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[Q] What should I be excited about in my next Nexus device?

I've had my Nexus S since official launch day in late 2010. I still love it. I've been mildly tempted to replace it with the Galaxy Nexus a few times.
I'm somewhere in the middle between amateur and power-user. I enjoy rooting my device and installing custom roms, but I don't go beyond that. Also, once I find a rom that works well for me, I generally keep it for several months or more.
I'm trying to figure out what is potentially on the horizon that I should find exciting in the mobile device world - any thoughts? I'm asking more about things that actually improve my daily use of the phone. Right now, I have email and calendar push-sync (important for work), fast web browsing pretty much anywhere I go (typically getting 3-6Mbps anywhere I am), and can easily stream movies and music. What could I ask for that would actually improve my phone experience?
1. Bigger screen - obviously has its ups and downs - for me wouldn't make any positive impact.
2. Higher resolution - this is cool, and was one of the main reasons I was tempted by Galaxy Nexus, but again, wouldn't actually make any difference to me. I don't have any interest in gaming on my phone, beyond Angry Birds or Cut the Rope-type games.
3. Better camera - always nice, but for my use, the camera on Nexus S is more than adequate.
4. Faster data speeds - wouldn't help me at all. As long as I can stream TV and movies (which I already can), I have no need for anything faster, particularly if batter life is impacted.
5. Updated OS - this is probably what would tempt me most, due to my incessant need to always run the newest software available. Not sure what actual improvements it will have, though...
I guess my point is, I look at the latest and greatest devices out there (GS3, OneX, etc.), and I think to myself, "If I had that device, what benefits would I have compared to my Nexus S". And honestly, I can't think of a single one.
Any thoughts!
Thanks!

I think almost the same as you. Thinking about change my Nexus S, but it make almost everything I need already. If I change, it's only too see something new, hehe.

I think part of this speaks to how great the Nexus S is. In nearly 18 months of bigger screens, dual-core and quad-core, higher resolution, bigger batteries, LTE, etc., I've barely even been tempted to switch. I think that Google pushing out ICS to the Nexus S so early was a huge "lift" to my deciding to hang onto it for so long.

The nexus S has a more compact design and better audio both from speaker and headphones. The camera isnt better on the galaxy nexus, only video recording is. The screen is higher resolution but has so many horror stories about it. I personally didnt like the colors that much on the galaxy nexus especially the whites which were the worst I have ever seen on an AMOLED screen. But apparently there are good and bad screens of galaxy nexus so maybe I saw the bad one.
The most tempting thing for me is dual core CPU and 1GB ram, 2 areas where the nexus S is notably behind now and it really does enhance smartphone experience to have dual core CPU and more ram. And obviously it will get updates faster in the future provided the nexus S gets anything at all which it may not after 4.0.4.
The galaxy nexus also looks so damn epic, one of the best looking android phones for sure. And textured plastic back >>> glossy plastic anyday.
The disappointing parts of the galaxy nexus for me are,
- screen is not as good as reviews would have you believe
- speaker sound is disastrous
- Not much of an upgrade in GPU from nexus S, just higher clocks
- too big
I suppose since you are an i9020 owner it would be easier for you to switch to galaxy nexus since you are used to SAMOLED screens. I have an i9023 and just love the SC-LCD on it, the galaxy nexus screen seems like too many compromises for those infinite blacks.

same dilemma
Same issue as me, not sure whether I should upgrade or not. I've always been a "nexus behind" in that I held onto the N1 when the NS came out and only bought the NS when the GN came out. It's been cheaper for me since I had to pinch money in college.
Now that I have a job and income, I'm really tempted to finally catch up and buy the GN even though I'm extremely satisfied with my NS...

