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

Hi! Reading around the web I've found out that Android still lacks of hardware acceleration in the windows' contents (enabled for compositing) and so does, of course, the browser (in the specific)! This is why we have not an as smooth as iPhone scrolling/zooming! Here an interesting article:
http://connect-utb.com/index.php?op...z-cpu-is-enough&catid=36:technology&Itemid=67
And here is a question made to a developer by an AndroidCommunity user:
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f41/the-hardware-acceleration-question-8963/index2.html
So my question is: Will be possible to have hw acceleration (also on cooked roms, doesn't matter) in the near future? I still can't understand why, for example, my Hero cannot handle games like NOVA altough has a dedicated GPU and its CPU is quite superior to the iPhone 3G's one! While on this one the game runs smoothly! My supposition was that these games are not even developed thinking about Android...They only are miserable portings from iPhone! Please tell me that one day (maybe with 3.0) will be possible to have Flash 10.1, great 3D (or at least comparable to 3G) and COMPLETE acceleration in Android on my Hero and other MSM 7XXX devices (dream, magic ecc.) I'm really thinking of selling my Hero to buy something like a Milestone (Droid in US) or a Liquid (not sure about this one)...Thanks in advance

Surely they did this in an attempt to save battery life?
Maybe that's where OpenCL comes in?

Well I don't know how much hardware acceleration can damage battery life...I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen on other devices with iOS or WinMo where hw acc. is enabled And battery lasts normally!
About OpenCL I'm not sure it has something to do with graphics enhancements! Maybe it's used to accelerate computational stuff like physics...Or, at least, this is what I can read from here (it uses GPU to enhance NON graphical computing):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL
What I'm talking about is to enable acceleration in UI and browser (as well as has been done with 3D graphics and videos with SnapDragon and Cortex A8) like iPhone did! And I think this wouldn't decrease so much battery life! I prefer to have a functional and smooth browser more than save 1-2 hours of battery life! IMHO! Thanks to have answered my question

Just a little up! Thanks!

There is no hope for the msm72xx. Qualcomm or Htc or both of them are complete douches to us power users that want the max out of our devices. They do not provide efficient graphics drivers hence the horrible graphics performance. This is highly unlikely to change in the future and it seems to me that in order to compensate for sluggish graphic performance, they are upping the processor speed as seen by the recent slew of snapdragon 1ghz which also underperforms due to lack of proper drivers.

Gosh... This means that not even Google took care of developing proper drivers fot ITS OWN DEVICE! This is pretty bad...And means that Android could be a "poor" OS because of the laziness of some developer...I'm wondering if is convenient to buy an Acer Liquid (very low price here! And I can't afford a N1 or a Desire) or an iPhone 3G at all! Games like NOVA run GREAT on both of them...And I'd really want a smooth browser...But I'm pretty sure on one thing: My Hero needs to be replaced It made me too much disappointment...
Thanks for your answer

Yes your hero is an outdated mid range device that needs to be replaced...i would suggest a samsung galaxy S or any of its variants.

Thanks but...Who's going to give me the money to do that? XD I can't afford a Galaxy S (549€ here!) while an Acer Liquid (with the same performance of a N1 and I know what I'm saying ) is WAY more affordable (299€! Almost half of the Galaxy S price!).

