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Have any of the OEMs thought about aquiring LauncherPro?

Hey guys,
My biggest problem in Android has always been UI lag and jerkiness. For a touchscreen device, it's absolutely crucial that response to finger input is instantaneous and snappy. I still haven't used a dual core device, but I've never seen an android device achieve the level of responsiveness of the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4.
I'm not saying I prefer the iPhones, just that they are the gold standard for scrolling, pinch-to-zoom and user interface responsiveness. I'm wondering why this is. I don't think it's a hardware issue, because LauncherPro is as smooth as the iPhone's homescreens even on a 600mhz processor.
So my question is:
Why can't phone manufacturers achieve consistent smoothness in their custom UIs? I'm referring specifically to Touchwiz and Sense - both the Galaxy S and Desire HD (and Incredible S) suffer from a bit of stuttering jerkiness. Why won't one of them just buy Launcherpro? What kinda technique are the launcherpro guys using to make their launcher so much better?
Why is the Android experience generally less smooth than the iPhone of WP7? This isn't to invite fanboyism or flaming, just a general question - I think even the most ardent Android supporter should be able to admit that Android is less smooth
cheers
zuka

scroll stutter

Why is the scroll stutter in sensation or in Android in general? WM7 or iPhone has it smooth from their first phone release.. is it something to do with screen refresh rate? Or its more OS related? Dont tell me that your android is smooth as hell..
For example when i scroll the app drawer or the settings page, i see stutter. I admit that some places (in some ROM) its smooth but most places its not. For instance, if you pan photos, its smooth.. but you scroll settings it stutters.
From a noob perspective i am guessing iphone handles "everything" like a image.. so scrolling, zooming, panning is smooth like we do on photos.. and i guess android renders as text or something else... just my wild stupid guess..
And, is there a way to fix this? or the android OS needs to be re-written? I am upset because sensation is much higher configuration than iphone 3gs. But the stutter present in sensation (even with any ROM) is not in 3gs. So i dont beleive its hardware..
Is it the screen and the capacity touch technique used by apple? i saw one video where the iphone screen is performed almost 99% close to maximum touch accuracy and sensitivity than any other phones..
see the video below..
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/moto-touchscreen-comparison-recruits-robotic-implements-for-heig/
so what do you developers think?
1) Touch screen itself
2) capacitive touch technique / code used by apple
3) screen refresh rate
4) GPU rendering
5) the way OS handles the screen and images
I cant think anything else from my noob brain.. but you developers can.. anything can be done to fix this? From OS perspective.. not like my 'contacts' scroll smooth but not the browser?!

its a matter of display, its well known fact that iFail has top notch displays, whats on the other hand, basically the only possitive fact on that thing. So yes it is Apple's screen, same goes for iPad. Btw as for WP7, i own HD7 and its even worse then old Touch Cruise

shammanCZ said:
its a matter of display, its well known fact that iFail has top notch displays, whats on the other hand, basically the only possitive fact on that thing. So yes it is Apple's screen, same goes for iPad. Btw as for WP7, i own HD7 and its even worse then old Touch Cruise
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If its all about display, how come cheap replacement display units from online can achieve the same thing in iPhone?
It got a be something else...

It's because of hardware acceleration. Too lazy to explain it now
Swyped from my HTC Sensation

iPhone uses the graphics processor to handle everything, not just games/videos/flash. The whole front end (UI) uses the GPU (graphics processor) in order to make everything look smooth. In a way, this is sort of a limitation of android. Hopefully Ice Cream Sandwich fixes it (it is rumoured to).

Bernardos70 said:
iPhone uses the graphics processor to handle everything, not just games/videos/flash. The whole front end (UI) uses the GPU (graphics processor) in order to make everything look smooth. In a way, this is sort of a limitation of android. Hopefully Ice Cream Sandwich fixes it (it is rumoured to).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
idavid_ said:
It's because of hardware acceleration. Too lazy to explain it now
Swyped from my HTC Sensation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Had to disagree. If its GPU rendering why the scroll is smooth in gallary? why not in other text related lists? Android uses GPU only in image and videos?

