from either of those applications. For instance, if you want a small text-widget to display what Locale/Tasker profiles are currently active, this is your answer for a very configurable solution.
For each widget you are also able to define an action to perform when tapped - whether it is launching another activity (my clock widget launches my alarm clock), opening the widget preferences page, or even reading out the text currently displayed on the widget. You are also able to save and restore your widget settings, so don't be afraid to experiment.
Given the sheer amount of customizations available to you with this widget app, the configuration menu may be a little bit overwhelming and complex when you first get into it. Play around for a few minutes, and you're bound to get the hang of it.
This is a fabulous widget, and one that I highly recommend to anyone who will take the time to tinker with it.
Verdict: A highly-configurable text-based widget to display pretty much anything you want, especially with Tasker integration.
Screenshots:
1) Widget(s) in action. I should note there are three separate widgets displayed: Time / weather up top, day / date on the bottom, and a battery level bar on the right-hand side.
2) Preferences Manager for all widgets
3) Text Style menu
4-5) Custom Layout configurator
(tested on NexusOne / Kang-o-rama 1.2 T1 (CM7.n13 / GRH78C / Android 2.3.2))
Clutch Pad[APP]
App Name: Clutch Pad (v.1.3v.1.4.2, @AppBrain)
Developer: stevealbright
Price: $0.99 $1.99
Clutch is an application that seeks to optimize and streamline the way you multitask on Android. It is currently in beta status, but is very functional in its current state. It is a powerful supplement to the built-in Recent Apps feature.
Clutch manifests itself as a small semi-transparent "trigger" area, which functions similar to "hot corners" on a Mac (I think. I'm a Linux/PC guy). This small region rides at the very top layer of the Android interface (in a user-configurable position) and is accessible no matter what application you may be working in. You can tap this region to instantly bring up a small grid displaying your recently-accessed applications. You can customize how many apps you want to be visible, configure the application to ignore your Home (Launcher) app in its list, and to visually distinguish currently-running applications from terminated apps. This makes it very easy to quickly determine if that app you just exited is still running or if it has been shut down as it should, as well as providing a quick (and lightweight) task switcher.
Nice, but nothing terribly fantastic. Yet. Clutch also has configurable swipe gestures - the most useful (to me) of which is a Last Task functionality. For instance, if I Swipe Up from the Clutch region, I instantly switch to whatever my previous app was. If I swipe again, I am moved back to the app I just switched from. This functions similarly to just pressing ALT+TAB quickly, and is very useful for quickly jumping between two apps.
This little utility is quick and lightweight, and I have found it to be extremely useful. It is still in development, and has many more features planned (and a price increase to accompany them - so get it quickly!) including support for additional gestures (open/close notifications, for example), on-click task control (press-and-hold to kill, for example), and configurable transition animations.
If you've got a dollar to spend, you would do well to add this application to your device in its current state, and I can only imagine the app's versatility and usefulness will increase with the further planned updates.
Update (2/24/11): Clutch Pad has recently been updated to version 1.4. With this update, the application has dropped the "Beta" tag, gained an additional "Pad" in its name, and has added additional features and configurable options. At the same time, the price has also been increased to $1.99. New features include additional swipe gestures, configurable transition animations (that are quite pretty), the option to toggle the trigger button via a press-and-hold on the Search hardware key, and a Favorites option to quickly launch your favorite apps. Options have also been added for additional visual tweaks and adjustments of both the trigger icon and the popup lists, and all known bugs have been fixed. With each incremental update, this app gets more and more useful and I find myself relying upon it more all the time. Even at the increased price, this is still one of my must-have applications.
Verdict: An innovative way to access recent apps, and the Last App gesture functionality is every bit as useful as Alt-Tabbing between apps on your desktop.
Screenshots:
1) Trigger icon
2) Recent apps list
3-5) Settings pages
(tested on NexusOne / Kang-o-rama 1.2 T1 (CM7.n13 / GRH78C / Android 2.3.2))
CircleLauncher (widget)
App Name: CircleLauncher (v.1.5.2, @AppBrain)
Developer: db-ware
Price: ~$1.37 (free, limited version here or @AppBrain)
As mentioned previously, I have a lot of apps. One of the problem with having a lot of apps is running out of room on your homescreens for app shortcuts. There are various widgets out there that propose a variety of solutions to this problem, but they often leave you with tiny, almost unusable icons. This would have been fine in the days where the trackball reigned supreme, but this is the oh-tens. It has to be finger-friendly.
