[Q] What makes Android so slow? - Android Software/Hacking General [Developers Only]

Im on Android since more a year now, starting with T-Mobile Pulse and since summer, going on with my HTC Desire.
My question is, why android needs this power of hardware, in order to run smooth. The old iPhone 2G got nearly same hardware to the pulse (550 MHz, 256 MB RAM etc), but was much faster(smoother). Ive read a lot about hardware optimised code fpr ARM7 or similar, but the performance is still poor, even with overclock on leedroid 2.2...
On my second computer with a intel pentium III Chopperine 933 MHz i could realy good surf the internet, even nowadays, or play games like battlefield 1942 or counterstrike.
Could it be possible, to improve the perfomance by hand otimising the code? Would even spend time on this, able to prog, but at first i want to her your oppinions.
Greets from Germany and sorry for my poor english

The fluid ui that the iPhone has is mostly because they use gpu accelerated support. Android for some reason does not and I think only minor ui features are done on the gpu, some phones might have custom work done and its why it feels more fluid or less slow.
The other thing is a iPhone is standard in hardware. You don't have the issue of a iPhone 4 with or without more memory or less. It's easier to code and optimize when you have only a set of rules.

What are you doing to your phones??
I have a Nexus One (same hardware as the Desire) and i'd willingly challenge any iphone 4 user to a speed contest

GPU accelerated GUIs make sense to me, but die missing feature in Android doesnt really make sense. As we know, there is an AMD Z340 GPU inside, could it be possible to make it boost the graphics in 2D mode?
What iam doing with my desire? whoa, even surfing this page without the xda app isnt really fun, just slowy moving flash sucks performacne in huge numbers, that websites arent rally usable at all when running a video.
Now on Desire, most thinks are running fluently, but there are still lags, even with the custom rom. Using the Pulse was horrible, while it got 550MHz CPU and 192 MB ram. remember, its a mobile!
Here is a german report about software tweaking, which could make software 5 times, if the developers would reconcentrade on the used hardware again, like they have to do on gaming systems like GBA or newer. GBA got abot 3MHz! but runs Pokemon very well. Now imagine what could be possible, if our operating system would be better written.
Question again: it is possible to do some tweaks on a kernel or eveb androiditself without being msater coder?