Im going to take a guess here but i think its to do with hardware acceleration, coding infact of the operating system like apple code all their interfaces to be bosted from the gpu, however with android i would say that not everything is coded to run with the gpu and actually id say there isn't anything but if someone could list the support for what is that would help. From what i can find only things like the internet browser and games are in sync with cpu and gpu.

Maybe it's not only related to GPU acceleration because I'm running InsertCoin 2.2.2 ROM and ADWLauncher EX. With the stock kernel that comes with IC 2.2.2 the appdrawer and pretty much everything else (with some exceptions) is "iPhone-smooth" but when I tried the Unity 7.0 kernel I saw much more stuttering.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that Android is multi-tasking, real multi-tasking that is. iOS and WP7 (I think, haven't touched it in forever cause it's complete trash) do some save-state multi-tasking crap. Should scrolling be affected by this? I don't think performance should ever be sacrificed. But I think a lot of stuttering in the Android UI comes from it thinking about so many things at once.

I think the gallery is hardware accelerated.
Some things are, some things aren't. Comparison for ya: use Opera then Use the stock browser. Opera is hardware accelerated (uses GPU for rendering). See how smooth it is? Now use the stock browser and compare.
Don't quote me on this, but I'm quite sure that is one of the biggies ICS is supposed to fix.
Somehow, I think Samsung has implemented hardware acceleration for the Browser on their Galaxy S and S II line of phones. This was first noticeable when the Galaxy S got upgraded from Eclair to Froyo: the browser was much smoother (albeit glitchier.... mind you, these don't necessarily go hand in hand, you can certainly make a hardware accelerated browser without the glitches).
I think that's as far as that goes. Try a hardware accelerated video player like diceplayer (free 14 day trial in the market). Try playing a 720p or even 1080p video with it. It'll be smooth. Now go into options and change the renderer to software. Now it won't be hardware accelerated. And it'll be a slideshow.

It seems to me more of an issue of software optimization. Try scrolling with Sense 3.0 and then compare it to a sense-less rom, completely different. And then things change again depending on which launcher you choose to use. The Sensation's hardware is completely capable of buttery-smooth scrolling, it's just a matter of time till developers iron out the small kinks in their roms.

it looks like everyone thinks GPU is the reason for ios smooth scrolling. well, do you really think the first iphone released in 2007 has a powerful GPU and used for everything ios does? the 2007 first iphone does the scrolling smooth and the 2011 sensation cannot. i strongly believe its not the hardware!!! i guess there something wrong in the basics and google let samsung and htc finding their own solutions for some of the apps they create on top of android.
something else is wrong and since the users are not greatly concerned (or expressed) about this, this is not fixed yet. I wish and hope ICS fix this issue somehow..

I have been trying to find additional information about this issue and the truth is that this is the only thread that people have actually started to talk about it. If i got this right you are refering to the periodic stutter within scrolling in android and not any asynchronous glitches. Even though many blame GPUs, non HW acc. interfaces and so on, to me its a clear cut situation of refresh rates/fps clashes. Its the same scenario of outputing a 24fps movie to 60Hz monitor where ull get the same kind of periodic stutter (something almost eliminated when u switch to 50Hz). Its got nothing to do with wether the monitor is CRT or LCD, it all comes down to refresh rate vs fps. Ive clearly seen that on my O2x where, hdmi mirroring (on a 60Hz FullHD TV) is perfectly fluent while there are some visible periodic stutters everywhere within the android enviroment, except 3D applications. And what do you know.. The O2X's display has a 72Hz refresh rate! Isnt there anywhere within the android OS where devs/users can have a go with this? Changing the ' transmiting' fps of the whole OS? Let me know what u think sundar

[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
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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

Getting Jelly Bean Buttery Smooth on the Infinity

Hi All,
Having owned a Galaxy Nexus, and getting Jelly Bean some time ago, I was expecting a lot more from Jelly Bean on the Infinity when it came to interface fluidity. My Galaxy Nexus was a lot smoother - transitions and the notification menu especially.
But then I started to notice - in apps - the notification menu is actually very smooth, but not at the home screen. All transitions were still very slow however.
I had quite a bit of a play around and nothing seemed to improve the performance. Then I think I found something, and I want some people to sanity check me. I use Apex launcher (performance was still just as slow with the default launcher). In it's options, you can disable wallpaper completely (which you cannot do on the default launcher).
When I do this...I finally get the greatly improved fluidity I was expecting. It's not perfect, but the difference is huge.
Is anyone else able to confirm this? It seems strange. I was not using live wallpapers...just a static wallpaper. How much difference can a wallpaper make?