One true solution that I stumbled across the other day is called CircleLauncher. What it does is really very simple, but it does it very well. It allows you to create a single widget to group similar applications together (I've used location-themed apps and clock-based apps in my example). Tape the 1x1 widget, and a lightweight menu appears to launch your apps. Pretty standard, but this menu is laid out (by default - you can change this in the settings) in a ring around the icon. As you slide your finger or thumb around the ring, the currently selected application icon grows to make selection a bit easier.
Note that CircleLauncher includes other layout types (configurable from the widget's config menu, which you access by selecting the widget and then press-and-holding the center) including horizontal and vertical lines. I was also very pleased with the way that the widget's application menu adapts to its position on the screen - stick it in a corner, and your full selection of apps will be displayed within a 90-degree pie slice.
Obviously, a menu such as this is a bit limited to a relatively low number of apps (more than 9 or 10 and the ring will be just too cluttered to be functional), but if you need to have quick access to just a few more apps from your homescreen, this should do the trick. Since there is a free version available, why not give it a shot and see if this widget can help you to organize your home screen a bit?
Verdict: An easy way to combine several app shortcuts into one.
Screenshots:
1) Plain widgets (labeled GPS and Time) - you can dress them up a bit more if you are artistically inclined.
2) One widget opened showing the full selection ring.
3) The corner widget open showing the adaptation to the position.
4) One icon expanded while my finger hovers over it.
5) Settings menu
(tested on NexusOne / Kang-o-rama 1.2 T1 (CM7.n13 / GRH78C / Android 2.3.2))
Keep going mate
gruzman said:
Keep going mate
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I surely intend to! Just have to figure out which app to post next
Thanks for the encouragement though. It is appreciated to know at least someone is reading over all this mess!
SwipePad Beta [APP]
App Name: SwipePad Beta (v.0.7.5, @AppBrain)
Developer: Conduction.mobi
Price: FREE
Keeping on the theme of "apps to help you access your apps", we come to SwipePad Beta. Similar in some regard to Clutch, this app also gives you "hot corner" functionality. Use the settings menu to establish what corners (or regions) you want to be active, and then slide your finger from a specified region to the center of the screen. Hold it for just a moment, and a 3x4 grid of application shortcuts magically appears. You can, of course, fully customize what applications should appear on this grid by simply pressing your finger on an empty square or by holding your finger over an existing icon until it is highlighted. The hot corners/region and swipe gesture should work pretty much any time that the screen is unlocked, and is a great way of quickly launching a new app without returning to your home screen.
The application offers to integrate task managing application by the same developer (which is a paid app) that I haven't tried out yet. Personally, I've got plenty of other ways of killing apps at this point - particularly once the function gets built into Clutch.
SwipePad is very nicely polished and quite responsive. It does what it does quite well. My only issue with it is that I just don't use it very frequently. I almost forget that it is there; I must be thoroughly conditioned to launching apps from the home screen. It's free, though, so give it a whirl and see if it can further help to optimize the way you launch apps from within other apps
Verdict: Clever use of hot-corners to gain quick access to up to 12 user-defined apps; non-intrusive to the point that you might forget to use it.
Screenshots:
1) SwipePad in action. Note that putting a link to SwipePad on your SwipePad gives you a quick way to access the settings screens.
2) SwipePad settings, with the hot corners highlighted in red at the bottom.
(tested on NexusOne / Kang-o-rama 1.2 T1 (CM7.n13 / GRH78C / Android 2.3.2))
is there a video demonstrating the use of Clutch? I want to watch it before paying for it.
Deff fav'ing this. Am looking forward to all reviews
(*is thinking about getting clutch)
Epic is as Epic does
Nice! Thanks bro!
waichung said:
is there a video demonstrating the use of Clutch? I want to watch it before paying for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I imagine there should be a video somewhere on the youtubes. Let me know if you find one and I will add it to the post. I'm about to go into work so it will be another 12 hours before I have access to the full internet, but I will look then if you haven't found anything.
Very good! Thanks
Keyboard Manager [APP]
App Name: Keyboard Manager (v.1.1) Keyboard Manager (v.1.4)
Developer: ne0fhyk
Price: FREE $1.99
NOTE: This app requires root!!
