Web browsing speed on current WinMo devices - General Topics

Hi everyone,
I'm getting a bit impatient waiting for the Leo, and I'm thinking about maybe getting a Topaz (Touch Diamond 2) instead - it's a lot cheaper right now than the Leo will be when it comes out (only 15€ a month instead of 20€) and they have the same screen res. However, I'm worried that the CPU in the Topaz might not be fast enough for what I want...
I don't need a lot of processing power (no games or anything like that), but I would like to be able to use it as a laptop-replacement when I'm at uni - so web browsing, ICQ/Skype and so on should work well and without any problems such as pages not loading/rendering properly.
Sadly I haven't been able to get my hands on a Touch Diamond 2 or Touch Pro 2 for testing (only at the store, and you can't really get online with the devices there), so I have to ask: How is the browsing? Do pages like Google Reader/Gmail/Google Calendar, Slashdot and other pages that are heavily scripted and/or AJAX based render quickly and reliably?
Has anyone compared the web browsing experience between a Snapdragon-based device and the other current-gen devices (Touch Diamond 2, Touch Pro 2, Touch HD... they all use the same 528MHz processor, AFAIK)? Is the difference during web browsing really noticable, or is processor power not the bottleneck during rendering web pages?
Thanks in advance!

IMHO browsing on an Android is by far superior to anything else I've tried (iPhone or on the last place WinMob), but even on Android it happens that big pages over load the processor and browsing gets really poor even it the software behind the browsing task is good.
So I'd say you pay some extra attention to CPU as well, even if you're not a gamer, since it will make a difference when loading big pages (with lots of images, scripts, etc).
Just my 2 cents.

I'm using Opera Mobile 9.5 and it takes me 10 seconds to open Engadget. Skype in the background won't hurt at all. Just remember that a better CPU = better/faster overall experience and that includes browsing.
I have TD 2 (from a friend) for a couple of days and the browsing is fine. Some lagg with more tabs open, but not a show stopper.

Hmmm, I'm becoming less and less sure about getting another WM device - the Nokia N900 browser is freakin awesome... full embedded Flash support, insanely fast for a mobile browser, good keyboard. This is getting difficult :'(
I wonder what's faster: the Snapdragon in the Leo or the iPhone/N900 CPU...

Snapdragon. The iPhone 3GS (and N900) uses a Cortex A8 600mhz, whereas the Snapdragon uses an A8-derived core at 1ghz.