Related

Asphalt 5 performance

I just installed this game and I am really disappointed in the performance on my Nexus. I'm running the latest CM rom with 33.1 kernel and even when overclocked to 1133 the game gets unplayable in most spots...
Anyone has any thoughts on that ? I search around and Droid users seem to get better framerates. Is the Nexus GPU so bad after all ???
Performance
I see what you are saying, but I don't find it excruciatingly laggy at all. Its pretty decent, but I do see the performance limits of the Nexus gpu. I also see the need for performance upgrades to the game itself. Other games go much smoother then this one (both are smooth though, just others are much smoother). Raging Thunder 1 and 2 are pretty beast on the nexus.
I don't find it a big problem at all. If anything, devs need to adapt for the nexus market
This is like the best to come to nexus I have a lot of the cars unlocked and get to play my music while I play. =) I dont see much lag on enoms with his oc/uv works great next update should be a bit faster.
Before I used Ivan's JIT this game was pretty choppy with long loading times, even with pershoot's ocuv. Now with Ivan's JIT and ocuv kernel, this game is super smooth with very fast loading times. If it can be optimized to run smoothly without JIT it would be even better.
I am also using CM's latest ROM and am getting pretty bad lag at times, I am thinking about going to Modaco's once the new version comes out. Is performance for this game really that different between ROM's?
Kutthoat5150 said:
I am also using CM's latest ROM and am getting pretty bad lag at times, I am thinking about going to Modaco's once the new version comes out. Is performance for this game really that different between ROM's?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think it's a ROM issue as much as it is a developer issue.
Using enom's rom and it plays brilliantly on my N1
Gameloft has admitted it needs to be tweaked for the N1. It's not optimized but still looks great. My wife has an iPhone and it looks fantastic on it.
I wish developers would make graphically pretty games for Android that aren't racing games. Seriously, how many do we really need?
denimjunkie82 said:
Before I used Ivan's JIT this game was pretty choppy with long loading times, even with pershoot's ocuv. Now with Ivan's JIT and ocuv kernel, this game is super smooth with very fast loading times. If it can be optimized to run smoothly without JIT it would be even better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I didn't buy the game to confirm that, but if it really runs faster with JIT it means it's written in java and it's going to run like crap anyway... In that case they don't need to optimise it, they need to rewrite it as a native app.
It is smooth but not extremely, yeah it stil need to tweak, as I notice it actually play extremely smooth in Motorola Droid (Milestone).
It still playable with decent speed just slightly lagging when your car bang, fly over, then you notice the lagging issue.
BlueScreenJunky said:
Well I didn't buy the game to confirm that, but if it really runs faster with JIT it means it's written in java and it's going to run like crap anyway... In that case they don't need to optimise it, they need to rewrite it as a native app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All "native apps" are run from within a java shell. Basically, each frame the java code has to call into the native code. The alternative would be essentially writing OpenGL from the ground up in the native code, although even then it'd still need to be called from an active java app and all controls, sound, etc, would need to be handled in java. There's simply no other way to write native apps in Android.
Yes, sorry, that's what I meant by "native app" (that's how kwaak3 works for example). I can be wrong but I think if only input and audio are handled by java, the use of a different virtual machine using JIT can't make such a difference...