Gambler_3 said:
The most tempting thing for me is dual core CPU and 1GB ram, 2 areas where the nexus S is notably behind now and it really does enhance smartphone experience to have dual core CPU and more ram. And obviously it will get updates faster in the future provided the nexus S gets anything at all which it may not after 4.0.4.
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For "daily driving" of web browsing/email/calendar/movies/music, how does dual core CPU and more RAM make a difference? Maybe faster app switching, smoother OS performance?

ddb540 said:
For "daily driving" of web browsing/email/calendar/movies/music, how does dual core CPU and more RAM make a difference? Maybe faster app switching, smoother OS performance?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Web browsing can max up nexus S ram pretty quickly which causes lag and launcher redraw on exit. Web browsing is perhaps the biggest advantage of dual core and 1GB ram especially if you like to use desktop versions.
There can be serious lag in doing anything when an app is being updated in the background I had to turn off automatic update for that and I think the single core CPU might be to blame for that.
With more ram you can run more third party apps that have background services. The ram is perhaps the biggest limitation of nexus S. It's almost impossible to play games smoothly when you are online on skype because it eats so much ram.
And lastly there are a few games now which lag on nexus S and I believe again the ram or CPU are to blame for that as we have very good GPU for our resolution.
But when it comes to screen and sound, nexus still holds its own against the new phones and provides a very satisfying multimedia experience.
I am personally still thoroughly satisfied with nexus S overall and will wait for the next nexus phone(or series of phones) to come.

happy with my nexus s, but if I had the chance and was able to afford it, I'd ditch it for the GS3 any day
why i want to upgrade:
1. more RAM, power.
---------- DEFINITELY something I found myself always wanting while watching videos on the browser.
---------- Annoying waiting for important apps such as dialer/camera to load up.
2. larger, hd screen. (especially for watching videos; something i do often)
3. camera

I also just wait for next nexus this december..
Buying galaxy nexus seem not worth it for me..
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

I agree about waiting on the next Nexus release. I really like my NS still and I skipped out on the Galaxy Nexus. Now that we know a SERIES of Nexus's ( :what: ) are coming I'm definitely holding out. The S3 sounds great but the new Nexus line may out shine that later this year.
Sent from my Nexus S using xda premium

I'd have to agree with everyone about the NS shortcomings when compared to today's phones. To add to the list is the internal sdcard. I will NEVER get another phone without a removable sdcard. 16GB is just not enough.
Unfortunately, my NS is also sensitive to overclocking and crashes often even with raised voltage. Anyway, it's still a good phone holding it's own for 18mos.
PS: i, too, will wait for the next Nexus.
Sent from my Crespo using xda premium

I would also say ram and cpu are pretty big improvements.. Although I'm waiting for the next nexus as well. It's only a few months away and it's gonna blow the gnex out of the water for sure.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA

Gambler_3 said:
Web browsing can max up nexus S ram pretty quickly which causes lag and launcher redraw on exit. Web browsing is perhaps the biggest advantage of dual core and 1GB ram especially if you like to use desktop versions.
There can be serious lag in doing anything when an app is being updated in the background I had to turn off automatic update for that and I think the single core CPU might be to blame for that.
With more ram you can run more third party apps that have background services. The ram is perhaps the biggest limitation of nexus S. It's almost impossible to play games smoothly when you are online on skype because it eats so much ram.
And lastly there are a few games now which lag on nexus S and I believe again the ram or CPU are to blame for that as we have very good GPU for our resolution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good explanation, thanks! Glad to hear that the RAM and CPU improvements will make a nice difference in my next device, even for daily tasks.

LordPhong said:
To add to the list is the internal sdcard. I will NEVER get another phone without a removable sdcard. 16GB is just not enough.
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What do you use to fill all this storage? I used to hold music on my phone and quickly maxed out the 16GB limit, but Google Music has completely obviated my need to hold files locally.

ddb540 said:
What do you use to fill all this storage? I used to hold music on my phone and quickly maxed out the 16GB limit, but Google Music has completely obviated my need to hold files locally.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some people aren't lucky enough to have multi-GB or unlimited data plans, let alone decent service to begin with. I'm also weary of sound quality with many online services too - i know what's going on with my own files.

al_madd said:
I also just wait for next nexus this december..
Buying galaxy nexus seem not worth it for me..
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Couldnt agree more with this.
I think it would be wiser if waiting for the next nexus
Gnex is good but is not good enough

For some reason I've never actually been attracted to the thought of replacing my NS with GN. I'm happy with my NS and recently, I've been tempted to get the SGS3. I've been tempted but my NS does everything I need and well, I think I'll wait till the next Nexus device shows up. Long live NS!

[Q] Why do Android tablets lag so heavily?