Related

Touch Pro performance

Let's talk about the Touch Pro performance.
I will post some quotes.
branko.savic said:
Ok, so just to be fair I did some more testings on all three of my devices to find the optimal settings, here is the results:
Test performed on same video, with coreplayer 1.2.5, and optimal settings for each device:
Omnia:
Raw framebuffer: 442.74%
Universal:
Direct Draw: 165.28%
Touch Pro:
QTv display: 152.44%
Smooth Zoom and Dither turned off on each device!
So in conclusion, again Omnia wins by a huge 277.46% over the next best device that is the Universal. And even then the Universal is 12.84% better then the Touch Pro!
Please bare in mind that the Universal is a three years old device with only 64MB ram, while Touch pro is brand new and 288MB ram! They have same clock speed but Touch pro is supposed to have a better/newer chipset then the Universal!
There is no doubt in my mind anymore, Touch pro is missing the video drivers, or could it just be that qualcomm chipset just sucks?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DSF said:
poor directdraw, framebuffer/video performance. Just to make an idea: an old device from 2005 with omap 850 200mhz CPU performs better in this area than the touch pro @ qualcomm 528mhz. what a shame. The test were done in this topic (in romanian, sorry). CorePlayer was used for benchmark. I will summarize.
- HTC Tornado overclocked (262Mhz) max performance: 174.22%
- Touch Pro max performance: 172,67%
Both in Raw framebuffer mode. When used QTV it gains only 162,64%. How come?
It's pitty, 262Mhz from OMAP performs better than 528!!!Mhz from Qualcomm?!
The video used for tests is this one. (320x240 @ 25FPS)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So what do you think? Are the qualcomm chipsets just junk or we got poor drivers? Personally, I was hoping that HTC did learn something after the HTC TyTN II issues..
Another prove of sh*ty graphics on touch pro: Touch Pro landscape redraw issue (videos included)
Furthermore I would like to make some recommendations to see the true performance of touch pro:
- Rats!! http://clickgamer.com/download.htm?pvid=15358
- Ubulis TSE http://www.ionfx.com/product_windows_mobile_obulisTSE.htm (note the req: "200Mhz CPU or higher"
- Spore
- Prince of Persia HD
- Assasin Creed HD
- etc.
Wonderfull, the graphics are so fluid... NOT.
How about GL benchmarks between the iPhone, Kaiser, Raphael, and Toshiba G810 Portege?
http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare....ser)&D3=HTC Touch Pro&D4=Toshiba G810 Portege
A lot of it is the quality of HTC's drivers since the Portege does better, but the rest is Qualcomm's fault because even the Protege is inferior compared to an iPhone, N95, etc etc.
However, I cannot find a better phone that has a decent 3D chip on it, has at&t 3G, touch screen, and isn't NDA locked.
If Qualcomm is such crap, then why oh why is HTC using it on all new devices?
Keep me wondering!
NuShrike, Touch Pro has a newer CPU that the one found on Toshiba G810 Portege, however, the benchmarks are still unsatisfying.
Here's some interesting information
Q: HTC, Qualcomm and the missing drivers—where do we send the angry mob with torches?
A: Qualcomm has a tiered pricing policy with their chipsets—so although you bought the chip, you have not bought all the features. So you have to pay additional fees per phone to get things like aGPS, graphic acceleration, etc.
In the past, HTC had no problems when using the older MSM-6500 chips (ARM9 processors) without drivers hence their reluctance to pay for any or additional support with the new MSM-7500 chips (ARM11 processors), especially since the newer processors were advertised to match or outperform the older generation.
Unfortunately, Qualcomm’s ARM11 performance does not match their previous ARM9 processor and is therefore, not quite as advertised. To get the proper performance out of the ARM11, one has to have knowledge of the processor’s implementation and design, but since that processor is not publicly available; the solution requires cooperation and assistance. HTC in this instance does not have this knowledge and is therefore unable to directly fix the problem, so they are put in a tough situation as they already have millions of these devices sold but they don’t want to pay Qualcomm more than they have to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Full article: http://wmexperts.com/articles/editorials/qualcomm_htc_chipsets_and_feat.html
And here we've got a comparison between touch pro and dell axim v51v (a VGA PocketPC from year 2005).
http://www.glbenchmark.com/compare....whide=true&D1=HTC Touch Pro&D2=Dell Axim X51v
(I've bold the VGA because there are some users that are trying to find excuses of poor performance because of VGA resolution)
branko.savic said:
If Qualcomm is such crap, then why oh why is HTC using it on all new devices?
Keep me wondering!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because Qualcomm owns wcdma! Anyone developing chipsets will have to pay them royalties which in the end increases cost of the chips and handsets.
branko.savic said:
If Qualcomm is such crap, then why oh why is HTC using it on all new devices?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They probably make their hardware really cheap compared to other solutions.
There aren't many others (or at all) that package 3G WCDMA, asymmetric dual-core ARM11/ARM9, GPS, (WiFi?), BT?, and 3D GPU all into one at a pretty good power envelope.
The problem sounds like it's $$$ to access any of Q's advanced features, and they're not even that good.
Funny part is the CPU design was licensed from ARM in 2002 and is only hitting mainstream last year with the Kaiser/N95. However, it seems Qualcomm never licensed FPU capable ARM11 design, versus TI (N95 cpu) and Samsung (iPhone cpu) whom did.
If the video issue was the only problem...
