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an iPod Touch/iPhone can play 3d games, utilise the g-sensor and run smoothly - for example racing games. Tilt the iPhone, the car turns.
Why can't our phones run these sort of games? Or is it just the case they haven't yet been produced?
From what I'm aware a Diamond is more powerful than an iPhone therefore these games "shouldn't" be a problem?
Shoot me down in flames if I'm wrong, just kinda thought there should be iPhone-esque software for these phones now.
I am right with you, i keep thinking the same thing.
Because Apple has crazy fanboys and they provided a simple infrastructure to facilitate payment and downloading (appstore). They also gimped the iphone out of the box so as to pretty much require people to sign up for the appstore if they actually want to use it, ensuring that they have the user base they need for it.
Now the iphone has several million users - how many Diamonds do you think are sold? Windows mobile itself is bigger, but the capabilities of the phones running it vary too much that profiting from making advanced games is as feasible.
I have wondered about this as well. I think the problem is 3 fold
Firstly, the Diamond has 3d and graphics performance issues for sure. Sometimes my Diamond will slow down terribly when running some simple animations. I have read that HTC are notorious for providing poor graphics drivers and this could be part of the reason.
Secondly, I actually dont think Windows Mobile is capable of doing what the iPhone UI is capable of in terms of interactive gaming.
Thirdly, Apple provide your at home developers a great business model to go out and develop great games and apps for the phone. Plus with the Appstore they know that if they develop something good, people will see it - there is only one place to get apps from - and the developer will make money.
For me, the iPhone is not the right phone, but I would love Windows Mobile and HTC to be able to do what the iPhone and Apple can do.
The iPhone has v-sync, so the 3d graphics are drawn smoothly with no tearing and sadly win mo just does not. At least that is what my mate said who is a games developer. The power is there but you just can't get it to the wheels! This just makes it fundamentally unappealing to a lot of developers.
yeah totally agree, i love the diamond, but i've been using windows mobile for years now, and each new model HAS generally got better and better. however the iPhone is just something else.. for people who aren't nerds and into mucking around iwth their phone etc, i could never recommend a windows mobile over an iPhone. its just so much more polished compared to the diamond.
i'm an AMD fan too, godamnit why do i always have to back the underdog
Yes, even though i have a diamond and have had great fun tweaking it, i still can't help but envy the iPhone users for their graphically superior games and video playback prowess .
Another explanation would be that iPhone games are developed solely for... u guessed it, iPhones! ...whereas WinMo games have to be developed to run across many different devices, with (or lack of) accelerometers, touch screens etc. Therefore, to achieve this interoperability / compatibility across the many different devices, compromises have to be made.
That said, there are still gd games for our beloved devices, my favourite being PDAMill, whom develop aesthetically pleasing games with intuitive controls, and they're cheap too.
Nudge.
So all in all, will it become possible? And what's vsync? Portable to diamonds?
I think V sync is something to do with the way images are drawn to the screen, and it is just not implemented in win mo, I don't know if it could be written into the drivers or of it is a hardware thing, but then I don't actually have a clue what I'm talking about! Can anyone confirm this?
vsync actually makes bad performance even worse since it forces the back buffer to wait until right after a screen refresh before it copies its data to the frame buffer.
it's great if the device is capable of rendering an FPS that is higher than the refresh rate, but in the diamond case it's just another fps thief
if you want games like iphone get an ipod touch. The diamond never advertised gaming as a capability. Think of it this way: The iphone is like a mac with mediocre hardware but also comes with a mid range video card. The diamond/touch pro are like PC's with raging motherboard/cpu/ram combo, but bottom entry level video card. You can get a lot done with the PC, but the fun factor lies in the mac.
Go buy virtual pool mobile, it runs great and it's very fun. Its the best pool video game ive ever seen actually.
Simple reason
The reason to me is simple: Apple cares about user experience. Just look at win mobile contacts, or explorer. Do you think this software is made for 2008-2009 hardware? Now look at iphone's ones... Seriously, Microsoft has the power to make good things for mobile users, but they released win mo 6.1 one year ago, which is mainly the same OS that existed in 2003.
Silly we when we buy pocketpc running on windows mobile.
Just to revive a dead thread for quite a good reason..
I've seen a few videos on Youtube and also a few write ups on the wonderful Tinterweb in relation to Windows Mobile devices running and successfully playing iPhone games through emulation.