High resolution wallpaper can slow down performances due to pictures taking space on the RAM. Thus high definition pictures can take quite a bit of data ~10MB. Though that doesn't seem to be a lot...

Well I have tried using a smaller image, but I expect Android is up-scaling it to full resolution. The anmation was much less smooth. Once I disabled the wallpaper again, animations were smooth again.
Does anyone else use Apex, or a launcher that can disable the wallpaper to test this?

I just use a 1x1 pixel of black, pretty much "removes" the need to draw the wallpaper.

androidxen said:
I just use a 1x1 pixel of black, pretty much "removes" the need to draw the wallpaper.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you notice a perceivable improvement in performance as a result of using that wallpaper? It seems likely that Android will stretch that 1x1 pixel out to fill a large canvas of black, which may not give any performance increase so I would be interested to know.
I would also like to know if I am the only one noticing this difference? Maybe no one else really cares about it except for me!

I use Apex Launcher Pro. I notice no difference whether I'm using wallpaper or not. Everything seems nice and smooth to me.

I would say you shouldn't expect to much from the Infinity. The Nexus 7, being a Nexus device, will always be faster than any other devices out there. The Infinity with it lousy flash storage and a full HD screen will never be able to catch up with the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 in terms of speed and fluidity.

huy_lonewolf said:
I would say you shouldn't expect to much from the Infinity. The Nexus 7, being a Nexus device, will always be faster than any other devices out there. The Infinity with it lousy flash storage and a full HD screen will never be able to catch up with the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7 in terms of speed and fluidity.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I somewhat agree...it is certainly pushing a lot of pixels. So my expectations have not been too high. In fact, I have really been pleasantly surprised. However - for the most part - I don't believe the I/O limitations should be affecting this tablet that much. Obviously there will be some effect...the same issues I was seeing before are still present...but I still do expect some improvement from JB.
That said...I am actually seeing it...but only with the wallpaper disabled. This is what strikes me as odd...it is just a static background image...and it feels like a bug.
Maybe I should just keep it off and wait until Key Lime Pie?

Disabling unused apps and clearing their data helps a lot. If you cannot disable see if you can "uninstall updates" first after that you should be able to. If you're rooted like me you can disable even more stuff using Titanium BU.
The difference? Everything is loaded immediately on startup (i.e. no calender widget that takes 5 sec to show). Balanced mode feels like performance mode, I can go on.

rikc said:
Disabling unused apps and clearing their data helps a lot. If you cannot disable see if you can "uninstall updates" first after that you should be able to. If you're rooted like me you can disable even more stuff using Titanium BU.
The difference? Everything is loaded immediately on startup (i.e. no calender widget that takes 5 sec to show). Balanced mode feels like performance mode, I can go on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What benefit is clearing a disabled app's data? My typical method for disabling something is to "freeze" it with TiBU and skip the OS menus altogether. Is there some additional benefit I could gain by clearing the frozen app's data too?

I was one of the people having slowness issues with their device but a couple of days later i figured it out. I went into the settings - apps - running and cached apps list. My ram was down to 100MB at some points. The 1GB of ram doesnt seem to be enough but we need to make due with what we got. So i installed Autostarts and disabled all the startup apps and any other apps i dont need when i change wifi state and all that other useless stuff. Google+ would run almost every 2 seconds, Maps aswell. So i disabled those apps from running at bootup and such. Now my available RAM is at 400MB constantly and it is running crazy fast. Opening the recent apps list and clearing those apps is super fast now. Also disabled some of the animation effects that jelly bean puts in. I personally am more concerned with performance then quality.

I noticed every app has notifications turned on by default (settings/apps). I don't know if it matters but I've been turning it off on everything I don't use notifications with.