Sometime it really annoys me how poor can perform... When I was thinking to switch from my HTC Tornado (TI OMAP 850 CPU (180Mhz)) I was saying the performance difference must be enormous , but I find that those qualcomm CPUs are crap or the drivers sucks.. (but I tend to think it's the first variant). I really want that my device to perform well while listening to music, not to wait 1-2 sec for Start Menu to appear (atention, Start Menu, not Programs list, while scrolling in that list the things are so laggy, but that's a WM issue, so I pass. I've got a lot of apps installed)
I'm really dissapointed of crappy performance. My first and last qualcomm cpu-enabled device. If I know that before buying... but no one complains of this, all worship it (for eg, see gsmarena review).
An advice for interested people in buying Touch Pro: if you want a good device PASS touch pro.
It simply doesn't deserve it's price. It has a lot of super nice features (5 row qwerty, plenty of RAM, good amount of ROM, accelerometer, multiple sensors, good shape, superb VGA resolution, HSPDA, etc etc) but has soo many issues (low volume, crap speakerphone/earpiece, music gap, slider play, gps lag, poor directdraw performance, landscape redraw issue, poor overall system performance..)
I really expected way much more from a 2008 year device and especially from HTC!
BTW, I'm using a custom ROM (T.I.R V8), so no I'm not using the factory ROM
What I'm wondering is that just a few owners joined the topic.. so, I guess, that the performance of your touch pro doesn't bother you..
then, we shouldn't be surprised if HTC isn't interested. They think that we are happy with the performance of the device.
Edit: http://brew.qualcomm.com/bnry_brew/pdf/brew_2007/Tech-303_Ligon.pdf - see page 13. And that's MSM72000. We got MSM7201A chipset on Touch Pro (better). So in final may be HTC fault? I'm so confused
Yep, have to agree the performance is abysmal. I heard HTC didn't want to pay some company for a proper graphics driver.... but thats just hearsay.
And have you seen the HTC HD? From the youtube videos I've watched ot goes like s**t off a shovel, seems they managed to get that thing working properly, if they'd only do an update for other devices.
Guys.. we need to do something, I'm really dissapointed about touch pro performance.
Look here how smooth does run quake 3 on nokia n82 (CPU: TI OMAP 2420 @ 330 MHz*): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1i4fOCrCv0
"Quake 3 Arena Running on nokia n82 in perfect speed,with all graphics settings set to high and Anti-Aliasing ON!!!!"
If you want, I will record a video showing quake 3 in action on touch pro, low fps, choppy sound, etc.
* Embedded 220MHz TI TMS320C55x DSP (GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS baseband), 640KB shared SRAM, 2D/3D graphics acceleration, dual display support, analog/digital TV video output, TI TWL92230 companion chip
http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=cpu&id=a2420
Is that fair..?
I just don't know what to say. The time is passing and nothing's done in this direction..
@Gav_ haven't seen touch hd running other stuff than internet browsing (opera with the full quares when dragging, etc..), youtube, general menu browsing..
DSF said:
Guys.. we need to do something, I'm really dissapointed about touch pro performance.
Look here how smooth does run quake 3 on nokia n82 (CPU: TI OMAP 2420 @ 330 MHz*): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1i4fOCrCv0
"Quake 3 Arena Running on nokia n82 in perfect speed,with all graphics settings set to high and Anti-Aliasing ON!!!!"
If you want, I will record a video showing quake 3 in action on touch pro, low fps, choppy sound, etc.
* Embedded 220MHz TI TMS320C55x DSP (GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS baseband), 640KB shared SRAM, 2D/3D graphics acceleration, dual display support, analog/digital TV video output, TI TWL92230 companion chip
http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=cpu&id=a2420
Is that fair..?
I just don't know what to say. The time is passing and nothing's done in this direction..
@Gav_ haven't seen touch hd running other stuff than internet browsing (opera with the full quares when dragging, etc..), youtube, general menu browsing..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I totally TOTALLY agree. I mean how can we fix this? How much time is going to go by until the chipset can finally do what it should be able to do?
The only take I have on these devices, is that they are pretty much marketed as "business class" devices. Yeah, they will play video, but you know that if they market it as a "business" device, they probably won't do much. If they
marketed it as a gaming device, or video music player, it might be a different
story. They made a Swiss army knife, but it doesn't do any of them well.
I'm happy with my TP, but I don't listen to music or watch videos, other than once in a while a youtube. I have mine for receiving email, text messages & phone calls, which, if you could get an honest answer from HTC, is where they think the market is for these devices.
@djcaston only HTC & Qualcomm knows..
No idea how we can fix this, but we should do something (make this public, e-mail htc, publish on mobile news site, etc). The solution/answer SHOULD come from the companies mentioned above.
@p51d007 but the DIAMOND is marked as a "business class" device too? I don't think so.
Even as a business device is not working too good. Just try some powerpoint presentations, open a doc file and see how much time it takes to load.
So..
I've made more comparisons.
Quake III Arema
Nokia N82 - Symbian S60 QVGA
TI OMAP 2420 @ 330 MHz, chipset launched in 2005
Graphic: PowerVR MBX
In action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1i4fOCrCv0
Dell Axim x51v - WM VGA
Intel XScale PXA270 @ 624 MHz, chipset launched in 2004
Graphic: Intel 2700G5 Multimedia Accelerator
In action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEuEGqYZNek
Touch Pro/Diamond
Qualcomm MSM7201A @ 528 MHz, chipset launched in 2008
Graphic: Not sure.. maybe embeded ATI Imageon?