It took me quite a while, but I finally weened myself away from requiring a physical keyboard on a mobile device when I got my NexusOne. With the multitude and variety of available software keyboards available for Android, I haven't really missed the physical keys. The only annoyance at this point is that I find keyboards that work great for one-handed operation in portrait orientation, like Swype or 8pen (if you're in the mood for adventure and don't really care how long it takes to get a message completed ), but are next-to-worthless for dual-thumb landscape input. With a physical keyboard, you'd just slide that bad boy out and away you go. For those of us with only a touchscreen and maybe a few additional buttons, it can be a bit of a chore to manually change the selected input method each time we rotate the device. If only there was a way for the device to read my mind and select the appropriate keyboard.....
As luck would have it, XDA member ne0fhyk has provided us with a solution to this difficulty, in the form of his Keyboard Manager application. Simply select what keyboard you want to use in each orientation (I use Swype for portrait and SwiftKey for landscape), and the app will handle the tedious business of choosing the appropriate input method. It's that easy, and it works.
Mostly. The app is a bit of a hacked solution, and requires root permissions to be able to get around the Android security feature which prevents applications from changing the input method. Installation is not always straight-forward (instructions are available in the first post of the application thread, and it may cause a few software keyboards to force-close if you change orientation while the keyboard is displayed. The current version (1.1) has come a long way from the previous releases in terms of usability, stability, and reliability, and I haven't had any major issues with it. I highly recommend that you give this application a shot and see if it will help you out with your input needs.
Update (2/23/11): Keyboard Manager is no longer available for free, but is now installable from the Android Market. The now-current 1.4 version has fixed most of the install issues and should be a very easy set-up for you. If you run into any issues with the purchased version, please contact the developer - he helped me solve issues specific to my device, and the application works like a charm now.
Verdict: A functional hack to auto-select the appropriate software keyboard based on device orientation.
Screenshots:
1) The optional persistent notification icon. Activating the notification will give you quick access to the Keyboard Manager settings page, and I recommend you leave it enabled until you get things set up the way you want. After that, disable the persistent notification at your own risk (the persistent notification keeps the process in the foreground and prevents Android from terminating it).
2) Settings screen
3) Selecting which keyboard to use
4) Demonstrating that the app has automatically selected Swype for portrait...
5) .... and SwiftKey for landscape.
(tested on NexusOne / Kang-o-rama 1.2 T1 (CM7.n13 / GRH78C / Android 2.3.2))
Shift Puzzle Game [GAME]
App Name: Shift Puzzle Game (v.1.2, @AppBrain)
Developer: Handmark
Price: $1.99 (Free ad-supported version here or @AppBrain let's you try out 15 levels; full version features 40 additional levels and no ads)
The Shift Puzzle Game is a tasty Android port of the ever-popular SHIFT game by Armor Games, which you can play free in your Flash-enabled browser at the Armor Games website. If you're not familiar with the original (as I wasn't until I found this app just an hour ago), then let me fill you in on the skinny.
Shift is a new take on the classic adventure-puzzle platformer game. Your mission is to get from point A to point B, dodging whatever nasty traps and obstacles may be in your path. The twist is the ability for you to literally shift the game universe upside down. White becomes black, up becomes down, and you find yourself walking on the flip side of the surface you were just standing on. You can (and will) use this clever maneuver repeatedly in order to successfully navigate each challenging level. Not quite tracking? It can be rather tough to explain... Hopefully the screenshots below will help clear it up (or go play the flash version for free here).
This implementation for a touchscreen device is phenomenal. The controls are large and appear on either side of the landscape display - and you don't even need multitouch. Just tap the left arrow to move left, the left-up diagonal to jump left, and the SHIFT button at the top to do that groovy shift thing. The gameplay is engaging, and the levels can be quite challenging (and quite addictive). The game is worth trying out (the free version) solely for experiencing the joy that is puzzle-solving by twisting the fabric of the universe, and you might just get hooked enough to purchase the full version. It would be two bucks well spent.
Verdict: Quickly becoming my latest Android gaming addiction.
Screenshots:
1) Main menu
2) First level
3) First level - SHIFTED!
4) It gets twisted!
(tested on NexusOne / Kang-o-rama 1.2 T1 (CM7.n13 / GRH78C / Android 2.3.2))
This is a little off topic but is anyone attempting a Tor app?
Sent from my SGH-I897 using XDA App
jinsfch said:
This is a little off topic but is anyone attempting a Tor app?
Sent from my SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just slightly off topic, but no worries.
A quick search on AppBrain found Orbot: Tor On Android. Impressive, since Android still doesn't have proper proxy support on its own...
Can't find clutch video on youtube...