BlueScreenJunky said:
Well I didn't buy the game to confirm that, but if it really runs faster with JIT it means it's written in java and it's going to run like crap anyway... In that case they don't need to optimise it, they need to rewrite it as a native app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I played the game while running JIT and it made zero difference. It was still laggy at times. No ROM will make a difference as it's not the software here that is the limiting factor but the GPU. The snapdragon has a great CPU but unfortunately a pretty poor GPU compared with other phones say the Droid. The Droid was much smoother and even smoother was the iPhone.
Gameloft needs to optimize this game keeping in mind the hardware specs for each device. Just my two cents.
Using Enomther rom, no lag whatsoever, plus you can overclock over 1 ghz...
Imperial.mack said:
Using Enomther rom, no lag whatsoever, plus you can overclock over 1 ghz...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting, with Enom's I always get lag. Good to hear that it works well for you.
Many people will probably have different views on what lag is, i get a lag when playing it and so will everyone else, some people may not notice it as much as others and in some cases it may occur less due to there actual set up but the ROM should not make a difference as it was not developed with the nexus one in mind, hence why it doesn't utilize the N1 as well as it utilizes the Moto
lolittle said:
Many people will probably have different views on what lag is, i get a lag when playing it and so will everyone else, some people may not notice it as much as others and in some cases it may occur less due to there actual set up but the ROM should not make a difference as it was not developed with the nexus one in mind, hence why it doesn't utilize the N1 as well as it utilizes the Moto
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually this game was developed for the iPhone it lags pretty bad on the Moto Droid as well.
I guess there is no game till now that has used N1's potential fully. Whats stopping game development on Android ??
faraz1992 said:
I guess there is no game till now that has used N1's potential fully. Whats stopping game development on Android ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The market. Not the "Android Market", but the market for heavily investing in optimizing a game. Every Android handset is different - different plug-ins, different hardware, different software, etc. If you want to design a great game that performs brilliantly for 2 dollars, you need to sell a LOT of copies of it. Hundreds of thousands or more. Well, only the Droid has even sold that many handsets, and you'll never get 20%-50% penetration into a market with just one application.
Sure, Asphalt will run on nearly anything, BUT, it isn't going to run as well as it does on the iPhone despite the inferior hardware on that device, simply because optimizing it for one platform in Android (except MAYBE the Droid) isn't economically efficient.
The iPhone's biggest advantage (though that is looking to be short-lived now...) is the absolute lack of platform fragmentation. Every single iPhone or iPod Touch can run 99.5% of the available applications, and run them well. Almost all of them are running exactly the same software (obviously, there are some kernel differences and baseband differences, but the userspace kit is almost exactly the same). And there are 80 million of them. A developer just needs to hope for 1 percent penetration to make a killing on even a cheap application.
Until Android can get rid of excessive fragmentation (to at least a reasonable extent), it will suffer in the game world compared to Apple's kit. If Android can get down to just one version on effectively everything, with one set of APIs to address graphics at high speed, it'll be too expensive to make something perform as well - unless you want to pay $30 for an Android game (and I sure won't do that...).