(bear in mind that I own an iPhone 3GS, iPad 3, Nexus S as my main phone and HD2)
Every time I try Android tablets somewhere, on a roadshow of the manufacturer or at a department store, they lag and stutter heavily at simple tasks or just flicking around the app drawer. No matter what brand they are, be it a Sony, Toshiba, Acer, on Honeycomb or ICS, they just lag. Even the newest Tabs from Samsung suffer from lag too, while the iPad flies.
How can they ever sell if the user experience is so laggy at the first try, in regards to normal users' perspective - they just care whether it's smooth unlike us gizmos - and why are they so laggy despite having dual-core processors and a ton of RAM inside while phones with lower specs run like butter?

I don't know why.. all I know is that I currently use a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 that was laggy on 4.0.3 until I installed Cyanogenmod 10 preview which put it at 4.1.1 ..
Buttery smooothh now :good:
Also I've seen some good reviews on the experience with the upcoming Samsung Note 10.1

bcoz android is eating heavy ram so it lags

Try any of the Asus transformer tablets, they are fast.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using xda app-developers app

Gam3boy said:
bcoz android is eating heavy ram so it lags
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Click to collapse
So tell me why phones run without lag? Android is not the reason why it lags, he was asking specifically about tablets.
I'm not a genius, but it might have to do with the size of the screen coupled with screen resolution. I've tried out some galaxy tab 10.1s and noticed the lag you're talking about
Sent from my MB508 using xda premium

Lag compare with what? Phone? Another OS? Widget and multitasking has a lot to take into consideration too. I am sure Android will be a lot faster if it doesn't have true multitasking

demonoflust said:
Lag compare with what? Phone? Another OS? Widget and multitasking has a lot to take into consideration too. I am sure Android will be a lot faster if it doesn't have true multitasking
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I don't think this is the root cause, the root cause is something to do with android's coding as it was never intended to Handel hardware gpu acceleration across the board with gpu and this is where lag occurs.
Gpu and CPU wasn't coded to work together so when google released 4.0, it's way a bit of a jerky mess as the os would lag for a few seconds and continuous lag when doing slow scrolling. It can also be seen with contacts list where a lot of the photos appear. The gpu only seems to render a few layers of the os while CPU struggles to load picture image at once so contact list lag was still present and that same goes with the browser.
Project butter was designed to aggressively ramp up cpu to maximum speed when users touched their finger on it hence smoother pinch to zooms as CPU tries to process information I.e. content while the gpu renders graphical side of it hence less lag compared to ics, it can be seen with pinch to zoom.
Notice how 4.0s zooms are pitch, lag, pinch, lag, pinch lag while 4.1's pinches has a relatively smaller lag between actually pinching and lagging?
It's more to do with reducing legacy between gpu and CPU response time. Which is googles approach to fixing lag while still keeping developers apps unbroken.
Ios and windows 8 for arm renders it differently, it's more to do with framework linking the two integrations together. CPU and gpu works together like bus link I,e. reducing legacy while accessing each others resources hence virtually no lag (not 100%, but maybe 97% of the time).
That is why ios runs fairly smooths even on a 412mhz device while android suffers more hick ups even on a 1.8 ghz quad core device with hideously large amounts of ram.
No I don't think cm 10.1 offers a so called "buttery smooth" performance even on the nexus 7 which has a tiny wee bit of hick ups and scroll lag.
Yes I over clocked my old n7 to 1.8ghz

[Q] Why does my Galaxy SII appear to be faster than my Trasformer Infinity?

I like my new Asus Transformer Infinity, but not as much as I love my Samsung Galaxy sII. It bugs me that it appears that a lot of apps are much smoother/faster in loading data on the SII than on the Infinity, while the former is a year older with a slower CPU.
Does anyone has the same experience?
And what could be the cause?
On both devices I use almost the same apps, have the same accounts installed and i use the same wifi connection. My sII still uses ICS and my infinty JB (which in my opinion is much better then before), Both unrooted.
When I run the usual benchmarks (quadrant, antutu, browsermark), I get the scores you would expect: Infinity scores clearly higher than the SII and conform the results that other users report. Internet speed tests do also give expected results,
I'm experiencing the following. A lot of apps that load some data from the web (news apps for example) show a delay of 1 or 2 seconds, while the SII often loads the data instantly. Browsing on the SII gives me a smooth experience, while browsing on the Infinity often results in a couple of seconds that the tablet is unresponsive when the page is not loaded completely.
This effect is the strongest in the Stumbleupon app, which probably has an inferior browser built-in, but my SII still loads the new pages really fast. The infinity shows a lot of unresponsiveness in Stumbleupon and it results in a lot of ANR popups.
The ANR popups are not so prevalant in other apps. This did happen a lot more with ICS. On my SII I almost never get an ANR.
I understand that the tablet needs to render for a much higher resolution and that the tablet has some issues with IO performance. But can this make such a difference? Could it be that most apps are so terribly designed for tablets, that the tablet needs a lot of CPU time to upscale, which causes unresponiveness?
Or is it just my tablet?