In action: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x8_wfWaYa_w
(the device in video is a touch pro)
SEGA Sonic 3 (Picodrive emulator)
Same emulator on both devices.
The hardware acceleration does not count as the last test includes Picodrive emulator that doesn't use HW acceleration at all. However, you can see that on SPV C600 the gameplay is smooth, something that we cannot say about the one on touch pro.
HTC Tornado (SPV C600)
TI OMAP 850 @ 200 MHz, overclocked at 252Mhz, chipset launched in 2005
Graphic: no Hardware Acceleration
In action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFmUxwGBmMc
Touch Pro/Diamond
Qualcomm MSM7201A @ 528 MHz, chipset launched in 2008
Graphic: Not sure.. maybe embeded ATI Imageon?
In action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrLD8OGFk8w
(the device in video is a touch pro)
As you see, touch pro is below EVERYTHING. A tehnology from year 2008 is so way behind a tehnology from 3-4 years ago. It's looks so anormally to me..
@p51d007 I'm asking you now, Dell Axim x51v was marketed as a "business" or a multimedia device?
Point taken....the only response I could say would be HTC & graphics DON'T go together LOL...
DSF said:
@p51d007 I'm asking you now, Dell Axim x51v was marketed as a "business" or a multimedia device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I saw some xperia drivers posted once that people were saying made the touch pro run better. Anyone ever look into this?
i'm from Diamond forum, but totally get what you're all saying here
I had a great game on my Elf called Chain Reaction. It was brilliant for killing a short amount of time while waiting for something/someone.... One of my problems with the Elf was that it wasn't powerful enough to multi-task at anything, like listen to music whilst playing a couple of rounds of Chain Reaction. I can't tell you how p****d I was when I fired up my Touch Pro for the first time and it realised it couldn't even play that game with anything like a smooth frame rate, let alone do it whilst listening to music. Never before have I spent so much money on a product that promised so much but delivered such a weird mix of 'that's really cool' and 'that's so poor/unreliable'. I've been emailing HTC for a month now asking them for a replacement unit or a refund (over the GPS issue), and I still haven't had a single reply. LOL....
Ouzo said:
I had a great game on my Elf called Chain Reaction. It was brilliant for killing a short amount of time while waiting for something/someone.... One of my problems with the Elf was that it wasn't powerful enough to multi-task at anything, like listen to music whilst playing a couple of rounds of Chain Reaction. I can't tell you how p****d I was when I fired up my Touch Pro for the first time and it realised it couldn't even play that game with anything like a smooth frame rate, let alone do it whilst listening to music. Never before have I spent so much money on a product that promised so much but delivered such a weird mix of 'that's really cool' and 'that's so poor/unreliable'. I've been emailing HTC for a month now asking them for a replacement unit or a refund (over the GPS issue), and I still haven't had a single reply. LOL....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just sent them an email myself. Hopefully enough people email them
so that we may get a proper update! Its ridiculous when I can barely run Quake 3 on this thing while my Viewsonic PPC runs it just fine!
And its not just about playing games either. The whole phone feels laggy..
Sorry to complain so much, but I paid good money for this thing..
And I like the design so much, I dont wanna return it just yet....
Coming from a Kaiser, and putting Elite RC1 on my Raphael, I was reasonably satisfied - until I got a G1.
Side by side is like pentium vs 486. My point being, they are running similar hardware, so I'm not sure the Qualcomm chipset is so crap after all.
I haven't seen any 3d accelerated stuff yet, but I know these devices are capable of great 3d gaming.
Indeed, as an Axim X50v owner I am dismayed at how immensely better it is in the graphics department, for a device so much older. HTC, Qualcomm or perhaps even a carrier needs to get off their hands and take care of the customers. Publicity may be one of the few tools we have, but I guess we might as well use it. Posting your displeasure here is as good an action as any, but take the time to comment or reply in any venue that you see these issues being discussed.
C'mon manufacturers/suppliers ... get those damn drivers out!
i do agree.
i began to get frustrated with my TP that i started thinking of selling it, there are alot of things that arent going well at all in its preformance, and since the thread is about preformance in general i have a bad experience with my TP laginess. and GPS for example my wife bought a diamond a couple of days ago, and some how her Diamond gets a fix in less than 30 seconds, my TP takes considerably longer. the device is really really laggy, i sometimes wonder it recieved my click or not when i touch the screen. and its video preformance is extreemly poor. i mean i have an XDA flame and a toshiba g900, i thought the G900 is a crappy phone but it has GoForce 5500 chipset with some driver update its video is becomming amazingly fast and smooth.
what makes me angry lets say is that im a WM fanatic and the company where i work distributed iphones on all of us to use in our business tasks, it was a surprise to be honest that the Iphone took over this market really wiered, but after testing it for a while its much faster than the TP and it scores much higher in all tests with a massive diffrence, the only WM phone that came near the Iphone is the Samsung omnia, i think i already know why. both are samsung CPUs i tested the samsung omina of my friend and i think the Omnia is the WM version of the Iphone.
THough HTC is the bigger sister in the smart phone world but she is letting her clients badly down with crappy drivers and sometimes crappy PDs.
best regards
Kevin