The core count dilemma

I had an iPhone 3GS. After I lost it now I have a HTC Desire.
My contract is expiring in a few months time and looking for another phone that will last me another 2 years. If I am going to use the phone for another 2 years, the hardware has to be up to the task. However I have problem with the latest crop of dual cores Android phones.
- LG Optimus 2x (despise the fake iPhone UI)
- Samsung Galaxy S II (despise the fake iPhone UI)
- Motorola Atrix (not available here)
- HTC Sensation (considering the Incredible S, not sure if it is rootable)
I could probably use a third party home screen for the Korean phones, I have tried most of them out there, IMO none of them are perfect. Zeam is not buggy, but doesn't scroll very smooth. Launcher Pro is very smooth, but occasionally pause to re cache (keep in memory doesn't quite work). ADW's elastic effect (so is Launcher Pro's) sometimes doesn't show up. IMO their features are superior in quantity but not in quality compared to vanilla Android or HTC's Sense.
On my Desire the AOSP ROMs tends to not fully utilise the hardware like the camera. I hope there are good AOSP ROM for them.
The phones that actually attracted me are:
- HTC Desire Z (has keyboard)
- SE Xperia Arc / Pro (Gigantic screen and pretty / has keyboards)
- Nexus S (I can imagine using it unrooted)
However they being all single core are kind of a side step from what i have now and worry they might get a little long in the tooth.
I considered the iPhone 5, on most aspect iPhone 4 is very nice to me, but it doesn't allow me to do simple things like USB file transfer, which is important to me. I also have a few Linux PC that doesn't do iTunes.
Thoughts?

There's no dilemma; buying a single-core in 2011 is downright stupid.

I bet my thunderbolt will give those dual core phones a run for there money...

liquid0624 said:
I bet my thunderbolt will give those dual core phones a run for there money...
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other than the LTE speed, it can't touch a dual core. thats so stupid that its beyond comprehension. do you also prefer a single core pentium4 over an i7?

lude219 said:
There's no dilemma; buying a single-core in 2011 is downright stupid.
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I wouldn't say it's stupid. Single-core devices will be pushed downmarket quickly and be more accessible. But I agree, anyone who tells me that a single-phone is a range-topping device is just trying to get a laugh

theomega said:
I wouldn't say it's stupid. Single-core devices will be pushed downmarket quickly and be more accessible. But I agree, anyone who tells me that a single-phone is a range-topping device is just trying to get a laugh
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I dont think economy of scales has anything to do with single or dual cores, but rather that's the natural progression of electronics. Every handset will go down eventually toward their End-of-Life (EOL) cycle before they're replaced with newer ones.

lude219 said:
other than the LTE speed, it can't touch a dual core. thats so stupid that its beyond comprehension. do you also prefer a single core pentium4 over an i7?
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Dude you don't have to be offensive.
Besides the gap between a dual and single core snapdragon is no where near between a processor today and one from a decade ago.
I don't play games, but I expect smooth UI. So the hardware is only part of the equation. As much as I like my Desire it is not as smooth as an iPhone 4 which is similarly spec'ed.
But if a dual core is what it takes to get that kind of smoothness on Android I'll pay for it. But once I paid for it I expect it to deliver as a package and not bogged down by some third rate software. Which is why I considered the Nexus S, which is as clean as it gets. The new Xperia line seems not bad from what I have seen even though they are single core.
Although the dual core Xperia will be a killer. But SE's history of software update may be a cause for concern.

lude219 said:
I dont think economy of scales has anything to do with single or dual cores, but rather that's the natural progression of electronics. Every handset will go down eventually toward their End-of-Life (EOL) cycle before they're replaced with newer ones.
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We are in agreement but thats not what I meant to suggest lol. Having dual-core phones at the subsidized $200-300USD top end will force carriers/manufacturers to price down single-core devices to occupy lower price points regardless of how competitive they are on performance.
OP - Looking at all the hands-ons lately with the Atrix, G2x, SGS2, etc. it seems like having 2 cores amounts to a fairly dramatic difference in smoothness of the UI. I guess the question is what constitutes "smooth enough"

[Q] Is a dual-core Windows Phone coming this year?

I thought one of the main disadvantages of WP7 has been inferior hardware.
For the original release Microsoft only supported the old snapdragon CPU with 1Ghz and Adreno 200.
Now for Mango, they did obviously update their support
for 8X55 and 7X30.
None of those are actually dualcore SoC's.
How are they going to keep up with Android if they continue offering inferior hardware specs? Or did I miss something?

I wish they do relase one which does. but they dont need dual core for the os so why burden the battery

"inferior hardware"
wow really?
dude, 1ghz, on a phone, thats everything else but inferior
it may be the truth that andoid is goin to need dual cores to give users a good looking and fluid experience, but windows phone is not.
no matter what handset you get, its working faaaast. no lags, no hickups, almost no loading times (and with mango its getting better)
so why would windows phone need it ?