+1

GregAndo said:
I somewhat agree...it is certainly pushing a lot of pixels. So my expectations have not been too high. In fact, I have really been pleasantly surprised. However - for the most part - I don't believe the I/O limitations should be affecting this tablet that much. Obviously there will be some effect...the same issues I was seeing before are still present...but I still do expect some improvement from JB.
That said...I am actually seeing it...but only with the wallpaper disabled. This is what strikes me as odd...it is just a static background image...and it feels like a bug.
Maybe I should just keep it off and wait until Key Lime Pie?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I kinda laugh when I hear that it is pushing a lot of pixels so that's why it isn't smooth.... take the iPad 3 for example higher resolution, crappier specs and crappy iOS but it runs so smooth that it makes me want to trade in my infinite for it. I will have to jailbrake it to be able to do what I like but the experience will be better.... was just playing around with my friends iPad 3 and **** did I get me tinking.....
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using XDA Premium HD app

hit173 said:
I kinda laugh when I hear that it is pushing a lot of pixels so that's why it isn't smooth.... take the iPad 3 for example higher resolution, crappier specs and crappy iOS but it runs so smooth that it makes me want to trade in my infinite for it. I will have to jailbrake it to be able to do what I like but the experience will be better.... was just playing around with my friends iPad 3 and **** did I get me tinking.....
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dude, you should seriously do some homework on Anandtech to say that the iPad 3 has crappier specs. In term of SoCs and graphic performance, the A5X chip in the iPad 3 is the most powerful SoC on a tablet right now, even the upcoming Snapdragon S4 Pro is unable to compete with it. I don't have much love for Apple, but we need to consider facts. If you consider raw computing power, Tegra 3 is even behind the iPad 2. In order to drive that many pixels on the iPad 3, Apple had to include a humongous SoC as well as much bigger battery, which explains why the iPad 3 is thicker and takes longer to charge. For your information, Tegra 3 is still stuck with single-channel memory while the rest of the industry have moved on to dual-channel memory early this year (look at Snapdragon S4, Exynos 4, OMAP 4)
As much as I dislike the current situation, there is not much of a competition going on right now with SoC. Currently, on the tablet front, Apple has the most powerful SoC on the market (A5X). On the phone side, the A6 chip is also the most powerful SoC on a phone as well. I am severely disappointed at Qualcomm and nVidia for failing behind Apple so far on this front. Not much is known about Tegra 4, but they'd better bring some Kepler to it, otherwise nVidia will become irrelevant.

Is this for real? [Android from my personal perspective]

Hi there,
I have been an avid iOS user since it came out in 2007. I owned an iPad 2 for long time and was very used to its speed. Surfing was really fun because scrolling was as soft as cutting through butter. I was thinking that this is how surfing was meant in the first place. Hence the iPad redefined "surfing" for me. I rarely used my Laptop after the iPad.
And... well, recently I bought the new Nexus 7 to see how far Android has gone. I never owned an Android device before. But i occasionally tested it over the years. My overall impression was, that it's too laggy. Even though today's android devices have strong hardware specs. It was laggy.
But I thought to myself: Google had 5 years to tune android. When I got the Nexus 7 I was hoping to get a fluent experience that I was used to from my iPad 2.
But no. One of the first things I did was to install Adobe Reader, because the main purpose was reading PDFs on the Nexus besides surfing. I was shocked. It was sluggish and really laggy. Even though the device had 2 GB of Ram and a high-speed CPU? I compared it to my 2 years old iPhone 4S. I installed the iOS version of Adobe reader and compared it to the nexus. It was fun to scroll. No, I mean it. After seeing it on the Nexus 7 it was great to have the speedy iOS below my finger tips. Then I spent several hours on searching for other PDF readers. I tried out many. Only a few had a considerably good speed. But those also had many downsides. Either they were really ugly or didn't provide important functions like bookmarks. Eventually I gave up and stuck to Adobe reader. What a miserable fail.
Surfing on the Nexus wasn't fun either. Chrome is even more sluggish. Not comparable to Safari on the iPad. Remember when I wrote that I put my Laptop aside in the most cases when I first got the iPad? In this case there was no urge to do so. Surfing was a pain.
I installed the AOSP browser. It was way better than Chrome considering speed and scrolling/zooming. But it had bugs on non root 4.3. The control elements disappeared regularly. And, yes, it wasn't beautiful.
How is this possible? Is this real? How come the Nexus fails at its two most important tasks? Surfing and reading PDFs?
In my eyes Google has failed. I gave them 5 years to make up their mistakes. They ended up making a device, that's behind my iPhone 4S considering the real life usage speed.
I don't care much about the specs. If it runs smooth, it's good. If not, it's not. My iPhone 4S has 512 MB of RAM and runs smoother than Google's state of the art device.
Ok, now I want to know your opinion about this matter. Did I do something wrong by having the same expectations that were set as standard for me by using an iPad?