Fastest & Most Responsive VGA PPC Phone?

Hi everyone,
I was just wondering what are the fastest & most responsive VGA-screen PPC Phones out there (or coming by end 2009)? I quantify performance in terms of 2D graphics, and I've been using SPB Benchmark Graphics benchmark. Of course, one can always argue there's more than 2D graphics in terms of speed, but slow phones really pissed me off. I used to had a HTC Universal and that was a steaming pile of junk. Switched to HTC Hermes 2-3yrs back... and it's been barely tolerable.
Right now, I've only found 2 "fast" VGA PPC Phones - ASUS P565 and Samsung Omnia II. However ASUS P565 is a questionable VGA phone since it's screen is a puny 2.8" size (might as well get a ASUS P552W). Both have a graphics benchmark of around ~2500, which is quite sad since that's equivalent to the Eten M600 speed (ok it runs as a QVGA). Compare this to Samsung Omnia I (~5000) or the ASUS P552W (~11,000) both of which uses the slower Marvel 624MHz CPU, Monahans and Tavor generation respectively.
I read that Toshiba TG01 Snapdragon is coming soon, but are there any concrete benchmarks done on it?
So, does anyone know if there is any fast & responsive VGA PPC Phones out there? Or do we have to wait for Snapdragon, Tegra or Marvell's 1GHz CPU? Can we expect such CPUs to make VGA screened phones fast enough? Or should I just get the ASUS P552W which means giving up my QWERTY keyboard , and wait for another 2-3years?
Hi
I can think on Tosh tg01 that is already on sale as the fastest to this date (I believe)
On december some snapdragon tosh models will be launched! perhaps HTC also...
Other ones not so fast but also good options are:
Touch pro 2
Hero
Acer M900?
YOu cannot treat a processors MHz as the be-all-end-all. Its an indicator and nothing more. You cannot compare processor speeds across diferent manufacturers either.
And no matter how fast the processor, if the drivers/design around it is sh*t, the phone will suffer greatly. A good example of this, Acer Shell to access contacts can be a little slow, SPB Shell however, is instant.
You can only compare by running the same app performing the same task on each phone. Benchmarks try to do this but can become far too specific at times. Again, they are a (good) indicator but not the be-all-end-all.
On a side note, I have an m900 and if you turn off Acer Shell (coz it sucks!) it is VERY fast.
When you want speed, why do you need speed exactly? Are you talking about accessing contacts etc? Are you talking about screen orientation or maybe playing games?
Your best bet is try and get hold of devices, install the required game/software and THEN see how responsive it is.
Monty Burns said:
YOu cannot treat a processors MHz as the be-all-end-all. Its an indicator and nothing more. You cannot compare processor speeds across diferent manufacturers either.
And no matter how fast the processor, if the drivers/design around it is sh*t, the phone will suffer greatly. A good example of this, Acer Shell to access contacts can be a little slow, SPB Shell however, is instant.
You can only compare by running the same app performing the same task on each phone. Benchmarks try to do this but can become far too specific at times. Again, they are a (good) indicator but not the be-all-end-all.
On a side note, I have an m900 and if you turn off Acer Shell (coz it sucks!) it is VERY fast.
When you want speed, why do you need speed exactly? Are you talking about accessing contacts etc? Are you talking about screen orientation or maybe playing games?
Your best bet is try and get hold of devices, install the required game/software and THEN see how responsive it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Easier said than done, I would love to have a try out by to replicate real-life performance one has to install all the apps one normally use, so it's not practical unless you have a dozen friends with different PPC Phones. While benchmarks aren't perfect, I don't see anything better to replace it. Sure, there is software optimizations and driver stuff, but if it sucks... no matter how much you cook your ROM and optimize, it sucks.
Take for example HTC Universal. That is one slow piece of junk. No matter how much optimization you do, you're not going to beat say the current HTC Hermes that I am using in terms of responsiveness. Another example is the last 1-2 yrs of HTC <Insert Model> running Qualcomm CPUs. So many users have reported the unbearably slow speed, and it doesn't help that many of them come with VGA resolution screens. Almost all evidence point to date that VGA phones are slow and crappy... and I was wondering if technology has advanced the point whereby this can be rectified.
Speed? It's the most importing thing when dealing with PPC Phones. For many years now, I the name Pocket PC is a real misnomer, as previous generation and maybe even current generation of phones acts in no way like a real personal computer.
What is acceptable? Fast 2D graphics. Instant response when I click on something, as I was using a laptop. No lag. No lag when rotating the screen. Faster loading of webpages instead of waiting for ages... and then it crashes. And btw I use Phone Weaver, Pocket Plus and SPB Diary on my Today screen, which makes it more taxing on the 2D system. Sure the HTC Universal with a fresh install can rotate screen in 1-2 seconds when optimized, but load in all my Today plugins it takes like 10-20 seconds!
Next comes fast 3D graphics and the ability to play movies. Right now my HTC Hermes can't play normal sized video files, i.e. 640x480, XVID/DIVX. Of course you can always recode with a lower res, but what's the point? It's all extra work.
Ronnie,
Have you thought about doing the 128MB memory upgrade, and overclocking the CPU on the Universal? May help things a bit.
Some other devices that may be faster:
Xperia X1
Acer F1
02 XDA Flame
Asus P835
Here is a site that test floating point and OGL performance in smartphones. Donot know how legit it is however.
http://www.glbenchmark.com/latest_results.jsp?benchmark=glpro
Most certainly don't look to HTC.
e.g. Kaiser - even if the CPU/GPU supports faster performance, they don't deem that necessary and don't include the required drivers.
The video 'hack' to speed up 2-D performance for the Kaiser proves that there are even more inefficiencies/missing drivers for that HTC phone.
I would suggest that the new Acer Tempo range and new Samsung Omnia's are a good way to investigate. Both these brands are selling the fact that there chips have built in 3d graphics and I believe the Samsungs even come with a free 3d game - could be wrong though. Either way, you wouldnt sell the fact you have a 3d games capability if you haven't programmed proper 3d drivers - something HTC have never really done afaik.
Again, the Acers are only showing a 528mhz (something like that anyway) but don't be fooled by a mhz rating. For example, just because a snapdragon is showing a 1ghz processor doesn't means its faster than a 528mhz Samsung... if you use google you will find plenty of winmob experienced people that feel its not as fast as it should be.
edit: Im sure the Samsung Omnia II's come with a Need For Speed Variant?