Btw,i think swipepad is better than it as swyping from the bottom is easier than from the right
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
waichung said:
Can't find clutch video on youtube...
Btw,i think swipepad is better than it as swyping from the bottom is easier than from the right
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I looked for Clutch videos as well and was disappointed to see that there aren't any. I may try to shoot a video once I get home from the desert in a few weeks (hopefully).
You can change the position of the Clutch region to really any spot on the screen. And I don't really see the two as competing anyway as they have entirely different purposes: Clutch gives you quick access to your recently-executed apps, while SwipePad offers a fixed menu of apps for you to launch.
codesplice said:
I looked for Clutch videos as well and was disappointed to see that there aren't any. I may try to shoot a video once I get home from the desert in a few weeks (hopefully).
You can change the position of the Clutch region to really any spot on the screen. And I don't really see the two as competing anyway as they have entirely different purposes: Clutch gives you quick access to your recently-executed apps, while SwipePad offers a fixed menu of apps for you to launch.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The likely alt-tab function of clutch is really fantastic but does it show the recently-executed apps or the running apps? I use swipepad together with the virtual task switcher which allows switching among the running tasks. These 2 apps are completely free and no need to paid $1 for the "swipepad: tasks". But I prefer quick accessing recent tasks to showing those apps running at the background.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
waichung said:
The likely alt-tab function of clutch is really fantastic but does it show the recently-executed apps or the running apps? I use swipepad together with the virtual task switcher which allows switching among the running tasks. These 2 apps are completely free and no need to paid $1 for the "swipepad: tasks". But I prefer quick accessing recent tasks to showing those apps running at the background.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The set {recently-executed} apps includes the subset {running apps}. The default behavior of Android is to show all recently-executed apps under the Recent Apps functionality, regardless of whether those apps are still running or have been terminated. I thought that Visual Task Switcher behaved the same way, but based on the application page it does appear to only display currently-running apps. Personally, I prefer to see recent apps (with a visual distinction between those that are still running and those that have been terminated), as I often end up re-launching the same app over and over; of course, you could also just pin a shortcut to those frequent apps to SwipePad. We all operate our devices in different ways, so either option is of course valid.
Visual Task Switcher (at least the last time that I used it) tended to make my phone lag significantly for whatever reason; I did use it for quite some time though, and was pleased with its functionality as a complete Recent Apps replacement (after configuring the long-press home trigger to launch it via CyanogenMod settings). Also note that the free version includes ads (which may contribute to the lag I was experiencing?) while the full version will set you back $1.99.
Saw this one on google+ and I think it's a nice read and very informative
How about some Android graphics true facts?
I get tired of seeing so much misinformation posted and repeated all over the place about how graphics rendering works on Android. Here is some truth:
• Android has always used some hardware accelerated drawing. Since before 1.0 all window compositing to the display has been done with hardware.
• This means that many of the animations you see have always been hardware accelerated: menus being shown, sliding the notification shade, transitions between activities, pop-ups and dialogs showing and hiding, etc.
• Android did historically use software to render the contents of each window. For example in a UI like http://www.simplemobilereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/2-home-menu.png there are four windows: the status bar, the wallpaper, the launcher on top of the wallpaper, and the menu. If one of the windows updates its contents, such as highlighting a menu item, then (prior to 3.0) software is used to draw the new contents of that window; however none of the other windows are redrawn at all, and the re-composition of the windows is done in hardware. Likewise, any movement of the windows such as the menu going up and down is all hardware rendering.
• Looking at drawing inside of a window, you don’t necessarily need to do this in hardware to achieve full 60fps rendering. This depends very much on the number of pixels in your display and the speed of your CPU. For example, Nexus S has no trouble doing 60fps rendering of all the normal stuff you see in the Android UI like scrolling lists on its 800x480 screen. The original Droid however struggled with a similar screen resolution.
• "Full" hardware accelerated drawing within a window was added in Android 3.0. The implementation in Android 4.0 is not any more full than in 3.0. 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 rather than having to put android:handwareAccelerated="true" in their manifest. (And the reason this isn’t just turned on for all existing applications is that some types of drawing operations can’t be supported well in hardware and it also impacts the behavior when an application asks to have a part of its UI updated. Forcing hardware accelerated drawing upon existing apps will break a significant number of them, from subtly to significantly.)
• Hardware accelerated drawing is not all full of win. For example on the PVR drivers of devices like the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, simply starting to use OpenGL in a process eats about 8MB of RAM. Given that our process overhead is about 2MB, this is pretty huge. That RAM takes away from other things, such as the number of background processes that can be kept running, potentially slowing down things like app switching.