Galaxy s or something else ?

I have a Htc hero gsm, happy about it, but i want a new phone with a bigger screen and more powerful gpu to play games on.
Is Galaxy s something good? or is there anything more powerful than the Galaxy s? if there is, how much is the GPU, better than the Galaxy as a percentage?
Or should I wait until after new year? when dual core come? but i have heard that the GPU on them should be similar or slightly better than Galaxyn s gpu ... So what is the best?
btw how good is the Galaxy s gpu compare to iphone 4 ?
you simply cant compare the iphone 4 to any other phone ... no matter what aspect ! the iphone 4 was created by god , to reflect his own vision of what a perfect phone should be ..
souljaboy said:
you simply cant compare the iphone 4 to any other phone ... no matter what aspect ! the iphone 4 was created by god , to reflect his own vision of what a perfect phone should be ..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For anyone else who is agnostic there are other options.
I have a TMO Vibrant, the phone is good for my my needs, but there are a few flaws that Samsung committed:
1. GPS is flaky, even with the latest update the accuracy is something to be desired.
2. For the life of me I cannot comprehend the business decision at Samsung to go with a crippled filesystem - RFS - based on a decade decaying FAT32.
It is the major gripe, but with the development going on in the Galaxy S forums there seem to be a light at the end of a tunnel with converting RFS into EXT based filesystem.
The CPU choice is good, the GPU is there as well.
If your main concern is games, I don't think Android is up there yet though.
The iPhone 4 is running a PowerVR SGX535 while the Galaxy S series are running on a PowerVR SGX540. The Galaxy S has better hardware for gaming, but still, the app store is still much better on the iPhone.
I suspect that the Android market will catch up within the year, but because of the different specs an Android phone can come in, developers may have a hard time porting their games.
just a random question... if there is a psp emulator, will galaxy s run smooth on psp games ?
The Galaxy S has a faster GPU, but it probably won't be taken advantage to the extent that the iPhone4's GPU is due to the hardware diversity of the android platform.
oopeteroo said:
just a random question... if there is a psp emulator, will galaxy s run smooth on psp games ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sony is going to release a Playstation phone running Android OS - most probably Gengerbread - my guess would be around CEC next year. So the quality gaming is coming to Android.

Sensation thread open at Fpse forum

The sensation setion on Fpse (PS1 emulator) has be opened today
http://www.fpsece.net/forum2/viewforum.php?f=44
Every feedback of Fpse running on the HTC Sensation is welcome !
So far, I'm not really happy with the results, it seems that an Xplay defeats my Sensation, so I'm sure there's a lot of space for optimization here!
I definitly hope Schtruck will have a look at it
I guess Fpse uses only one core so far, that's the only explaination I can find.
Every info, feedback, opinion, experience might be useful
Thanks !
99% android apps dont take advantage out of the additional core. And it will take some time until they do because they have to be programed differently. So i guess for an emulator like FPSE your performance should be about the same as on a DesireHD with singlecore 1.2ghz.
But then the Xperia Play has the about the same hardware as the DHD so i dont know :/
What games do you have fps issues with? I run almost everything at full speed that i tried (TombRaider 3, Ridge Racer, FF7, Resident Evil) on my DesireHD at 1.1ghz.
I know Schtruck has better results for Tekken 3, with screen filtering ON, with his Xplay
(tekken 3 has always been my reference for test, since 2009, when I was beta testing with my Omnia 1 i900 )
I remember when we started to have multitouch on the HD2, firts with Morphgear, then for FpseCE, when originally the HD2 only supported pinch to zoom, and the OS was not supposed to handle multitouch.......
So now we have a dual core device, the OS doesn't support dual core except for a few HTC homebrews? I hope devs will manage to fix all this, it's kind of the same situation, having to bypass a limitation due to the OS using what HTC did for some apps
It will come eventually. But implementing working dualcore support isnt an easy thing to do from what i've heard^^ Its not the same thing as using multitouch.
Even on PC where multicore is established for years, support is still very basic. But im not a programmer so maybe someone else could explain it in details or use the mighty google.
I know how to use google, don't worry, but I've also seen many miracles since I've been in smartphones world, like for example playing tekken 2 full speed on a 624mhz CPU and no GPU or graphic chip, and I now cross my fingers.