[Question] Hardware acceleration...Where is it?

Hi! Reading around the web I've found out that Android still lacks of hardware acceleration in the windows' contents (enabled for compositing) and so does, of course, the browser (in the specific)! This is why we have not an as smooth as iPhone scrolling/zooming! Here an interesting article:
http://connect-utb.com/index.php?op...z-cpu-is-enough&catid=36:technology&Itemid=67
And here is a question made to a developer by an AndroidCommunity user:
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f41/the-hardware-acceleration-question-8963/index2.html
So my question is: Will be possible to have hw acceleration (also on cooked roms, doesn't matter) in the near future? I still can't understand why, for example, my Hero cannot handle games like NOVA altough has a dedicated GPU and its CPU is quite superior to the iPhone 3G's one! While on this one the game runs smoothly! My supposition was that these games are not even developed thinking about Android...They only are miserable portings from iPhone! Please tell me that one day (maybe with 3.0) will be possible to have Flash 10.1, great 3D (or at least comparable to 3G) and COMPLETE acceleration in Android on my Hero and other MSM 7XXX devices (dream, magic ecc.) I'm really thinking of selling my Hero to buy something like a Milestone (Droid in US) or a Liquid (not sure about this one)...Thanks in advance
Surely they did this in an attempt to save battery life?
Maybe that's where OpenCL comes in?
Well I don't know how much hardware acceleration can damage battery life...I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen on other devices with iOS or WinMo where hw acc. is enabled And battery lasts normally!
About OpenCL I'm not sure it has something to do with graphics enhancements! Maybe it's used to accelerate computational stuff like physics...Or, at least, this is what I can read from here (it uses GPU to enhance NON graphical computing):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL
What I'm talking about is to enable acceleration in UI and browser (as well as has been done with 3D graphics and videos with SnapDragon and Cortex A8) like iPhone did! And I think this wouldn't decrease so much battery life! I prefer to have a functional and smooth browser more than save 1-2 hours of battery life! IMHO! Thanks to have answered my question
Just a little up! Thanks!
There is no hope for the msm72xx. Qualcomm or Htc or both of them are complete douches to us power users that want the max out of our devices. They do not provide efficient graphics drivers hence the horrible graphics performance. This is highly unlikely to change in the future and it seems to me that in order to compensate for sluggish graphic performance, they are upping the processor speed as seen by the recent slew of snapdragon 1ghz which also underperforms due to lack of proper drivers.
Gosh... This means that not even Google took care of developing proper drivers fot ITS OWN DEVICE! This is pretty bad...And means that Android could be a "poor" OS because of the laziness of some developer...I'm wondering if is convenient to buy an Acer Liquid (very low price here! And I can't afford a N1 or a Desire) or an iPhone 3G at all! Games like NOVA run GREAT on both of them...And I'd really want a smooth browser...But I'm pretty sure on one thing: My Hero needs to be replaced It made me too much disappointment...
Thanks for your answer
Yes your hero is an outdated mid range device that needs to be replaced...i would suggest a samsung galaxy S or any of its variants.
Thanks but...Who's going to give me the money to do that? XD I can't afford a Galaxy S (549€ here!) while an Acer Liquid (with the same performance of a N1 and I know what I'm saying ) is WAY more affordable (299€! Almost half of the Galaxy S price!).