Is this just simple hear-say or fake ? I've been thinking for a long time about focusing simply on making the graphical capabilities of the diamond better through customising the graphics drivers. That's the main flaw for me.
According to a few posts the graphics card has 64MB dedicated memory.. is this right?
If so, these things SHOULD be capable of running bloody good games but the drivers are just nowhere near good enough. I did hear about changing to ATI drivers - is this right? If so, where can I find the info on this cause I would like to maybe bash at hybrid-combining the drivers and modifying them a bit as to allow maybe a bit more fluid graphics. If you check one of my other posts on the Diamond, I've been complaining about split-graphics. It's really getting on my nerves as I'd rather just see a full picture move around my screen fluidly. None of this "split it up" rubbish.
Cheers
Driver dev
This seems to be a good thread with most/all of the available drivers posted.
well I have been enjoying copy + paste and fully working GPS on my Diamond ever since
now why hasn't Apple offered this so far?
I guess each company chooses their own battles
glumetu said:
well I have been enjoying copy + paste and fully working GPS on my Diamond ever since
now why hasn't Apple offered this so far?
I guess each company chooses their own battles
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hrrm.. In the new 3.0 SDK update for iPhone 3G and iPod Touch which will be released soon there is copy and paste + redo.. in a very stylish and functional way.
And there will be mms + almost every single function that the iPhone was lacking before + some more.. many, many new stuff for improved gaming, new OS improvements etc.
I watched the presentation on the apple website..
Shoddy_me said:
Hrrm.. In the new 3.0 SDK update for iPhone 3G and iPod Touch which will be released soon there is copy and paste + redo.. in a very stylish and functional way.
And there will be mms + almost every single function that the iPhone was lacking before + some more.. many, many new stuff for improved gaming, new OS improvements etc.
I watched the presentation on the apple website..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stuff that should have been released last year. The only reason Apple is releasing it when they are is because people's 2 year contracts are starting to expire, and Apple wants to try and persuade them from leaving by finally giving them features they've been demanding from day 1.
Honestly, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I knew Apple would do that.
Heres my question:
Smart phones and windows mobile operating system have been around for something like, oh, 15 years now. Why is it some EMO company like Apple releases a phone (badly I might add) and it becomes THE Benchmark for mobile devices? Its just purely unbelievable to me that so many people obsess over "well the iphone can do this, and it can do that.. I want my ______ to do what the iphone does..." If you like the turd and all its glory so much, why don't you just buy one and get it over with??
the iphone is so easy to use, thats why so many people bought one. when everyone has something, it becomes the norm to judge other things by. think of the model t from ford
Model T?
Confused.com. Is that the foreign (for me) Focus? lol
Anyways, I've looked about and the ATI drivers have given me the power boost I'm happy with. However - My images are still split on the screen.
Still trying to get this fixed...
FIRST: the intention of this post it not to flame. These is just my point of view and I would love to hear some other people’s point of view.
This is just an observation from a real cell phone junkie who is coming from WinMo and iPhone to android and is a bit disappointed.
It just feels like the Android platform is overrated and half baked. While it has its “Google apps” advantage, most of the other parts of it are seriously lacking.
Coming from an iPhone(which I hated because of apple’s dictatorship and because it feels like a dumbphone) and the HD2, which is a brilliant device with a very capable OS which has stability issues and lack of new useful apps development, I wanted to try something new with Android. It should have been the prefect mix between openness and development of new useful apps (which WinMo lacks). So far I have been nothing but disappointed.
Some of the issue I noticed and why I think Android is really overrated are:
- Very low end apps. Most of them are poorly designed and unstable. There are a few good apps but none from the major players.
- BUGGY apps!!! One of the reason WinMo was failing is because of cross device support for apps. Apps that would work on one device would not work on another because of different hardware chipsets. I was sure that Google would see this is a point of failure and will make sure this won’t happen with Android. WRONG: almost every app I downloaded has bugs and is not working properly with the N1 and if you just read the comments for the various apps you see the horror. So many people complain about FC’s and instability of the apps. This means that Google simply failed in this area and there is no real cross device support. Each app needs to be tweaked to work on each hardware set to get it right. This is going to be a huge point of failure for the platform.
- Crippled copy and paste. Seriously? You can’t copy and paste from everywhere in version 2.1??? didn’t they learn from apple?
- No built in Tethering. Again this is OS version 2.1 and there is no tethering option unless you root you phone.