However I would really like to have dual core phone,jut like to think that I have one of the fastest phones. But its true windows os is so smooth it wont make a perfermonce differnece, only thing that can help is using NAND memory instead of SD. Howver I want a better GPU so we can play faster games with good FPS and better quality, not saying that the quality is poor atm its great but it can always improve.

webwalk® said:
"inferior hardware"
wow really?
dude, 1ghz, on a phone, thats everything else but inferior
it may be the truth that andoid is goin to need dual cores to give users a good looking and fluid experience, but windows phone is not.
no matter what handset you get, its working faaaast. no lags, no hickups, almost no loading times (and with mango its getting better)
so why would windows phone need it ?
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I agree with you wholeheartedly, but the problem is it's not about "why would WP need it".
The average consumer, who is used to buying PCs based on their specs, will look at an Android phone and a WP and compare them. If they don't know the difference between the two OS then they'll be looking at the specs.
What do you think they're going to choose..?

Casey_boy said:
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but the problem is it's not about "why would WP need it".
The average consumer, who is used to buying PCs based on their specs, will look at an Android phone and a WP and compare them. If they don't know the difference between the two OS then they'll be looking at the specs.
What do you think they're going to choose..?
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to be frank, the average customer knows a superficial knowledge of cell phones...and many still market dumb phones as the approach for all user needs. Nokia has addressed the h/w issues ad nauseum, so it wouldn't surprise me if Nokia would be the first wp7 with a dual core. In fact, I would love to grab a Nokia phone...

i thought of your point too
its true the specs are taken in consideration
but currently im not aware of any device that stand out..
i think the average people would think
2x cores = 2x power needed = half the battery
battery is a major aspect
so still, why build a dual core if nothing is using it, besides the battery
like i said, android may be able to to make their os fast & fluid
but why cant they do it on the current specs
you simply dont need heavy processin unit on your mobile device, as long as you wont do heavy processin on the device. the phone wont need it, but the tablet does.
the average user is used to windows
the average user uses the phone for not much more then phone, text, surf, game.
last but not least, the price, i dont know much about dual core phones (do they already exists?) but double the cores, may raise the price by a lot.
this year we wont need no dual cores....

To be honest, I never really felt the need of such a powerful processor in a phone. What can you use it for apart from games with high graphics?
I'm sure opening office docs, web pages, utility apps, music...everything at once still won't slow down the processes. It's a phone guys. Not a desktop PC.
Many years ago, I had a 1.2 GHz CPU running windows XP, which in fact ran heavy programs without any lag. And today, our phones have 1GHz CPU running a phone OS and apps that hardly go above 50mb.
What's the need, seriously?

I don't care about dual core yet, but would like to see some higher end devices. All first gen releases were very generic.
Newer Gen CPU/GPU (dual core not necessary till things are coded for it)
High Quality Material/build
32GB or 64GB Internal ROM
Super AMOLED/next gen if avail
512MB RAM
Good Battery
Good Quality Optics (iPhone4 or better (like Nokia N8))
Thats all I want. Maybe a FFC just for ****s n' giggles, but thats not high on my priority list.

[email protected] said:
Now for Mango, they did obviously update their support
for 8X55 and 7X30.
None of those are actually dualcore SoC's.
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Well just like you said they have added support for new processors but neither of the new ones are dual core. We've heard rumors that ST-Ericsson will be supplying dual core chips for Nokia's Windows Phones but for now Qualcomm says they're the only WP7 manufacturer.
I don't doubt Windows Phone will see dual core support in the future. I have a feeling that Nokia won't be launching their Windows Phone alongside the others in September/October, but later in November or even December. That's when I think we'll see the first dual core Windows Phone. (Just speculation. No evidence for this.)