Is your smartphone faster than your PC?

Just to get it out there, I'm not a complete idiot, obviously this is debatable due to architectural differences and what have you but I think we're at the stage where modern phones can hold their own against the average PC.
For example my laptop (AMD-E450 1.65GHz dual/Radeon 6850/4GB RAM) plays 1080p video with a lot to be desired. YouTube 1080p plays at low fps, and local 1080p is just straight up lag.
A lot of our devices today can breeze through such tasks without breaking a sweat and we take it for granted!
What do you think? Is your smartphone 'faster' than your PC?
I was thinking the exact same thing the other day, while I agree with the different architectures between phone and PC, my phones blow it to hell as far as YouTube is concerned. Same as you really, sluggish lag on PC when handling 1080p but on my smaller devices it's a breeze. And my pc is not low end nor high end by any means.
Sometimes my Smartphone is faster even than my PC, who has a AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE processor, 4GB of RAM. But of course I can't complain too much because I am on my PC one of heavy users, and on my smartphone - not. And on the future perhaps I will upgrade my PC (especially RAM) :silly:
When comparing raw performance, x86 will almost always beat out ARM (the type of processor in your phone). When comparing performance per watt, ARM beats x86 -- that's why your phone usually outlasts your laptop.
However, there are a few other different reasons for the gap in performance.
1 - Hardware decoders. Most smartphones, in order to save CPU power and wattage, include video decoders in the hardware. That way, whenever you want to watch a YouTube video, the dedicated chip takes care of the processing and CPU usage remains minimal. On the PC side, hardware video decoders usually only appear in some types of video cards. Chances are, if you have a cheap, $349 notebook, you've got minimal processing power to start with, and the CPU gets stuck with everything.
2 - Software. If you took the same computer you have today and put a Linux distribution on it, you'd probably get better raw performance than Windows with the usual Windows overhead + PC maker crapware + spyware infections + whatever other applications are in the background combination I usually see. I say "probably better" because there are always PCs with hardware that isn't fully supported yet, which causes performance issues particularly when it comes to video hardware.
i have been thinking of this for some time now. but compared to my computer, my computer is way faster with an intel i7 2700k and a radeon hd 7870 but compared to some laptops and low end desktops our phones can handle just about the same thing that they can handle. our phones can play some nice graphic games like real racing 3. im sure that game would make some low end computers lag at playing that game
not fast but i can play amazing spiderman and the dark knight in my phone
but cant play it in my pc :/
I have no idea, as Android still can't run Windows games. (What I wouldnt give to be able to run Skyrim on my tab... Splashtop is useless without wifi.) But the blame for that lies with game developers, not Google or Android itself.
I need to replace the gpu in my laptop as it's starting to become a bottleneck, (gt 130m), but other than, my laptop is probably faster.
Also, screen resolution on my phone is WAY lower than my computer, so it's a seriously unfair comparison, lower resolution always means higher framerate, as it has to render less.
On an 1280x800 screen, it only has to render 74% of a Full HD video, as opposed to the full 100% (and more) on a 1920x1400 screen.
Send From My Samsung Galaxy S3 Using Tapatalk 2
yeah , my pc is just like a slow runner(need to find new one !!!!) , my new xperia is just like ALIENWARE !! Thanks SONY Corporation
I think PC is faster. My alienware beats the s**t out of my note 2 anyday.
My PC is faster.
I can certainly see that this is not the case for everyone. My friend's laptop can't run a DS emulator very well, my phone can at about 2/3 speed, and my PC can at full speed.
My PC can run both an HD Game of Thrones rip (we own it on Blu Ray) and run the Dolphin Game Cube emulator playing Twilight Princess at full speed - at the same time.
And it's not even that great a PC - it's just a mid-range gaming set-up that I built because I wanted to play GW2 and Skyrim (not the most demanding games) at maximum shininess.
Did some googling and it appears today's phone CPUs would be equal to about a Pentium D computationally.
You need a few more generations to really close the gap. Any perceptions of them being faster is based on the overall architecture of the phones.
Sent from my SCH-I605 using xda premium
PC faster, my galaxy mini is slow, galaxy w is normal
Sent from my GT-I8150 using xda app-developers app
Additions from a stranger
crayz9000 said:
When comparing raw performance, x86 will almost always beat out ARM (the type of processor in your phone). When comparing performance per watt, ARM beats x86 -- that's why your phone usually outlasts your laptop.
However, there are a few other different reasons for the gap in performance.
1 - Hardware decoders. Most smartphones, in order to save CPU power and wattage, include video decoders in the hardware. That way, whenever you want to watch a YouTube video, the dedicated chip takes care of the processing and CPU usage remains minimal. On the PC side, hardware video decoders usually only appear in some types of video cards. Chances are, if you have a cheap, $349 notebook, you've got minimal processing power to start with, and the CPU gets stuck with everything.
2 - Software. If you took the same computer you have today and put a Linux distribution on it, you'd probably get better raw performance than Windows with the usual Windows overhead + PC maker crapware + spyware infections + whatever other applications are in the background combination I usually see. I say "probably better" because there are always PCs with hardware that isn't fully supported yet, which causes performance issues particularly when it comes to video hardware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
to add to what this poster has already stated:
3 - Possessor Channels. They are kinda like interstate highways for programming languages that pass information that is recognized as a supported without a whole lot of extra emulation or superfluous handling. Apparently ARM has many more channels than IBM or AMD; google it and be surprised.
4 - Openstack. Why compare differences and get all caught up with what can and can't be done on an individual hardware set-up(s), instead lets join them all together into one virtual machine and never worry about speed or ram again.. this is what I'm working on and there is promise that one day we will all be able to run any program or operating system with any collection of old hardware.
my HOX now with viperx 3.6 is iqual in speed to my laptop.(lenovo p4)
My pc still faster
Sent from jamban umum.
Yeah I agree my HTC is faster than my old P4 Windows XP.
Well, yes. Nexus One 1GHZ 512MB RAM vs Athon 850Mhz 364MB RAM
My htc desire plays 720p 10x faster than my P4 desktop. It's a real shame, my mother paid 3 grand for that HP back in 2004. Look at the progression of technology...
It's a shame that my phone faster than my PC ,, but thanks to my PC i can finish my assignments faster.. can i use phone to do it ?LoL :what:
Sent from my E15i using xda premium
pc: 4gb ram dragon, ati radeon hd 4870, amd phenom quadcore, disk Samsung 1tb with linux mint 14 nadia xfce enviroment. vs galaxy s3 i9300
Enviado desde mi GT-I9300 usando Tapatalk 2