- Feels sluggish at time: even on a 1Ghz processor the phone does feel sluggish at time (and yes I close my apps with task manager). Some say it is because the RAM was not fully utilized in this OS. Why have Google released a phone that suppose to have 512MB RAM with only half active? Didn’t they think it would cause bad experience?
- Very poor multimedia support: and I mean VERY poor. Even the built in YouTube Video player will not rescale the video to show on the entire screen if the video was not encoded specifically to the N1 resolution, not to mention other video apps who will NEVER show videos at full screen as they were designed for lower resolutions. There is really no way to watch DIVX or XVID and everything needs to be converted. There are dozens of media players on the market and NONE can do either tasks! And yxflash, the only player that can supposedly play DIVX is doing such a poor job it is a joke. WinMo has ONE player that beats all dozens on the android market. I read somewhere it isrelated to the SDK being very limited in Multimedia. I find it hard to believe that Google is trying to compete with apple witch such a poor Multimedia support. I even purchased OrbLive and the picture quality is extremely poor because they were forced to use the only codec that Android can support for streaming which is 3gp and has very poor quality.
- No big brand name apps: Skype, Sling and many other big brands are simply not there. I know you can use Fring as an alternative (or Nimbuzz) but both are very buggy and have delay when using skype calling. You also can’t turn off the screen when you use the VOIP apps as it is causing the sound to break.
- VPN: very poor support. I can’t get the connection to stay connected while it works just fine on the HD2 and iPhone. The latest software update from Google completely broke VPN support and now it won’t connect at all.
- There is no real way to backup all you apps AND settings of the apps unless you have rooted your phone. If you want to upgrade your ROM or change ROM’s you need to reinstall everything (unless you are rooted and then you can backup your apps settings as well). This is something that should be implemented out of the box. WinMo has exactly the same problem.
- Failure in the gaming area. There are maybe 20 good games on the Market that actually use OpenGL 3d. other games look like they are from the mid 90s. I was hoping to see better games on Android than on WinMo. I guess I was wrong here as well.
I wanted to like Android, I really did, and maybe it will get better with time, however currently it has exactly the issues as WinMo phones has (buggy apps mainly, some OS slowdowns ) and if Google is not going to address these issues they will find themselves in the same position as Microsoft is finding itself now.
For now I’ll have to go back using my HD2 and just wait until Android gets a little better and more usable for me. I just really don’t understand people hate WinMo so much if Android is not much better (at least from my consumer standpoint).
Thanks for reading.
Number one reason and the only one I need to hate WinMo is Internet Exploder. It's broken badly. They had better fix this in 7 or they are done. The fact that you have to use a third party browser to do anything useful is total BS.
I think for most people, who don't want to think to hard, Iphone OS is probably a better choice. The interface is dead simple and there are a ton of apps. Most people won't realize that they are being fenced in.
The majority of your rambling is about apps. I don't think anyone overrates Android's app catalog. Everyone knows it's much smaller than the iPhone's.
It's not overrated in the way that people tend to praise it, which is openness and customization.
I agree on IE but like the fact that you can chose various browsers.
App support is dreadful compared to the Iphone but you have to look at the sales figures in ITMS vs. Market; $ = incentive. Yes right now it's apples and oranges but when someone is researching what device to buy and what carrier to swear allegiance to for 2 years, there are certain variables considered.
Take a heavy facebook user. The iphone fbook app is solid. Yes it has issues, but compared to the android solution, there is no contest. The fact that you have to use m.facebook.com when linking from your notifications panel in android is quite unacceptable (just one of many issues people have brought up). Pandora on the iphone is also quite a bit better than on android.
I disagree in regards to your comment about the phone being snappy. I have my old iphone 3g and my nexus 1 sitting side by side and real world feel says that the n1 wins in performance.
For me there are two things I wish were present with the nexus one/androidOS that are present on the iphone.
1 - app support. That is targeting android.
2 - the keyboard. For some reason I can type far more accurately and with greater speed on the iphone than on my n1. Not a deal breaker at all
You bring up tethering. There is no native tethering on the iphone without jailbreaking or paying for an app (pdanet) for the official stateside carrier (att). Your nexus one has the ability to install pdanet and you can tether all you want at a small price. Of course, you can root your phone and suddenly this ask is satisfied; just like jailbreaking and updating your carrier file.
If you want to talk about setbacks; how about the lack of MMS for the first gen iphones while the 3g/3gs both have this. No reason whatsoever to not include the functionality in the 2g other than slow deprecation of support for the phone...that just sucks.