gybema said:
I understand that the tablet needs to render for a much higher resolution and that the tablet has some issues with IO performance. But can this make such a difference?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes.

You are not alone. I also have a galaxy s2,and it's a lot faster than this tablet.

It is not that surprising. My Sensation also feel faster and more reliable than my Infinity, guess it is just right that the S2 is much faster. And yes, the resolution does matter a lot. Imagine running Skyrim or Crysis II a 1024x768 resolution versus at 1920x1080, the difference in frame rates will blow you away.

Yup,
Most games and apps are designed for phones not tablets.
Applications for phones driving that big 'ole 1920X1200 screen with a 12 core GPU just ain't going to respond the same as the junior sized screens at a much lower resolution.
Just wait when the apps catch on to the HD wave there will be many happy campers.
Takes time...

Asus uses a tegra and samsung uses exynos. The exynos/malli processor/GPU seems to perform much better than tegra despite that tegra is made by nvidia. on paper the GFLOPS and toals MADs produced by the Exynos is higher.
The screen also is a factor as FHD screen takes more time to push all the pixels on a 10.1 screen compared to a 4.3.
Architecture of chipset as well
Manufacture also plays a part. Their coding and software implementation to make the hardware and software work together. Samsung does better in this case. ASUS is always pushing updates.

Its not just the Infinity as this was the first thing I noticed when I got the Transformer Prime vs my S2. Does resolutions play a role? Maybe a bit more in the Infinity's case but the Prime and TF300 had resolutions that's not too far off from the Galaxy Nexus but the latter with 2 less cores sure did better than the Asus tablets.

Most of it is the cheap crappy internal memory Asus decided to use for their flagship device, some of it's the higher resolution.

Unibrow said:
Most of it is the cheap crappy internal memory Asus decided to use for their flagship device, some of it's the higher resolution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My wife's apple ipad 3 with the high resolution runs smooth like a baby's butt. I could only wish my infinity ran that smooth. Since complaints aren't only coming from me now the proof is right here...this tablet was made without thinking. Basically Asus wanted a great tablet on paper to jump ahead of everyone, ON PAPER, but in reality it is a pretty bad device for such a large amount of money. Better off with a cheaper laptop with an SSD drive in it really.

Not to be funny, but my droid charge (2 years old, first samsung lte phone) is faster and smoother than tf700! Asus build a biggest giant cruise ship and forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the ship!

As any gamer knows, higher resolution means more resources needed, which means a lower frames-per-second rate. It simply has to render more.
Your S2 has a resolution of 480 x 800, your TF700 a resolution of 1920x1280. In terms of resource difference between those two, it's pretty much the difference between running Minesweeper and running Skyrim.
Add to that the fact pretty much 99% of the apps are made for phones, and in most cases specifically the Galaxy series, and it's no surprise they run better on a small phone they're optimized for than on a large full HD tablet that most app-developers don't even consider.

ShadowLea said:
As any gamer knows, higher resolution means more resources needed, which means a lower frames-per-second rate. It simply has to render more.
Your S2 has a resolution of 480 x 800, your TF700 a resolution of 1920x1280. In terms of resource difference between those two, it's pretty much the difference between running Minesweeper and running Skyrim.
Add to that the fact pretty much 99% of the apps are made for phones, and in most cases specifically the Galaxy series, and it's no surprise they run better on a small phone they're optimized for than on a large full HD tablet that most app-developers don't even consider.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The storage device is a piece of crap, there's nothing wrong with the graphics performance. Every single user experience issue with this tablet is down to data not getting read/written fast enough from/to storage. It's as simple as that.