One Mini vs Nexus 4

Hi,
I know that such comparison may seem a little odd but after 3 solid years using iPod Touch as smartphone replacement I'm finally buying something new and I end up narrowing my choice to those two.
I would like to get some opinion/advice from actual users of One Mini as my sister has Nexus 4 and I played with it a little bit.
Basically it seems like Nexus 4 is just better but I'm still hestitating.
Pro Nexus 4:
- it's cheaper (I can get Nexus 4 unlocked in Poland for ~380 USD and One Mini for 470USD)
- way more powerful
- twice as much ram - I guess it's possibly a deal breaker - Is 1GB real problem in everyday use (e.g. multitasking Maps, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter and Instapaper)?
- stock android and updates! (I guess last update for HTC One Mini will be Android 4.4)
Pro One Mini:
- it's smaller! 4,7 is nice but I still find it a little bit too much for me.
- it's just beautiful
- aluminium better than glass
- Probably better battery life because Nexus 4 is apparently awful. Am I right?
- Probably better audio. I'm particularly interested in headphones jack audio quality as my iPod Touch was really good.
- LTE (though I guess I won't be using that much)
+ Is there something there I've omitted what would justify buying less powerful, ram lacking smartphone for almost $100 more?
I wouldn't underestimate the importance of battery life in a smartphone, especially if I understand you correctly that you haven't actually been using a smartphone for 3 years? An Ipod Touch has no cellular network connection so a smartphone's battery life isn't going to be comparable.
While pretty much all smartphones have decent battery life these days to get you through a day of light to medium usage, the Nexus 4 is definitely on the low side.
1GB RAM is fine for a smartphone. For comparison a 3 year old Ipod Touch has 256MB. The iphone 5s, faster than pretty much any other smartphone, has 1GB.
That said, your point about the Nexus getting Android updates for longer is a valid one.
MercuryStar said:
I wouldn't underestimate the importance of battery life in a smartphone, especially if I understand you correctly that you haven't actually been using a smartphone for 3 years? *An Ipod Touch has no cellular network connection so a smartphone's battery life isn't going to be comparable.
While pretty much all smartphones have decent battery life these days to get you through a day of light to medium usage, the Nexus 4 is definitely on the low side.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm actually kind od hardcore iPod Touch user. I use iBluever (cydia tweak) to connect to the Internet via cellphone and after three years battery life is awful when you take into account that bluetooth is supposed to be energy efficient. It's 11.55 AM up here, battery was full at 8.45AM, I used Spotify offline for half an hour and browsed for another half an hour. Battery is now 55%. When it comes to battery life I just want to have device which will survive my workday (12-14 hrs outside home).
MercuryStar said:
1GB RAM is fine for a smartphone. *For comparison a 3 year old Ipod Touch has 256MB. *The iphone 5s, faster than pretty much any other smartphone, has 1GB.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know, but isn't that true that Android needs more memory than iOS to be really fast in everyday use?*
Thank you for your answer!
I know, but isn't that true that Android needs more memory than iOS to be really fast in everyday use?*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
People say a lot of things about memory use and Android that aren't true or are half-truths. What I do know is that the One Mini is not laggy or slow by any means.
I get annoyed by people who write reviews that tend to judge a phone's responsiveness by the most shallow means: simply by swiping between home screens or bringing up the app tray. Then they compare this on a Galaxy S4 with an older Samsung phone with 1GB and conclude that the Galaxy S4 is faster because of its 2GB RAM. So many things wrong with this! Firstly, no matter how much you swipe between home screens and bring up the app drawer you're still within the same app - you're not testing the OS, you're only testing the home screen app! And three's no way that home screen app uses over 1GB RAM - probably more like 50-100MB at most. To really have a test that taxes memory you'd need to switch between several *different*, memory-hungry apps (like a browser with many tabs open, a heavy game, etc) rapidly. Secondly, the comparison is always between newer, faster processors with 2GB RAM and older, slower processors with 1GB RAM. The obvious answer to why the newer one is faster is that the processor is significantly faster, not the RAM since the home screen app won't be taxing that much RAM anyway. And thirdly, very few reviewers look at mid-range phones like the HTC One Mini - but even with 1GB RAM it is arguably more responsive swiping between the home screens and bringing up the app tray even than the full-size Galaxy S4 with 2GB RAM. How can you observe this and still conclude that the RAM is the defining factor in performance? If reviewers looked at lower-spec "modern" (ie, not with a 2-year-old processor) Android phones with 1GB RAM they'd see similarly that 1GB RAM is fine and that the reason that flagships were slower back when they had 1GB RAM is not because of their lower RAM but because they were slower, older phones.
MercuryStar said:
People say a lot of things about memory use and Android that aren't true or are half-truths. What I do know is that the One Mini is not laggy or slow by any means.
I get annoyed by people who write reviews that tend to judge a phone's responsiveness by the most shallow means: simply by swiping between home screens or bringing up the app tray. Then they compare this on a Galaxy S4 with an older Samsung phone with 1GB and conclude that the Galaxy S4 is faster because of its 2GB RAM. So many things wrong with this! Firstly, no matter how much you swipe between home screens and bring up the app drawer you're still within the same app - you're not testing the OS, you're only testing the home screen app! And three's no way that home screen app uses over 1GB RAM - probably more like 50-100MB at most. To really have a test that taxes memory you'd need to switch between several *different*, memory-hungry apps (like a browser with many tabs open, a heavy game, etc) rapidly. Secondly, the comparison is always between newer, faster processors with 2GB RAM and older, slower processors with 1GB RAM. The obvious answer to why the newer one is faster is that the processor is significantly faster, not the RAM since the home screen app won't be taxing that much RAM anyway. And thirdly, very few reviewers look at mid-range phones like the HTC One Mini - but even with 1GB RAM it is arguably more responsive swiping between the home screens and bringing up the app tray even than the full-size Galaxy S4 with 2GB RAM. How can you observe this and still conclude that the RAM is the defining factor in performance? If reviewers looked at lower-spec "modern" (ie, not with a 2-year-old processor) Android phones with 1GB RAM they'd see similarly that 1GB RAM is fine and that the reason that flagships were slower back when they had 1GB RAM is not because of their lower RAM but because they were slower, older phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's defiantly a very snappy phone, but when I have several heavy apps open the apps it starts to lag at times, but closing an app solves the problem so it isn't a big deal. I think it's the memory that's responsible for it. Quad core phones are usually running with two cores disabled to save power, but they can multitask better because almost all of them have 2GB of memory to work with. I always run my phone under-clocked to 1.134 GHz to save battery and everything is always butter smooth until I have lots of heavy apps open. The UI is always snappy, if an app is lagging and I open the notification menu it opens smooth as butter and if I press the home button it goes to the home screen instantaneously so I don't think it's the processor that slows the phone down.
Ecstacy42 said:
It's defiantly a very snappy phone, but when I have several heavy apps open the apps it starts to lag at times, but closing an app solves the problem so it isn't a big deal. I think it's the memory that's responsible for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android's memory management is such that the memory used by any app not currently in the foreground is expendable and can be purged when the memory is needed for something else. This applies to pretty much every app except those that have specifically requested to run in the background - for example, part of a music player app.
If you run, say, 9 memory-hungry apps one after the other, then probably by the time you run the 4th or 5th the operating system is probably going to start purging the memory that was held by the first ones you had open, to reclaim memory so it doesn't run out of free memory or cache. When it does this, the apps that are purged are given the opportunity to save their state to disk so if they are switched back to, you get the illusion that they never closed. Not all apps do this particularly well.
Note that the list of recent apps in the app-switching menu that you get to by pressing the app switching button/double tab on home on Android phones does not necessarily mean that these apps are still all resident in memory. Some may have already had their memory purged by the OS, saving their state to disk. Swiping these away does purge them manually if they haven't been purged already.
Individual apps may be quick or slow to save their state to disk or may misbehave in this area. This is something that can happen whether you have 1GB or 8GB RAM but is of course going to happen more often if you have 1GB. App misbehaviour when switching to/from an app or when the app is requested to close or suspend is probably going to be the biggest cause of lag when task switching for most people. The home screen app on the Sense 5 devices definitely is very snappy and doesn't seem to cause any noticeable slowdowns. I don't know if HTC has pegged the home screen app to be always-resident though I suspect not; it's probably just quite well-behaved.
I always run my phone under-clocked to 1.134 GHz to save battery and everything is always butter smooth
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a testament to the awesome processing power of these Snapdragon Krait CPUs. Another thing to note is that the power management baked into them probably means they would rarely go over 1GHz anyway during normal use, so if you limit their max CPU speed to 1.1GHz like you did, it will only make a difference during high CPU load situations, not normal use or even I/O heavy use (such as network or disk communication).

Categories

Resources