There are plenty of solid games in Market for your device. I had to watch a video "50 android games" to be made aware of quite a few of these tiles.
For me, nothing you wrote kept me from migrating back to android after spending a year with an iphone (g1->iphone->n1; the entire time I had the iphone I missed my g1) But I am not the target audience device manufs are going after...almost nobody here is.
All your points are valid and are what the atypical customer thinks about, cares about and bases their monetary decisions on.
Good post
deprecate said:
App support is dreadful compared to the Iphone but you have to look at the sales figures in ITMS vs. Market; $ = incentive. Yes right now it's apples and oranges but when someone is researching what device to buy and what carrier to swear allegiance to for 2 years, there are certain variables considered.
Take a heavy facebook user. The iphone fbook app is solid. Yes it has issues, but compared to the android solution, there is no contest. The fact that you have to use m.facebook.com when linking from your notifications panel in android is quite unacceptable (just one of many issues people have brought up). Pandora on the iphone is also quite a bit better than on android.
I disagree in regards to your comment about the phone being snappy. I have my old iphone 3g and my nexus 1 sitting side by side and real world feel says that the n1 wins in performance.
For me there are two things I wish were present with the nexus one/androidOS that are present on the iphone.
1 - app support. That is targeting android.
2 - the keyboard. For some reason I can type far more accurately and with greater speed on the iphone than on my n1. Not a deal breaker at all
You bring up tethering. There is no native tethering on the iphone without jailbreaking or paying for an app (pdanet) for the official stateside carrier (att). Your nexus one has the ability to install pdanet and you can tether all you want at a small price. Of course, you can root your phone and suddenly this ask is satisfied; just like jailbreaking and updating your carrier file.
If you want to talk about setbacks; how about the lack of MMS for the first gen iphones while the 3g/3gs both have this. No reason whatsoever to not include the functionality in the 2g other than slow deprecation of support for the phone...that just sucks.
There are plenty of solid games in Market for your device. I had to watch a video "50 android games" to be made aware of quite a few of these tiles.
For me, nothing you wrote kept me from migrating back to android after spending a year with an iphone (g1->iphone->n1; the entire time I had the iphone I missed my g1) But I am not the target audience device manufs are going after...almost nobody here is.
All your points are valid and are what the atypical customer thinks about, cares about and bases their monetary decisions on.
Good post
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for all the replies.
However please keep in mind that in my original post, i was hardly making any comparison to the iPhone and at the end of my post i stated that i am going back to the HD2 . The iPhone is the last platform i am going back to, even with all the apps. i Just cant keep with the Apple / Jailbreakers game and all the limitations.
You do have native tethering on the iPhone, only it is disabled because at&t does not want you to have it. in other countries it works out of the box. no Jailbreak needed.
I agree that market share = incentive for developers however i am a bit worried that with the current state of the SDK, we will see the same old issues with cross device support for apps, and this is exactly where WinMo failed and the iPhone won (because there is only one device to support (chipset wise), so far)
If only the apps that are in the market now would work better, my point of view will be much different.
I want to use Skype, OK there is no real skype app so i tried to use Fring...DELAY on the call. unusable. I tried to use Nimbuzz, it is better but you cant turn off the screen so the battery dies fast.
I want to watch a movie > need to convert.
I want to watch live TV > there is still not a single app that can actually do this. ORB's app is really bad at the current version.
I want to tether > need to root (i am ok with this) but wireless tether never connected to my laptop. unusable. Wired tether worked fine.
I did watch the 50 best games on Android Video and the are in par with WinMo's games and so far WinMo is giving better usability. but the OS is not so stable hehe...
I guess there is no perfect phone.
Overall is the lack of actual functionally is what killed it for me. I hope it will get better in the future and then i can give it another try
as you said, there is no perfect phone. but give it a little time, android is only a year old after all. i for one have little to no problems with FCs from any of the apps i'm using, so it also depends on what you like to do with your phone.
my main issue atm. is the lack of good bluetooth enabled voice dialing (and lack of any voice dialing at all for non-english users).
and the pet peeve would be the missing framework for the trackball colors.
other than that i'm really enjoiying the relative openess of the platform, and having cyanogen as a developer
Tether without root with PDAnet. This program works great.
Looks like the OP need's to have a read over yonder
There's also been a great deal of talk in the development forum regarding new openGL support in 2.0.