ABBCC11 said:
Hi there,
I have been an avid iOS user since it came out in 2007. I owned an iPad 2 for long time and was very used to its speed. Surfing was really fun because scrolling was as soft as cutting through butter. I was thinking that this is how surfing was meant in the first place. Hence the iPad redefined "surfing" for me. I rarely used my Laptop after the iPad.
And... well, recently I bought the new Nexus 7 to see how far Android has gone. I never owned an Android device before. But i occasionally tested it over the years. My overall impression was, that it's too laggy. Even though today's android devices have strong hardware specs. It was laggy.
But I thought to myself: Google had 5 years to tune android. When I got the Nexus 7 I was hoping to get a fluent experience that I was used to from my iPad 2.
But no. One of the first things I did was to install Adobe Reader, because the main purpose was reading PDFs on the Nexus besides surfing. I was shocked. It was sluggish and really laggy. Even though the device had 2 GB of Ram and a high-speed CPU? I compared it to my 2 years old iPhone 4S. I installed the iOS version of Adobe reader and compared it to the nexus. It was fun to scroll. No, I mean it. After seeing it on the Nexus 7 it was great to have the speedy iOS below my finger tips. Then I spent several hours on searching for other PDF readers. I tried out many. Only a few had a considerably good speed. But those also had many downsides. Either they were really ugly or didn't provide important functions like bookmarks. Eventually I gave up and stuck to Adobe reader. What a miserable fail.
Surfing on the Nexus wasn't fun either. Chrome is even more sluggish. Not comparable to Safari on the iPad. Remember when I wrote that I put my Laptop aside in the most cases when I first got the iPad? In this case there was no urge to do so. Surfing was a pain.
I installed the AOSP browser. It was way better than Chrome considering speed and scrolling/zooming. But it had bugs on non root 4.3. The control elements disappeared regularly. And, yes, it wasn't beautiful.
How is this possible? Is this real? How come the Nexus fails at its two most important tasks? Surfing and reading PDFs?
In my eyes Google has failed. I gave them 5 years to make up their mistakes. They ended up making a device, that's behind my iPhone 4S considering the real life usage speed.
I don't care much about the specs. If it runs smooth, it's good. If not, it's not. My iPhone 4S has 512 MB of RAM and runs smoother than Google's state of the art device.
Ok, now I want to know your opinion about this matter. Did I do something wrong by having the same expectations that were set as standard for me by using an iPad?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure what you want. Are you asking a question?
As for your observations, I have a Nexus 7 and a Galaxy Note 8, as well as an iPad 2. I don't have the same experience that you describe even with the nexus 7 stock.
In terms of comparing the devices, they don't even come close. The iPad is an overpriced, crippled Kindle.
There are so many things that an Android based device can do that iOS device will never LET you do, even if you jailbreak.
Use the device you like ... it's as simple as that.

quattros said:
I'm not sure what you want. Are you asking a question?
As for your observations, I have a Nexus 7 and a Galaxy Note 8, as well as an iPad 2. I don't have the same experience that you describe even with the nexus 7 stock.
In terms of comparing the devices, they don't even come close. The iPad is an overpriced, crippled Kindle.
There are so many things that an Android based device can do that iOS device will never LET you do, even if you jailbreak.
Use the device you like ... it's as simple as that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here i have an ipad mini and a Note 2 and I even Use my Note more often then the ipad to surf the web etc...
The Android system is so more Open and has much more to offer...
The iPad is like a overpriced Browser for the Couch...
Sent from my Note 2

Ok, sorry guys. Let's stick to the following two questions:
1. Safari on iPad is smoother than any Android browser out there. Do you agree? Yes/No? Why not?
2. There is no good PDF reader for Android. They are all sluggish and/or don't provide good interface and/or bookmarks functionality. Do you agree? Yes/No? Why not?
What browser do you use on your note 2?