Every application that uses "RAM" is subjective as fast as at my SGS2 (runnig CM9). But the i/o perfomance at stock ROM on my TF700 is really bad. With Browser2RAM surfing is a lot snapier but still not as snappy as at SGS2. Hopefully CM10 at TF700 works as much as possible around this storage issues.
Don't forget that the TF700T has the fastest RAM of all android devices that are on sale at the moment. But it has the slowest eMMC storage, too.

As far as the browser goes, use stock browser and if you are rooted, 1st look for app browser2ram and sideload it (and follow all instructions in thread dedicated to it), then (or for anyone else not rooted) type about:debug into browser address box, hit enter, then go to settings (three small vertcal dots in upper right hand corner of screen) and choose debug menu. Check the box next to Enable CPU Upload Pathand then close it. It speeds up the browser by a lot. I'm only using the stock browser now and I'm very satisfied with its performance.
The other suggestion I have for you that feel unhappy with the TF700's performance in general, is really consider unlocking, flashing a custom recovery (I highly recommend TWRP) and a rooted custom ROM, especially the CleanROM Ultra Light Edition v1.3. This JellyBean stock-based ROM is so fast and smooth and functional, you will wonder why you waited so long to have the device you had imagined. I kid you not. I've tried all the ROMs available for this device, and though they all have their strong points, for someone looking for a better than stock experience, where everything works, right now, this one's the best and it gets even better with each update. And this is just the beginning of wonderful development for the Infinity. This is honestly, a superb machine. We owe it to ourselves to take full advantage of it.

If you're running stock it's slow. If you optimise it it's pretty damn fast. Had mine lying next to an iPad 3 and they are on the same level. How to do it? Disable (a lot) of unneeded apps and use the right software (Firefox Aurora or the above mentioned Browser2Ram)

That's not much of a win considering the ipad 3 has a higher resolution with 2 less cpu cores and running 600mhz slower.

maedox said:
The storage device is a piece of crap, there's nothing wrong with the graphics performance. Every single user experience issue with this tablet is down to data not getting read/written fast enough from/to storage. It's as simple as that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup. This. The screen is a minor thing. If the ASUS engineers had not selected subpar parts for the internal SD, this thing would have absolute bleeding edge performance on every front. As it is, it often shows signs of brilliance but also has some limitations due to the system bottleneck. Your impression of the device user experience will depend heavily on your use model (and its associated memory footprint). The vast majority of issues/discussions wrt to this device basically come down to this one thing.
Barring some very serious OS hacking (ala the effort to allow external SD to replace internal) all the TF tabs will ALWAYS be limited by memory bandwidth. It's a hardware limitation. Either you can live with it or you can't. Too bad. Now that JB is here and the OS is finally decent/stable, this tab is one bad cost cutting measure away from being the undisputed best in class device in the industry. <shrug>
I'm not browsing very frequently and when I do, they are not heavy multimedia sites, so for me, the TF's certainly a really good user experience and I love the device. Games are great now that the driver bug is fixed for example. It's slightly frustrating knowing that the tab could have been amazing on EVERY front if they had spent another fifty cents on the memory... but that's life. I'll be happy if they just continue to support/stabilize/enhance the firmware. The hardware is what it is.

htcplussony said:
That's not much of a win considering the ipad 3 has a higher resolution with 2 less cpu cores and running 600mhz slower.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, I understand that the gpu is better and the whole ios thing is completely optimised for browsing, so yeah, it is kind of a good comparison in terms of user experience.

This!!!
My HTC Evo 4g LTE has more consistent performance than my TF700T....
It's kind of frustrating really and the fact that my daughter's ipad is ALWAYS smooth bothers the hell out of me...
Is this the way these things are designed or do I have a lemon on my hands?
The fact that there are articles instructing people that they can buy a $30 SD card and move their /data mount to the external micro SD card tells me this is a design issue...
There's nothing more frustrating than tapping the screen and not being able to tell if you mis tapped or if the tablet is IO locked and in a 'wait' state. and it happens way too damned much.
I'm not doing anything special.... all I can say is that I'm running a lot of apps and perhaps this is the problem (I've restricted background process to 4 and disabling all animations and am now using APEX launcher to even disable all animations + the wallpaper).
Max free RAM at any time is around ~250 MB...
I want to show this thing off but everytime I pull it out it's performing like **** and cache cleaning or rebooting doen't seem to help either...
Also to add - post JB I DID perform a factory reset as well. I've installed about 130 apps.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using xda app-developers app

Just curious, how does tf700 compare to other android tablets? Is it a a lot slower or less smooth? It one thing to compare it to phones. I want to know how it compares to a Samsung note 10.1.