• Because of the overhead of OpenGL, one may very well not want to use it for drawing. For example some of the work we are doing to make Android 4.0 run well on the Nexus S has involved turning off hardware accelerated drawing in parts of the UI so we don’t lose 8MB of RAM in the system process, another 8MB in the phone process, another 8MB in the system UI process, etc. Trust me, you won’t notice -- there is just no benefit on that device in using OpenGL to draw something like the status bar, even with fancy animations going on in there.
• Hardware accelerated drawing is not a magical silver bullet to butter-smooth UI. There are many different efforts that have been going on towards this, such as improved scheduling of foreground vs. background threads in 1.6, rewriting the input system in 2.3, strict mode, concurrent garbage collection, loaders, etc. If you want to achieve 60fps, you have 20 milliseconds to handle each frame. This is not a lot of time. Just touching the flash storage system in the thread that is running the UI can in some cases introduce a delay that puts you out of that timing window, especially if you are writing to storage.
• A recent example of the kinds of interesting things that impact UI smoothness: we noticed that ICS on Nexus S was actually less smooth when scrolling through lists than it was on Gingerbread. It turned out that the reason for this was due to subtle changes in timing, so that sometimes in ICS as the app was retrieving touch events and drawing the screen, it would go to get the next event slightly before it was ready, causing it to visibly miss a frame while tracking the finger even though it was drawing the screen at a solid 60fps.
• When people have historically compared web browser scrolling between Android and iOS, most of the differences they are seeing are not due to hardware accelerated drawing. Originally Android went a different route for its web page rendering and made different compromises: the web page is turned in to a display list, which is continually rendered to the screen, instead of using tiles. This has the benefit that scrolling and zooming never have artifacts of tiles that haven’t yet been drawn. Its downside is that as the graphics on the web page get more complicated to draw the frame rate goes down. As of Android 3.0, the browser now uses tiles, so it can maintain a consistent frame rate as you scroll or zoom, with the negative of having artifacts when newly needed tiles can’t be rendered quickly enough. The tiles themselves are rendered in software, which I believe is the case for iOS as well. (And this tile-based approach could be used prior to 3.0 without hardware accelerated drawing; as mentioned previously, the Nexus S CPU can easily draw the tiles to the window at 60fps.)
• Hardware accleration does not magically make drawing performance problems disappear. 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 1280x800 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. To get 60fps animation, Android 3.0 and later use a number of tricks. A big one is that it tries to put all windows into overlays instead of having to copy them to the framebuffer with the GPU. In the case here even with that we are still over-budget, but we have another trick: because the wallpaper on Android is in a separate window, we can make this window larger than the screen to hold the entire bitmap. Now, as you scroll, the movement of the background doesn’t require any drawing, just moving its window... and because this window is in an overlay, it doesn’t even need to be composited to the screen with the GPU.
• As device screen resolution goes up, achieving a 60fps UI is closely related to GPU speed and especially the GPU’s memory bus bandwidth. In fact, if you want to get an idea of the performance of a piece of hardware, always pay close attention to the memory bus bandwidth. There are plenty of times where the CPU (especially with those wonderful NEON instructions) can go a lot faster than the memory bus.
All credit goes to Dianne Hackborn. Thanks for sharing this!
HAHAHAHA good facts, and very interesting!
Great post
yup, Nice Post!
Interesting observation!
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda premium
We heard it would be flat. We heard it would be
black and white. We heard that it would be a
totally different experience.
It is. iOS 7, the latest version of Apple’s
flagship mobile operating system, is here, and
it’s almost entirely different from the versions
that came before. Gone are the skeuomorphic
designs and 3D effects, replaced by Sir Jony
Ive’s “flat design.” Rumors had been flying for
weeks about the new OS and now it’s here and
it is, at least at this early reckoning, a massive
change for the six year old operating system.
First, we must remember that Ive, Apple’s
industrial designer now in control of software
following the departure of Scott Forstall, isn’t a
believer in interfaces that copy real-world
objects. In the past, making the Notes app look
like a legal pad or the calendar app look like a
Moleskine calendar notebook were part of the
iOS design philosophy, as ingrained in the OS
as “Slide To Unlock.” All that is gone now.
Are you ready for a whole new world?
New Look:
iOS 7 has a new font leading the way, which
seems to be a sort of Helvetica Neue Ultra. It’s
very skinny, clean, and it was hinted at in the
iOS 7 banners that went up for WWDC
yesterday.