ABBCC11 said:
Ok, sorry guys. Let's stick to the following two questions:
1. Safari on iPad is smoother than any Android browser out there. Do you agree? Yes/No? Why not?
2. There is no good PDF reader for Android. They are all sluggish and/or don't provide good interface and/or bookmarks functionality. Do you agree? Yes/No? Why not?
What browser do you use on your note 2?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check out Dolphin browser.
Frankly I've seen ios based devices be sluggish / have crappy apps / not work right / fail just as much as any other device ... they're not made with fairy dust.

Well, I am not sure if this is intentional, but the tone you use is that of a biased fan, not of a person that wishes to hold an objective discussion.
Let's start from the beginning: Google does not manufacture every Android device. They do not manufacture your Nexus 7 (ASUS does), and they do not tinker their OS specifically for a particular device. Google release their code, and then manufacturers are tasked to implement it as they see fit. The issue at hand here is that Google's developers do not really have a 'base minimum' architecture with which to work. When they develop Android they have to take into account that their code will be run by 256MB as well as 3GB RAM devices. Or from single-core A7 700MhZ devices all the way to quad-core beasts. By default, it is hard to find the right balance. The end result is that Android is not designed/catered for a particular architecture.
By comparison, Apple works with specific architectures, which they were even involved in designing. They have a small handful devices to support, and they can make sure that things work smoothly from one device to another.
Objectively, I agree that iOS is more stable, fluid and responsive on the same hardware compared to an Android device of the same specifications. Of course, the problem here is that even with the same specification, due to different Android implementations you could have Android devices performing vastly differently. The beast in question here is complexity.
Nexus 7 is a decent device, but it is far from being high-end in Android. Given that Android seems to use more resources than iOS (in terms of RAM, but also in terms of CPU/GPU requirements -- and this is a direct consequence of having to work for a huge range of different architectures), it seems to me that almost no Android devices can offer you indisputably superior stability, fluidity and responsiveness. But it is hard to understand why Android can be 'slow'. For example, HTC One S overclocked running custom ROMs can be blazing fast. I would say almost, if not even better than (in certain situations) any iPhone device. Then, on the other hand, the Sony Xperia T which has the same CPU as the HTC One S is a very slow device, with many hangs and freezes with its stock ROM. The reason is different optimization, and the main culprit behind any discrepancies in performance for Android.
Apple's iPhone 'works out of the box'. It is stable, fluid and responsive. For the average user, I can completely understand why this is beneficial. To get the most out of Android, you are on the right way as there are many intelligent and hard-working people around here who work with particular devices trying to get the most out of them. I am certain that there is the right ROM + Kernel configuration for you out there that will help you get the most out of your Nexus 7.
With that said however, keep an eye on the new Spandragon 800 and Mediatek octacore devices. We are already seeing some incredibly powerful Android phones that I really believe you will find much faster on every account than the best iPhone out there right now.

grcd said:
Well, I am not sure if this is intentional, but the tone you use is that of a biased fan, not of a person that wishes to hold an objective discussion.
Let's start from the beginning: Google does not manufacture every Android device. They do not manufacture your Nexus 7 (ASUS does), and they do not tinker their OS specifically for a particular device. Google release their code, and then manufacturers are tasked to implement it as they see fit. The issue at hand here is that Google's developers do not really have a 'base minimum' architecture with which to work. When they develop Android they have to take into account that their code will be run by 256MB as well as 3GB RAM devices. Or from single-core A7 700MhZ devices all the way to quad-core beasts. By default, it is hard to find the right balance. The end result is that Android is not designed/catered for a particular architecture.
By comparison, Apple works with specific architectures, which they were even involved in designing. They have a small handful devices to support, and they can make sure that things work smoothly from one device to another.
Objectively, I agree that iOS is more stable, fluid and responsive on the same hardware compared to an Android device of the same specifications. Of course, the problem here is that even with the same specification, due to different Android implementations you could have Android devices performing vastly differently. The beast in question here is complexity.
Nexus 7 is a decent device, but it is far from being high-end in Android. Given that Android seems to use more resources than iOS (in terms of RAM, but also in terms of CPU/GPU requirements -- and this is a direct consequence of having to work for a huge range of different architectures), it seems to me that almost no Android devices can offer you indisputably superior stability, fluidity and responsiveness. But it is hard to understand why Android can be 'slow'. For example, HTC One S overclocked running custom ROMs can be blazing fast. I would say almost, if not even better than (in certain situations) any iPhone device. Then, on the other hand, the Sony Xperia T which has the same CPU as the HTC One S is a very slow device, with many hangs and freezes with its stock ROM. The reason is different optimization, and the main culprit behind any discrepancies in performance for Android.
Apple's iPhone 'works out of the box'. It is stable, fluid and responsive. For the average user, I can completely understand why this is beneficial. To get the most out of Android, you are on the right way as there are many intelligent and hard-working people around here who work with particular devices trying to get the most out of them. I am certain that there is the right ROM + Kernel configuration for you out there that will help you get the most out of your Nexus 7.
With that said however, keep an eye on the new Spandragon 800 and Mediatek octacore devices. We are already seeing some incredibly powerful Android phones that I really believe you will find much faster on every account than the best iPhone out there right now.
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Good, I've never paid attention to those.