App space has been limited in android and thats a factor, but this is being resolved and we will start to see more 'pretty' applications, but I would argue that android has just as many useful and good applications as the iPhone.
The ONLY windows mobile device that I would trade my Nexus One for is an HD2. It'd be a tough decision though. My touch pro 2 was fun from a customization stand point because I seemed to flash a new rom at least once every couple of days. However, it was painful to use, it was slow, required frequent restarts, work-arounds galore, etc etc. Android may have some bugs, but I have far less trouble with day to day use with my Nexus than I did with my TP2. The hardware power of the HD2 would probably alleviate the thing that killed the TP2 for me and that was the annoying speed (or lack thereof).
Iphone OS is boring, but it works reliably. Safari mobile on my Ipod touch is a great browsing experience (nexus is better though, simply due to the power).
The only major problem I have with Android 2.1 on my nexus is its lack of full exchange support. However, if I really cared that much about it I would drop the $20 to get Touchdown and be done with it. Oh, and I would really love it if a full version of Epocrates made its way to android sometime soon.
This is of course for my uses, and in my experience. Therefore, I am just adding my opinion to the bunch...
Firstly, how can you say the N1 is laggy? Seriously? Especially compared to a WinMo device, and even the iPhone 3GS. The N1 is hands down the fastest smart phone I have ever used, whether it be my own personally owned smart phone, or one I was testing for work. Most actions are instant or near instant in their result, and the only time I find myself waiting at all is when data transfer from the network is involved, and it does that faster on my N1 than any other phone I have tried! Actually, I can load some websites faster than my computer, and I am not talking about sites that use flash either.
Secondly, yes a 1 year old OS platform does not have the same level of app support that a 4 year old platform has(iPhone/iTouch) or a decade old platform (WM). However, it is an open source platform that is growing quickly. While not all 15K apps are perfect for every device, this is true of the WM platform and the iPhone platform. There are plenty of great apps, that don't reqiure root.
Thirdly, the Android OS supports the same media playback functions as the iPhone OS... and actually can handle more in some regards. The N1 will have native flash support someday(hopefully very soon), where as Apple has picked a fight with Adobe, and likely never will have flash support. To say the Android OS, and the N1 falls short in multi-media compared to the iPhone is ignorant, to say the least. WM does support more formats, but at the same time that is a result of a OS in developement a lot longer than Android, as well the current Android OS can support Divx, et al, but companies like CorePlayer do not want to make an app until this support is in the SDK natively, and CorePlayer has pointed out they are working closely with Google, and it looks as though Android 2.5(Froyo).
Fourthly, as someone that sells cell phones for a living, the Android OS is the best smart phone OS for me to sell to consumers by a long ways. It is much more functional than the BB OS, yet maintains the ease of use. iPhone OS lacks most of the top smart phone functions, and WinMo is too slow and buggy. While 3rd party apps are not perfect, this is true of any platform, and at least with Android it will force close instead of freeze the phone. As well, the apps that are quality work very well and blow most other stuff out of the water, ie CameraFX. I have yet to have a customer complain that a free app wasn't working right... nor complain that the phones were buggy.
I was someone that came from winmo.
Android is much more polished than wimo, but it's barebones out of the box.
Winmo is much more packed with utilities out of the box, but lacks the polish of android.
That has alot to do with the timeframes of when these things derived. Android thrives on the "there's an app for that!" ecosystem.
Up until winmo (6.1?) there was no place to just get a quick app, so MS had to implement more things to give a better out of box experience. Too bad they lacked cleanliness.
Yes, Android has bugs and Yes, Market is poor compared to iPhone. But if you sum things up, I think Android wins. And Nexus wins as well, since I has the best hardware on the market today (or one of the best) 1Ghz CPU + AMOLED display + big resolution
Sorry, double post.
- There is no real way to backup all you apps AND settings of the apps unless you have rooted your phone. If you want to upgrade your ROM or change ROM’s you need to reinstall everything (unless you are rooted and then you can backup your apps settings as well). This is something that should be implemented out of the box. WinMo has exactly the same problem.
Give the market a closer look, and download MyBackup - it does indeed backup apps and settings, along with other things like bookmarks, contacts, the usual. This is the only point I could point out from your post without having to go into extensive detail ._.