dtboos said:
I don't care about dual core yet, but would like to see some higher end devices. All first gen releases were very generic.
Newer Gen CPU/GPU (dual core not necessary till things are coded for it)
High Quality Material/build
32GB or 64GB Internal ROM
Super AMOLED/next gen if avail
512MB RAM
Good Battery
Good Quality Optics (iPhone4 or better (like Nokia N8))
Thats all I want. Maybe a FFC just for ****s n' giggles, but thats not high on my priority list.
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Well you just described Nokia N9 except for the screen ... only Sammy can put Super-AMOLED and the RAM is 768MB
PS. I though someone from Microsoft or Nokia I can't recall said that WP7 is already dual-core ready, so maybe it doesn't need new coding or I'm terribly wrong

kainy said:
Well you just described Nokia N9 except for the screen ... only Sammy can put Super-AMOLED and the RAM is 768MB
PS. I though someone from Microsoft or Nokia I can't recall said that WP7 is already dual-core ready, so maybe it doesn't need new coding or I'm terribly wrong
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Aye Why I know the phone I want is easily within reach. That would be more than powerful enough for the next couple years. This is also why I was excited about the Nokia deal because they have some excellent quality hardware & optics in some of their phones.

Android needs dual-core because the OS is so cluttered and filled with junk. WP7 phone have "inferior hardware" yet still run smoother than any Android phone would.

yea it should b strong

One Mini vs Nexus 4

Hi,
I know that such comparison may seem a little odd but after 3 solid years using iPod Touch as smartphone replacement I'm finally buying something new and I end up narrowing my choice to those two.
I would like to get some opinion/advice from actual users of One Mini as my sister has Nexus 4 and I played with it a little bit.
Basically it seems like Nexus 4 is just better but I'm still hestitating.
Pro Nexus 4:
- it's cheaper (I can get Nexus 4 unlocked in Poland for ~380 USD and One Mini for 470USD)
- way more powerful
- twice as much ram - I guess it's possibly a deal breaker - Is 1GB real problem in everyday use (e.g. multitasking Maps, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter and Instapaper)?
- stock android and updates! (I guess last update for HTC One Mini will be Android 4.4)
Pro One Mini:
- it's smaller! 4,7 is nice but I still find it a little bit too much for me.
- it's just beautiful
- aluminium better than glass
- Probably better battery life because Nexus 4 is apparently awful. Am I right?
- Probably better audio. I'm particularly interested in headphones jack audio quality as my iPod Touch was really good.
- LTE (though I guess I won't be using that much)
+ Is there something there I've omitted what would justify buying less powerful, ram lacking smartphone for almost $100 more?

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of battery life in a smartphone, especially if I understand you correctly that you haven't actually been using a smartphone for 3 years? An Ipod Touch has no cellular network connection so a smartphone's battery life isn't going to be comparable.
While pretty much all smartphones have decent battery life these days to get you through a day of light to medium usage, the Nexus 4 is definitely on the low side.
1GB RAM is fine for a smartphone. For comparison a 3 year old Ipod Touch has 256MB. The iphone 5s, faster than pretty much any other smartphone, has 1GB.
That said, your point about the Nexus getting Android updates for longer is a valid one.

MercuryStar said:
I wouldn't underestimate the importance of battery life in a smartphone, especially if I understand you correctly that you haven't actually been using a smartphone for 3 years? *An Ipod Touch has no cellular network connection so a smartphone's battery life isn't going to be comparable.
While pretty much all smartphones have decent battery life these days to get you through a day of light to medium usage, the Nexus 4 is definitely on the low side.
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I'm actually kind od hardcore iPod Touch user. I use iBluever (cydia tweak) to connect to the Internet via cellphone and after three years battery life is awful when you take into account that bluetooth is supposed to be energy efficient. It's 11.55 AM up here, battery was full at 8.45AM, I used Spotify offline for half an hour and browsed for another half an hour. Battery is now 55%. When it comes to battery life I just want to have device which will survive my workday (12-14 hrs outside home).
MercuryStar said:
1GB RAM is fine for a smartphone. *For comparison a 3 year old Ipod Touch has 256MB. *The iphone 5s, faster than pretty much any other smartphone, has 1GB.
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I know, but isn't that true that Android needs more memory than iOS to be really fast in everyday use?*
Thank you for your answer!