Weak graphics performance?

Hi! I'm a bit worried about the Galaxy S6 graphics performance. I'm currently owning an iPhone 6 and I read about benchmark testings where the iPhone 6 and also the HTC One M9 got much better results for graphics intensive tasks. Maybe the S6 has just enough power for current games, but what about in a year's time? So I'm thinking about keeping my iPhone. Any thoughts?

S6 has much higher resolution screen than both of those phones. That is why it may have lower scores on the on screen bench mark portion of the tests.
Anyways benchmarks are garbage and shouldn't be cared about.

http://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s6-review-1227p5.php

any game runs on native 2k res will run slower than your iphone on s6. but games generally run on 1080p so you will barely see any difference cuz s6's gpu can handle 1080p easyly.

http://www.telekom-presse.at/smartp...apdragon_810_im_htc_one_m9_und_a.id.33301.htm
That's what I found. From what I understand, multicore performance is only relevant for some special apps. Regarding graphics performance the S6 seems to be crushed by the iPhone and the HTC One M9. I don't care that the Samsung has a higher resolution. All that counts is that you have good framerates in games. The QHD is overkill anyway.

paranoid2007 said:
http://www.telekom-presse.at/smartp...apdragon_810_im_htc_one_m9_und_a.id.33301.htm
That's what I found. From what I understand, multicore performance is only relevant for some special apps. Regarding graphics performance the S6 seems to be crushed by the iPhone and the HTC One M9. I don't care that the Samsung has a higher resolution. All that counts is that you have good framerates in games. The QHD is overkill anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
nope. like i said pretty much all games running on 1080p most. so you can just check offscreen test to check which faster. i have exynos note 4 pretty much whole games running around 60 fps.

Firstly Iphone6 is 25 % of the resolution of ss6 or even lower because it is not proper HD 720p. When you buy a suit which one is going fit better, of the shelf or custom tailored? The same is happen in IOS. The benchmarks need to be optimalised for IP even before they are accepted to the Store. The suit is custom tailored .
Secondly I am owning xperia z and most of the games works flawlessly which is 2 years old (gta and nfs which works medium setting). Furthermore most of the games will not be able to utilize full potential of the samsung S6. From the other perspective i own shield tablet which pretty much owns the benchmarks in terms of graphics performance, guess what there are games which still stutter as hell. I would prefer perform a benchmark on lollipop 5.1 because 5.0.2 is kind of s****. Look at the nexus 6 on the 5.1 is much better and faster
In regards to the HTC M9 the question is how sustainable the frame rate is going to be with the throttling , what is going to happen after 3 hours of playing games.

paranoid2007 said:
http://www.telekom-presse.at/smartp...apdragon_810_im_htc_one_m9_und_a.id.33301.htm
That's what I found. From what I understand, multicore performance is only relevant for some special apps. Regarding graphics performance the S6 seems to be crushed by the iPhone and the HTC One M9. I don't care that the Samsung has a higher resolution. All that counts is that you have good framerates in games. The QHD is overkill anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then the S6 isn't for you. Get the HTC One M9 instead.

Vertron said:
Then the S6 isn't for you. Get the HTC One M9 instead.
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Click to collapse
For gaming I have my Nintendo DS, Wii and Tablet. Honestly I don't put much importance on 'weak graphics' . As long as it loads the games that's fine.
I care more about having a fast, stable and responsive phone with a great camera. Gaming is at the very bottom of my list.
.: sent from my 'Android til I die' phone or tablet