I think it is not the hardware, but the software that is important.
No doubt the Nexus 7 has enough power to deliver a smooth browsing and PDF reading experience (see AOSP browser for example).
But the sluggish apps make you have no fun with the device. There is no decent PDF reader out there. Chrome is slow and AOSP is hard to install on non root devices.

Try dolphin 10 with jetpack browsing and ezpdf pro for pdfs.

mashed_ash said:
Try dolphin 10 with jetpack browsing and ezpdf pro for pdfs.
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Big agreement on Dolphin 10 with jetpack. Chrome and firefox are laggy, Stock browser stinks too.
Also agree w/ summary by 'grcd' above re: different hardware implementations using a stock OS. Take-away: Find the OEMs who are most responsive / most attentive / focused on quality and user experience. If you're a business user - find those that cater to business. If you only care about consumer media / gaming - the world is your oyster, eat it at your peril.
I work at the largest networking company in the world, and only two device vendors are 'recommended' buys for BYOD: Apple and Samsung... read between the lines.
FWIW:
My experience with Android (3 devices since 2.x) - on phones, 'multi-tasking' takes away from core phone functionality that should ALWAYS be prioritized. Phone functions should preempt all other actions in the device, every time, no exceptions. When i want to dial a number or respond to an incoming call, every other process had better bail / suspend / hibernate, whatever it takes to get out of the way. Think fire truck and heavy traffic - pull right / left and stop to get out of the way.
On tablets not used as phones, there should simply be consistency of operation, smoothness of interaction, it should feel elegant. Apple wins this hands down from what I've seen. I've never owned an apple product for daily use, and that still comes across loud and clear.
20 years in IT - I'm a tech geek by choice, love to fiddle with the bits... but starting to lean to less distraction with the apple hardware/software package. Thinking 'more do... less fiddle'.
Biggest apple gripes off topic: arbitrary cellular download limits (100MB in iOS 7), no SD/MicroSD, no USB, no Flash... hmmm, can I really live with that. May have to try one out for a couple of weeks.
happy computing!

I've always preferred the way Android devices scroll. On iOS you have to swipe a lot more to scroll through a page, where on Android one fast swipe will keep scrolling. iOS also has that annoying overscroll feature where the page keeps scrolling and then bounces back. I find that annoying as you have to wait for the bounce back to stop before you can start reading the page.
If you are ok with the limitations of iOS, nobody is stopping you from using it. For me personally I'd rather put up with a bit of lag if it means I get more features.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 4

2 troll points for effort but that's it.

I've also noticed that pdf and office software in general is very sluggish when compared to iOS. Browsing definitely isn't as smooth as well. Regardless, iOS 7 killed any love I had left for my iPad, so it looks like I'm on to a Windows tablet in the near future.

On an overclocked note 2, running a debloated ROM whips an iphone's speeds, coming from using both. Adobe reader is just slow by itself.
Sent from carbon note 2 on XDA premium app

I find it odd that no one's mentioned Naked Browser or Easy Browser!?
I use Naked Browser and it's very fast, no lags. Very efficient browser, very small RAM usage.
Only downside for some ppl would be the GUI, it's not meant to be pretty.