I know, but isn't that true that Android needs more memory than iOS to be really fast in everyday use?*
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People say a lot of things about memory use and Android that aren't true or are half-truths. What I do know is that the One Mini is not laggy or slow by any means.
I get annoyed by people who write reviews that tend to judge a phone's responsiveness by the most shallow means: simply by swiping between home screens or bringing up the app tray. Then they compare this on a Galaxy S4 with an older Samsung phone with 1GB and conclude that the Galaxy S4 is faster because of its 2GB RAM. So many things wrong with this! Firstly, no matter how much you swipe between home screens and bring up the app drawer you're still within the same app - you're not testing the OS, you're only testing the home screen app! And three's no way that home screen app uses over 1GB RAM - probably more like 50-100MB at most. To really have a test that taxes memory you'd need to switch between several *different*, memory-hungry apps (like a browser with many tabs open, a heavy game, etc) rapidly. Secondly, the comparison is always between newer, faster processors with 2GB RAM and older, slower processors with 1GB RAM. The obvious answer to why the newer one is faster is that the processor is significantly faster, not the RAM since the home screen app won't be taxing that much RAM anyway. And thirdly, very few reviewers look at mid-range phones like the HTC One Mini - but even with 1GB RAM it is arguably more responsive swiping between the home screens and bringing up the app tray even than the full-size Galaxy S4 with 2GB RAM. How can you observe this and still conclude that the RAM is the defining factor in performance? If reviewers looked at lower-spec "modern" (ie, not with a 2-year-old processor) Android phones with 1GB RAM they'd see similarly that 1GB RAM is fine and that the reason that flagships were slower back when they had 1GB RAM is not because of their lower RAM but because they were slower, older phones.

MercuryStar said:
People say a lot of things about memory use and Android that aren't true or are half-truths. What I do know is that the One Mini is not laggy or slow by any means.
I get annoyed by people who write reviews that tend to judge a phone's responsiveness by the most shallow means: simply by swiping between home screens or bringing up the app tray. Then they compare this on a Galaxy S4 with an older Samsung phone with 1GB and conclude that the Galaxy S4 is faster because of its 2GB RAM. So many things wrong with this! Firstly, no matter how much you swipe between home screens and bring up the app drawer you're still within the same app - you're not testing the OS, you're only testing the home screen app! And three's no way that home screen app uses over 1GB RAM - probably more like 50-100MB at most. To really have a test that taxes memory you'd need to switch between several *different*, memory-hungry apps (like a browser with many tabs open, a heavy game, etc) rapidly. Secondly, the comparison is always between newer, faster processors with 2GB RAM and older, slower processors with 1GB RAM. The obvious answer to why the newer one is faster is that the processor is significantly faster, not the RAM since the home screen app won't be taxing that much RAM anyway. And thirdly, very few reviewers look at mid-range phones like the HTC One Mini - but even with 1GB RAM it is arguably more responsive swiping between the home screens and bringing up the app tray even than the full-size Galaxy S4 with 2GB RAM. How can you observe this and still conclude that the RAM is the defining factor in performance? If reviewers looked at lower-spec "modern" (ie, not with a 2-year-old processor) Android phones with 1GB RAM they'd see similarly that 1GB RAM is fine and that the reason that flagships were slower back when they had 1GB RAM is not because of their lower RAM but because they were slower, older phones.
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It's defiantly a very snappy phone, but when I have several heavy apps open the apps it starts to lag at times, but closing an app solves the problem so it isn't a big deal. I think it's the memory that's responsible for it. Quad core phones are usually running with two cores disabled to save power, but they can multitask better because almost all of them have 2GB of memory to work with. I always run my phone under-clocked to 1.134 GHz to save battery and everything is always butter smooth until I have lots of heavy apps open. The UI is always snappy, if an app is lagging and I open the notification menu it opens smooth as butter and if I press the home button it goes to the home screen instantaneously so I don't think it's the processor that slows the phone down.