[Q] crazy idea about porting halo

ive just realised something. halo ce's minimum requirements are 800mhz processor and geforce 2 gtx and 256mb of ram. a lot of phones have more processing power than that (im mainly thinking about tegra 2 phones like the atrix)
So aside from the direct x issue would it be possible to port halo ce onto android?
thre3aces said:
ive just realised something. halo ce's minimum requirements are 800mhz processor and geforce 2 gtx and 256mb of ram. a lot of phones have more processing power than that (im mainly thinking about tegra 2 phones like the atrix)
So aside from the direct x issue would it be possible to port halo ce onto android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
...
thre3aces said:
...aside from the direct x issue...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is kind of a big issue, but maybe. It would have to run as a native application, and it would need to be ported to run on openglES, It would also involve a lot of refactoring to make a java-based interface to the game.
Possible... maybe with the source code, and some talented devs.
Not likely to be coming soon, and then there is the whole IP issue on top of the difficulty of the porting... I know I value my sanity too much to work on such a project.
Not likely. You may think that our current processors are more powerful, but that's not necessarily true. Watt for watt they are, but those non mobile x86 processors run many more instructions than these mobile chips. Also porting a game in x86 to ARM is a massive undertaking, not really worth it.
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA App
ive recently started a thread here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1195712
wouldnt this help if the interface is java-based?
Yay I have a atrix
Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
This is relevant to my interests. I was wondering why a Diablo 2 style game couldn't be tried. I know my phone far overpowers my old pc. Lol
There are two main technological hurdles to overcomes when porting games from consoles/PC to a mobile platform are:
1. CPU Performance
Just because a ARM CPU has a higher clock-rate than a non-low-power CPU doesn't mean that it is more powerful. ARM is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) CPU which means that it is ideal for low-power limited memory devices. However some operations that could be completed in one clock-cycle on an X86 CPU may take two or more clock-cycles an ARM CPU.
Even when comparing ARM CPUs to RISC PPC CPUs included in game consoles, the PPC CPUs tend to implement optimisations that aren't available in mobile ARM CPUs.
2. Graphics
As previously mentioned the main problem is that console and PC games are all developed with OpenGL (or possibly DirectX) not OpenGL ES. Whilst OpenGL ES 2.0 does have support for programmable shaders it's still very limiting compared to what can be achieved with OpenGL (even old versions).
Other Issues
There are also other issues due to the limited (or different) input mechanisms available to mobile device. The smaller physically sized screens are also potentially a issue even if resolutions are similar.
yea ive taken that into account and i know that arm CPUs are slower than an intel/amd counterpart despite higher clock speed. but surely a 1ghz dual core arm cortex a8 is faster than a 800mhz intel cpu.
the open gl thing was something i completely forgot about and know that you mention it i think the whole idea may not be possible. BUT i found this on wiki "PowerVR's Series5 SGX series features pixel, vertex, and geometry shader hardware, supporting OpenGL 2.0 and DirectX 10.1 Shader Model 4.1".
maybe it is still possible.
the screen size is another big issue. but maybe it will be ok on a tablet like the zoom.
We need to start looking into this again
Qualcomm will be releasing the snapdragon 810 soon it supports direct X, is x64, and has 2.7+ghz I think porting pc games is becoming much more of a reality and I would love for someone to give me a reason ditch my pc for gaming
I'd hate to re revive but since android practically is Linux, couldn't we focus on wine for android? That would not only allow people to install direct x in the first place on android phones and tabs but also open up many many possibilities such as a PC version of steam for android. A fun way of this could be taking advantage of Samsung's multi window support. But yes there is no halo for android before wine. Once wine is existant there will be PC on android. And Gabe's 3 will be comfirmed.
I have DREAMED of Halo in my pocket, and this is why I started developing. I thought I could put in the hours to at least get it off to a good start and get people involved. Here are the main issues, and the reasons that I (and I bet any others who have tried) eventually gave up.
It's been pointed out the difference in processing and graphics. X86 processors just run many more instructions than mobile processors. Mobile processors are catching up, and have been more powerful for a long time, but even if one runs a comparitively adequate number of instructions it still communicates differently with graphics processors and ram etc. This alone is intimidating because means that the entire game would have to be redone from scratch and the assets either stolen (yikes) or a partnership arranged with Microsoft.
Enter Microsoft. I love ole Mikey Soft I do, but they are defensive about their Halo. They recently made it almost impossible to install a fan project rework of Halo 1 CE. Any attempts to port to Android would be met with similar treatment. *Cough* they don't trust fans, but they gave Master Chief to 343, killed Cortana, and then made her evil.* That was a long cough. In their defense they have probably not pursued this because of the last point here: porr end product = poor user experience.
So processor, graphics, Mike, and finally porting itself. Borderlands 2 was recently ported onto an arm (mobile) processor. I bought a PS Vita+BL2 bundle specifically to see if I could learn anything about porting other pc games, like Halo. If you've played it you know that it is AWESOME, but has a great deal of glitches, frame rate drops, and even later loading textures than the PC/console version. To be fair I'm SHOCKED that BL2 and all its dlc run as well as it does on Vita. Bravo yo!
My conclusion was that it would have to be completely remade which would require using assets from a zealously guarded IP, and if a partnership was struck the final product would likely be extremely hard to optimize leaving all of us nostalgic fans with dissapointment as we are trying to launch each other to the top of blood gulch but run into such low fps that we can't coordinate the required wart hoggery. This is also why there are several Halo-ish games on Android. It's tough to Port, but much easier to imitate. Sad pandasaurus.
sorry to revive an older thread but heres an apk. i found however its in Spanish if someone can change the language it would be great.