paranoid2007 said:
Hi! I'm a bit worried about the Galaxy S6 graphics performance. I'm currently owning an iPhone 6 and I read about benchmark testings where the iPhone 6 and also the HTC One M9 got much better results for graphics intensive tasks. Maybe the S6 has just enough power for current games, but what about in a year's time? So I'm thinking about keeping my iPhone. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First you honestly should stop reading AppleInsider, their the epitome of fan-boyism gone wrong. If you look at those benchmarks that were posted you can clearly see that at 1080p the S6 is faster than the iPhone 6 but since the S6 uses a higher resolution it's a little slower. Now when I say a little slower, I mean insignificant and is not enough to affect your overall experience by any measure.. Software has not caught up with the hardware yet. Anything with a Qualcomm 800 or better will be able to play every game listed in the Google Play Store without a single frame drop or lag. The iPhone is a good platform for gaming and media consumption, that's about it. The fact that you can't choose your own default apps, cannot run apps in the background except for iTunes and a few GPS apps, has the worst file-management I have ever seen on any mobile OS including dumb phones that uses a proprietary Java system and horrible inner-app communication I would seriously consider jumping ship. Android, though not perfect is eons better than iOS, especially now that Android 5.11 has been released. Here's the kicker, I don't even use an Android phone, I'm rocking a BlackBerry Passport but I do have a Nexus 9 for office work and an Nvidia Shield for play.
I had an iPhone 6 Plus for about a week, I honestly tried to make it work, installed iFile to hopefully make sense of the chaos from iOS saving files under the app that created them, who does that, but it didn't help much. I tried installing OneDrive and Google Drive because I could have a terebyte of data from both of them for the same price as a single terebyte from iCloud but because what I said above about the horrible inner-app communication none of the apps except those from Microsoft and Google supported saving files directly. I had to open the clients up individually and pray that I could remember which app was used to create the file that I wanted to upload so I didn't have to spend 30 minutes going through 100 apps to find out. This of course is an exaggeration but you get the point. With my Passport all I have to do is go into my Documents folder using the fantastic built in file manager and than wham, there's my files. I can also search every file from a certain date, zip them up and upload them to a cloud storage of my choosing without having to buy another app to do so, all built in. Same thing with my Android tablet's.
I know when I install any app that I will be able to access said app through the Share function of other apps, unlike iOS's apps which uses a pre-programmed list of allowed apps to share with on a per app basis. So I never know which app can share with what, it's a crap shoot and extremely inconsistent. Does it sound like I really dislike iOS, can you blame me. I use a terminal app to keep ties on the applications I write for my clients, at any given time I could be logged in up to 8 different servers performing updates, which means compiling. With both my Passport and Nexus 9 all I have to do is start the compile job and than minimize the terminal app and continue working on other things until completion. With iOS this isn't possible, well it is but I have to keep the terminal app in the foreground because if I minimize it all of processes will be terminated iOS doesn't support full multitasking, what is this, the 90's. To add even more frustration if I have more than 3 connections going at once, even though the terminal app is in the foreground, iOS will start terminating connections. Why, 1GB of memory, yep, in 2015, simply ridiculous on the highest order. iOS's supposedly wonderful memory manegment just goes out the window when faced with such tasks. Here's a simple test you can do now on your phone, start typing up your response to me, do about a paragraph and than switch over to another app for about 5 minutes, just watch a YouTube video to pass the time, when you come back to Safari your work would have been lost, Safari has refreshed the page, why, lack of memory.
Doesn't it piss you off that you can't choose your own default apps, if it doesn't it should. Sure I can install another email client, no problem but what is the point when it isn't listed in any of the apps that I have installed, so something as simple as say, attaching a file while in another program isn't possible because only Apple's email client is ever listed. With my Passport regardless of the app I'm using I can attach a file to any app that is installed and supports the app that I'm sharing from, same thing with Android, any. Do you like Evernote, it's great because you can send files to it from almost every app in iOS, mark my words though, the second Apple releases a cloud note taking app of their own, you will no longer see Evernote listed as possibility to share to.
I can go on and on about the disdain I have for iOS but I think you get the picture. Even if the S6 turns out not to be for you I would still recommend ditching the iPhone. Apple isn't a good company anymore and is hell bent on controlling you, please get out from under their thumb. Even if you don't use the features I described above, I mean just think about what their doing, is it right, don't you think they should allow their users to decide which apps they want to use as defaults, that's just evil man.

The truth about laggy Idol 3 5.5 ?