As well, to add to my last post, there is multi-phone support with the apps and the Android OS... if this wasn't so, why would the Moto apps work on the Nexus One? While an app written for Android 1.0/1.5/1.6 might not work on 2.1 perfectly, this does not change the fact an app written with the 2.1 SDK will work on any phone running 2.1(actually, SDK 2.0+ will work with any 2.0+ phone, minus live wallpapers.)
But that is to be expected, just as an app written for iPhone OS 1.0 won't work properly with 3.1.3, or WM5.0 apps won't work with WM6.5 properly.
Isn't this a pointless debate.
It like like trying to debate good vs evil, butter vs margarine, pro-choice vs pro-life?
He seems to have come up with his own very logical, sound reasons why and why not android is over rated. There are countless arguments for both sides and I've read all 15 post of this. Android like the iPhone OS like Windows, like symbian all have their strong and weak points. No perfect phone OS out there. But rather whiny and complain of this and that maybe improve it, like some of the really great developers here which advances Android OS and make it great for all of us users.
In the end do I care if you move to Window mobile...not really. Hope you are happy. Move on. Have a nice life.
amen sir
this thread is only worthy of a one line reply. ...
Well... Having never used a WinMo device. I can't argue that side of things... I owned a Blackberry (NEVER again!!!!), and I own an iPod Touch. Sure, the iTouch isn't the phone, but they're certainly one in the same. My iTouch is jailbroken btw.
With that said, I've never owned a better overall device than the N1. Don't get me wrong, it has its quirks and issues. But man, this thing IS my Media Player, my GPS, my overall entertainment "finder" (Where/Places/Aloqa), Grocery Lists, Forum browser (I'd say I'm 50/50 with Phone and PC while surfing web and forums now).
Sure, the apps could use some work... But, with quality devices being placed on the market, the apps WILL follow. Realize that the main reason the apps market isn't bigger, is because of the strangle-hold that Apple currently has on the market. Many Devs have invested into Apple development and have customers there. It's hard to talk them into changing their ways. In time, they'll sure move over to Android though.
With that said, the apps I get... Work for me. Just the basics: Handcent, Meebo, Car Home, Where/Places, "OurGroceries", Mixzing (Still not my ideal choice, but it gets the job done for now... And yes, I've tried Meridian, nemoPlayer, Stock, and TuneWiki), "Listen", and so on.
Yes, I've deleted as many apps as I still have on my phone (Many more than listed above)... But I've stuck with some that get the job done. If I could ask for only 2 other apps, it'd be Mint.com and Audible.com... Otherwise, I can be content in knowing I have my ideal communication device, with some GPS goodness, and it plays through my car speakers wirelessly.
So no... I don't consider it overrated, but rather too young. It'll mature in time.
MOD EDIT - REPORTED FOUL LANGUAGE REMOVED
It would appear, ambiently, that other Android handsets have some forms of support for Divx + Xvid - I say ambiently as this is from perusing Engadet, Pocket Lint etc etc I have also seen various threads looking at porting WM tools and attempting to address what I consider to be a major shortfall of Android so far, at least where HTC handsets are concerned. I, like many many others, have a major collection of Films using Xvid and Divx, with many using AC3 as the Audio codec. The 'solution' so far has been for wise individuals to point out the blindingly obvious and to convert using Handbrake, Xilisoft etc Here's the thing - why should I have to ? To me, it's tantamount to saying 'Just re-encode all your MP3's - it took me ages to rip them from CD, get the metatags correct, album art etc - no way !! Also, MPEG4 is rubbish - I've never liked it.
As an open slate, from an Applications point of view (can't stand this crApple use of the term 'Apps') the Hero is very good - the music player is so so - acceptable I guess. As a gaming platform, it looks to be improving with underlying code and SDK support improving all the time - yet there is this gaping hole in its multimedia 'arsenal' - that of movie support. I can't be the only one who sees this as very important. Much discussion on here is the distraction of the 'technical' - I don't think that everyone wants geek Linux on a Mobile - that's not sexy to most other than uber uber geeks. What is is Multimedia prowess - excellent Music, Film and Gaming - with the applications stuff surely running second fiddle to this. So, I'd like to get some discussion going to see if people feel the same way or this kind of movie support is seen as superfluous. Also, if people know of (other than the exceptionally crap yxflash) any Vxid Divx and AC3 support tools, installable codecs or applications I'd love to hear from you.
Regards,
Simon
Dude,
You need to cut out all the swearing!