[Q] Why is iPhone still faster than any Android Quad-Core Phone?

Hi,
my friend and I are comparing which Phone is better.. The iOS Phones or the Android Phones.
In my opinion an iPhone is not a real Smartphone because you can't really do nothing with it..
There is just a damn Appdrawer without a damn Home screen.
Just Apps and some other notification stuff.
An Android Phone has almost everything that you need. You can even Update a Ps3 system with just an Android Phone.
You can build your own system and run your Rom with your taste.
But why the hell has the iPhone 5 still compared to HTC One X or Sony Xperia Z a better Benchmark result?
I mean the iPhone got a Dual core with just 1 Ghz per Core. But it beat a Quad-Core Phone.
For example I got a Sony Xperia S and how you know it has a 1,5Ghz Dual-Core hardware. And STILL the iPhone runs Asphalt 7 or Shadowgun: Deadzone better than the Xperia S
How that can be possible??
xShottaZx said:
Hi,
my friend and I are comparing which Phone is better.. The iOS Phones or the Android Phones.
In my opinion an iPhone is not a real Smartphone because you can't really do nothing with it..
There is just a damn Appdrawer without a damn Home screen.
Just Apps and some other notification stuff.
An Android Phone has almost everything that you need. You can even Update a Ps3 system with just an Android Phone.
You can build your own system and run your Rom with your taste.
But why the hell has the iPhone 5 still compared to HTC One X or Sony Xperia Z a better Benchmark result?
I mean the iPhone got a Dual core with just 1 Ghz per Core. But it beat a Quad-Core Phone.
For example I got a Sony Xperia S and how you know it has a 1,5Ghz Dual-Core hardware. And STILL the iPhone runs Asphalt 7 or Shadowgun: Deadzone better than the Xperia S
How that can be possible??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To answer the question in title.
Iphones would seem faster because its software is only written for one device.. the Iphone.
When you build the hardware and the software you able to really optimise it for that device.
This would be possible with Android but for a device manufacture would take far to much work at the lower levels of android itself, and they simply do not have the time or resources to do that (After all we do want updates within 6 months of google pushing them).
If you however get a Nexus device built for stock Android you will see what android can do
zacthespack said:
To answer the question in title.
Iphones would seem faster because its software is only written for one device.. the Iphone.
When you build the hardware and the software you able to really optimise it for that device.
This would be possible with Android but for a device manufacture would take far to much work at the lower levels of android itself, and they simply do not have the time or resources to do that (After all we do want updates within 6 months of google pushing them).
If you however get a Nexus device built for stock Android you will see what android can do
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes and Java android implementation has a really time spent garbage collector, IOS programs are written over Objective C with just in time memory management.
No garbage collector = faster app
The on-the-surface reasons are a fast and capable CPU and GPU, but mainly the fact that apps have a very limited ability to run in the background. There are more technical reasons, as mentioned above, but that's the gist of it.
iOS's efficiency and performance comes from its heavy software limitations.
Okay, so mainly it has to do with optimizing the hardware with the software right?
xShottaZx said:
Okay, so mainly it has to do with optimizing the hardware with the software right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, and like I said, heavily disallowing apps from running in the background.
I bet thats also the reason why macs are seen as such intuitive machines compared to pcs. Windows is made for any pc while mac os is strictly built for mac. :good:
Omega Supreme said:
I bet thats also the reason why macs are seen as such intuitive machines compared to pcs. Windows is made for any pc while mac os is strictly built for mac. :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Macs use the same parts as PC's. It's just that they say, "Alright, these are the parts we're going to use this year. We only need drivers and software compatible with these parts. Anything extra is up to the manufacturers." It's the same thing with Windows, but like you said, just a wider array of devices and parts.
Intuitiveness has nothing to do with hardware and interfacing software; it has everything to do with aesthetics and software design.
Okay thanks for your answers guys
for me, Iphone is only good for old people, who doesnt really care about their gadget, they only use it for show off, without knowing the "true" potential of their phone.
with android, we could squeeze the juice from the phone out untill its screaming, lol, and our device will worth every dime and penny we spent, like many of people only know that they have Intel i7 processor without knowing that their i7 processor can beat up so easily with Overclocked core 2 Quad processors.
just my 2 cents though
There's more to it than benchmarking though. I actually carry and use both devices. My DNA is a good bit faster than my iPhone with some processes. Other things the iPhone is faster with. But as stated above, the apple hardware and software is highly optimized, which is why iPhone users don't see force closes or random reboots except for the occasional rare extreme problem.
They both have their pros and cons, there's a lot of young people also that the iPhone fits better than android.
There's a lot of people in this world that think differently than me. I did not see the dialer or keyboard on my DNA until after it was unlocked and rooted and had a custom rom and kernel overclocked. I didn't realize until later that I didn't even open much on the interface until after I had installed the software I wanted. Lots of people wouldn't want to take an off contract 700 dollar device and blindly void the warranty, but that's all I bought mine for is the hardware and ability to build my rom and interface to fit my needs.
Sent from my DNA... S-Off like a baws
apple not only manufactures its own software, but also hardware, hence it has better control to customize their hardware according to the software or vice versa.
ob7125 said:
apple not only manufactures its own software, but also hardware, hence it has better control to customize their hardware according to the software or vice versa.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Apple doesn't manufacture anything. Most of their components come from Samsung and other manufacturers like Qualcomm. They work ONLY on the software.
i think you are wrong.
zacthespack said:
To answer the question in title.
Iphones would seem faster because its software is only written for one device.. the Iphone.
When you build the hardware and the software you able to really optimise it for that device.
This would be possible with Android but for a device manufacture would take far to much work at the lower levels of android itself, and they simply do not have the time or resources to do that (After all we do want updates within 6 months of google pushing them).
If you however get a Nexus device built for stock Android you will see what android can do
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i saw the nexus 5 benchmark fight with the iphone 5s, NEXUS 5 can't reach near iphone 5s , actually i don't understand how is this possible and i don't believe that optimization makes iphone to this much faster, when we are looking forward the case of samsung galaxy note 3 and iphone 5s just an optimization can't beat the 8 core and 3Gb ram with 1.3gh 2 core with 1gb ram, may be the precision is the key

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