Ecstacy42 said:
It's defiantly a very snappy phone, but when I have several heavy apps open the apps it starts to lag at times, but closing an app solves the problem so it isn't a big deal. I think it's the memory that's responsible for it.
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Android's memory management is such that the memory used by any app not currently in the foreground is expendable and can be purged when the memory is needed for something else. This applies to pretty much every app except those that have specifically requested to run in the background - for example, part of a music player app.
If you run, say, 9 memory-hungry apps one after the other, then probably by the time you run the 4th or 5th the operating system is probably going to start purging the memory that was held by the first ones you had open, to reclaim memory so it doesn't run out of free memory or cache. When it does this, the apps that are purged are given the opportunity to save their state to disk so if they are switched back to, you get the illusion that they never closed. Not all apps do this particularly well.
Note that the list of recent apps in the app-switching menu that you get to by pressing the app switching button/double tab on home on Android phones does not necessarily mean that these apps are still all resident in memory. Some may have already had their memory purged by the OS, saving their state to disk. Swiping these away does purge them manually if they haven't been purged already.
Individual apps may be quick or slow to save their state to disk or may misbehave in this area. This is something that can happen whether you have 1GB or 8GB RAM but is of course going to happen more often if you have 1GB. App misbehaviour when switching to/from an app or when the app is requested to close or suspend is probably going to be the biggest cause of lag when task switching for most people. The home screen app on the Sense 5 devices definitely is very snappy and doesn't seem to cause any noticeable slowdowns. I don't know if HTC has pegged the home screen app to be always-resident though I suspect not; it's probably just quite well-behaved.
I always run my phone under-clocked to 1.134 GHz to save battery and everything is always butter smooth
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This is a testament to the awesome processing power of these Snapdragon Krait CPUs. Another thing to note is that the power management baked into them probably means they would rarely go over 1GHz anyway during normal use, so if you limit their max CPU speed to 1.1GHz like you did, it will only make a difference during high CPU load situations, not normal use or even I/O heavy use (such as network or disk communication).

Question Does this phone lag even after the latest updates?

I just bought this phone and I've been seeing complaints all over the internet. I do see a few positive reviews but "few" isn't convincing. I've been faithful to SD for over a decade so I don't know if it's the problem with the chipset. Any kind of input is appreciated
(pls help)

As a mid range device with a fairly low end Exynos SoC, performance isn't going to be the best. It should be sufficient for web browsing or streaming media, but keep in mind that the more concurrent processes you have running (like always running apps) the less available processor bandwidth you're going to have. Plus, a lot of the A53s come with only 4GB of RAM, which is pretty much the bare minimum by today's standards.

AgENtSaRcAs said:
I just bought this phone and I've been seeing complaints all over the internet. I do see a few positive reviews but "few" isn't convincing. I've been faithful to SD for over a decade so I don't know if it's the problem with the chipset. Any kind of input is appreciated
(pls help)
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I thought it was a bit laggy at first but not so much anymore. The screen in my opinion is better than the iPhone and the speakers are almost as good too - good bass, that really impressed me. It's a great device for everything except hardcore gaming and stressful workloads. Regular media content and browsing and medium gaming is really good. Most people do casual things on their phone and the A53 nails that. As an added bonus, battery life is incredible. The 5nm Exynos 1280 chipset just needs to be optimized by developers a bit more.

AgENtSaRcAs said:
I just bought this phone and I've been seeing complaints all over the internet. I do see a few positive reviews but "few" isn't convincing. I've been faithful to SD for over a decade so I don't know if it's the problem with the chipset. Any kind of input is appreciated
(pls help)
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Click to collapse
It is what it is for the processor, I think the slow storage speed is also hindering the performance too. I bought the usa unlocked version for $300 so I can't complain for the overall value. turning off ram plus gave mine a speed boost so I strongly suggest doing that.