Instead of white bars on a black background,
Apple will now tell you what kind of service
coverage you have with five little dots, which
are white and grey depending on how strong
the signal is across a translucent background.
The lock screen is changed for the first time in
iOS’s history, with no more shine top or bottom
bars for slide to unlock or the clock. Instead,
Slide to unlock is translucent above the
background image.
Default app icons are now flatter, but not quite
flat, just as predicted.
Jony Ive’s hand has had its way with iOS
notifications. The notifications panel isn’t laced
with dark grey linen anymore, but actually has
a very flat look to it. There is a today view, that
lets you see friends birthdays, upcoming
invitations, calendar, stocks, and a quick look
at tomorrow.
The apps all seem to have a white base, except
for the stocks app which has a black
background and the weather app, which shows
motion in the background to convey the current
weather.
The keyboard is more white, than grey, with a
translucency that lets you see what’s
underneath the keyboard.
New Features
Control Center
Control Center is a pull-up tray that is available
in your lock screen.
You can adjust brightness, volume, and other
settings including Wifi, Airplane mode, rotation
lock, or Bluetooth.
The Control Center even offers a flashlight,
along with tabs for music, camera, and other
quick-access apps.
The Control Center takes on the environment
it’s in, so if you swipe up while you’re in mail, it
will have the same blue and white coloring
under that translucent panel.
Multitasking
iOS 7 lets you multitask between all third-party
apps with much better battery consumption.
You can double-tap the home button to enter
into multi-tasking mode, just like always, but
the interface for multitasking has been
revamped. It appears to offer live previews, but
Apple wasn’t clear about that.
Safari
Safari opens straight into full screen mode now,
with the option to pull down to bring up the
search bar at the top.
The search field has been improved to be a
unified smart search field, which lets you have
access to all your favorite websites with a
single tap.
Tabs come with a totally new interface,
scrolling in a vertical carousel, and there are no
longer any limits. In other words, you can have
as many tabs as you want, as opposed to just
8 like before. Swipe a tab off to the side to
throw it away.
The new Safari is integrated with iCloud
keychain from OS X Mavericks, and also comes
with parental controls.
AirDrop
You can share sharesheets with other people by
simply tapping their name. No NFC required.
Airdrop supports iPhone 5, iPad 4th gen, iPad
Mini
Camera And Photos
The Camera app lets you swipe between your
various camera types, such as panorama or
HDR so you can quickly take a pic instead of
fumbling around with settings.
Photos marks the first update to the photo
gallery on iOS since it was introduced.
You can search based on date, and location,
within the photos app.
Instagram must be flattered — Apple has
introduced photo filters so you can add a little
professionalism to the picture.
Users can share via AirDrop, iCloud photo-
sharing, as well as shared Photo Streams.
You can even share video with iCloud photo-
sharing.
Siri:
Siri has a new voice! It sounds similar, but also
weird. You can choose a male or female voice,
if you like. Voices include languages like
French, German, and other languages “over
time.”
The visual UI has also been upgraded, with a
sound wave going along the bottom.
Siri has also been integrated with settings,
letting you tell her to turn on bluetooth, or
lower the screen brightness.
The company has also added support for
Twitter, Wikipedia, and shows web search
results direct from Bing.
iOS in the Car
iOS in the Car depends a lot on Siri.
It puts the iOS homescreen on the screen of
your car, and lets you search for directions,
listen to music, etc.
App Store
You can now search for apps based on
location. In other words, search for apps by the
Louvre and see a lot of French museum apps.
The App Store also automatically updates apps
for you in the background now. Hallelujah
again!
iTunes Radio:
Apple has finally introduced the much-
anticipated iTunes Radio, which gives a Genius-
like experience to the entire 26-million title
iTunes catalog.
You can see the full list of songs on each
station by clicking history, with purchase and
preview buttons built right in to send you to the
iTunes store.
iTunes Radio also lets you customize each
station by clicking a star to show that you want
more of this type of music.
iTunes Match users will get an ad-free
experience, but others will be able to use the
app for free with a few audio and text ads.
Activation Lock:
This is for those of us who have had an iPhone
stolen.
If a thief steals your phone and tries to turn off
Find My iPhone, they can no longer turn the
device back on without your iCloud password.
Users can also block messages and calls from
other users.
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda premium
I tell you what I think:
lol.
Thread closed: this discussion should be held on a more Apple friendly website....