So I have read and watched a lot about the i3 5.5, probably too much. In short it's a great in almost all aspects, save from
the performance, rendering it laggy/slow/choppy at times. Is it really that bad, or is it exaggerated, or perhaps downplayed?
I'm interested in intel of day-to-day use and how the i3 5.5 handles the OS, browsing, video and gaming.
Hopefully it's more a software issue than a hardware issue, which would make sense. Hopefully the 5.1 update will be out
soon. Are the European i3 5.5's also getting the last updates, or is it only the U.S?
Hopefully these relatively small issues will be a thing of the past soon. I am planning on leaving my Z Ultra (qualcomm 800,
adreno 330) for this device and that says a lot I think of how much faith I have in it
:good:

I have definitely experience lags here and there during day to day usage but haven't really found them annoying to the point where it is impossible to use the device.
Sure, the phone could have been fitted with a slightly more powerful GPU but overall the pros outweigh the cons. Only thing left is how commited Alcatel is with regards to software updates.
Power Users should definitely stay way. However, I have no qualms recommending this phone to anyone who is looking for big screen multimedia mobile device on a budget.

Thanks for your answer. A guy at Youtube said that after a couple of updates he received from Alcatel the phone performs much better, thus implying it is not a hardware issue, but a software one. He reported a perfectly lag free i3, with maybe once in a while a minor hiccup. Did you get any of those updates yet and if so, what is the difference in performance lag wise?

We have had only one update , that has resulted in a minor improvement in the UI response. Remember, the phone is still on 5.0.2 and that is responsible for the lag to a large extent. Plus - at the end of the day, its a 1.5 Ghz quad core with 2 GB RAM - The performance will be limited to whatever that means. If you are a power user , need a phone for an year or so, and are spending $250 for the Idol3 - you might want to see if you can score a OnePlus One 16GB for the same price. From a sheer performance perspective, it will come out ahead owing to a faster processor and more RAM . There are other drawbacks , that you should consider of course.

Thanks for your insight. The thing is that the i3 runs almost an all Vanilla Android, whereas other heavier skinned phones with the same cpu run perfectly fine, no hiccups either. Mind you, 33000 in Antutu is quite substantial and should be enough to run the i3 flawlessly. I guess you're on point by saying it's still on 5.0.2 and that is probably the main culprit. Hopefully Alcatel will tackle the issue soon, then they truly have a device they can be proud of for 100%, something the bigger brands and their "flagships" can learn from, imo. Did you see any improvement after the update?

My big issue was scroll lag that was in every browser, any page that had those menu overlays would stutter like a mofo. After the update it largely fixed it but still left stutter in ad laden pages. Once I installed Adguard my browsers became butter smooth. The Adreno 405 pushing 1080p res isn't doing well in 3D demanding games... if you need a phone for that get Zen2.

Thanks for the heads up. I just installed Adguard for the lulz on my old Samsung S3, quite nifty. I think the i3 will continue to impress and possibly get even better with coming updates.

Why on earth does your thread require I be in XDA 2015 theme to view it when none of the other threads do?

Good question. Probably because this thread is made of pure win

My guess is the idol using more of the 1ghz CPU to run a little cooler and save power, and when it is slow to switch to the 1.5ghz CPU is when we experience lag. Kind of like your using a 1ghz quad core phone. The idol has been proven to run cooler than its other 615 brothers, so it may be set to run on the slow CPU more.

It will definitely get better if they ever release 5.1.1. I'm not holding my breath.

I am already on the latest update, there is slight ( not sure if placebo ) improvement when scrolling web pages with mulitple images. Overall, I think it is fine unless you are power user.

Anymore input from users? What is your experience between before and after the update regarding to smoothness?

I found enabling gpu rendering for 2d made the phone run a lot smoother.
I was barely able to view this forum on it now I can scroll up and down and its buttery smooth (with the occasional hiccup here and there)

Changing default keyboard for Fleksy fixed all for me
Sent from my 6045Y using xda-developers.com, powered by appyet.com

Funny, I love that keyboard. Fleksy all the way, looks really clean too!

Try clearing your cache and/or doing a factory reset. Worked for me after the update slowed me down a little

no more lag since 10 06 update, this phone is finally totally great

When was it released? Is there a changelog?

there was a changelog when i got it, it's about stagefright and stuff