I have used yxflash too - useless, laggy, not worth the download time!But, I have just been reading about the HTC Desire which apparently comes with Divx support out of the box! So, hopefully one of the genius devs on here will be able to get this working on our Hero's soon
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous of Google to think this doesn't matter. This would have been an excellent feature to contrast with Apple. I was playing all sorts of codecs on winmo with the core media player years before android.
Firstly, it's a cellphone... it's not your ****ing TV or laptop.... you don't need all your mp3s and videos immediately ready on your phone. If you really HAVE to watch a video on the go you can easily convert it.
Ok, I know you didn't want to hear this.
Now, it's not Google's business to develop special apps. OEMs like HTC can include extra features by default and it's not so hard to make an app that uses ported native libraries.
Well, another thing: DivX is "dead". There's no DivX hardware decoder chip included in newer hardware, so even if someone makes an app it'll drain the battery or even worse, not run fast enough. Now, there's only limited space in a phone's hardware. You can't add all chips for all codecs. It's only natural that the manufacturers only choose the newest most advanced codec.
Quite clearly an idiot - most probably American
Woo - we spotted your 'attempts' at a windup - did you employ everything you learnt at kindergarten ? I mean - you're good - we've seen the classics:
Dismissal, condescension, 'superiority' - such insight, breathtaking
Just some suggestions that spring to mind, son: Cliffs, rope, 200 Paracetamol, guns - in fact anything that may cause you harm
It's food for thought
Hello,
With handsets like the Galaxy S series (i9000, Captivate, Vibrant, etc.) and others, it looks like we're at the point where we have the horsepower - processor, RAM, and graphics cards - needed for pro audio software to come out for Android. As it stands though, there is nothing that can match up to multitrack for iOS (a 16-track 44.1/16bit recorder) let alone fourtrack, which is only a four track audio sequencer and which I run on my iPhone 2G.
The market is there, and now the high-powered hardware is there, but the selection of audio apps is meagre at best. Does anyone know of any plans for pro audio software for Android? For that matter, video editing software like iOS 4's iMovie would be great, but we're not seeing that either.
I'm aware that there are programs that have packages of preset loops, as well as an audio multitrack and a video editor that rely on server-side rendering. I'm talking about a native solution for audio editing, sequencing, and/or tracking. I am not a programmer, and I know there are differences between X11 and Android's setup, but with programs like Ardour and Rosegarden for Linux, why can't someone adapt the relevant parts to Android? Even Audacity...
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www.mountvalley.net
I've been waiting on an app like this forever. I would definitely but an it if one ever comes out.
Just saw this the other day: http://nomadicwhales.com/wordpress/2010/11/fourtracks-pro-released/
The four track app is a step in the right direction but it's still kinda buggy on my phone when trying to record a second track, etc. I'm assuming that could also very well be due to the fact that i'm still using a 1st gen phone (Sprint Hero)
Sent from my HERO200 using XDA App
PLEASE DO NOT START A FLAME WAR!
As you can tell from my sig, I have recently acquired a new HD2, flashed and ready with the Windows Phone 7 OS, in addition to my Samsung Vibrant. I will try my best to provide an accurate comparison of WP7 vs Android from an unbiased standpoint, as I show equal likes and dislikes with both OSes and phones. Keep in mind I have a class 6 sd card in the hd2 so it should be just as fast if not faster than the HD7.
Navigation Efficiency/ Smoothness: I must say at first glance, WP7 may seem like a true winner with its GPU accelerated animations and scrolling, both of which are butter smooth. The flips and backflips of screens and icons is nice, as is the rotation swirl, and adds that bit of polish lacking in Android. However, if you look past the animations, you may realize that the Vibrant (modded), does open apps just a bit faster than WP7. The key to WP7 is the eye candy, those animations decrease the delay you may otherwise see with Android phones lacking fancy animation, turn off the animations on both and the Android device will likely open the app first, whether it be browser, Gmail, calculator, calender, etc.
Apps: Android, no doubt. The WP7 app store is sorely lacking apart from a few high quality games and apps such as Netflix. Sure, streaming movies is fun, but what about everything else? Not to mention, the WP7 marketplace strangely lacks a search feature, or just that I didn't dig deep enough.
Browsing: This is really half and half. Smoothness wise, WP7 is a winner with the GPU acceleration, again glass smooth. Page rendering such as Engadget had similar times, with non flash pages the HD2 won easily, but with flash turned off on both, I must say the Vibrant won. Both were connected to wifi at my house, with the Vibrant being 2-3 seconds ahead without flash. At times I question the use of flash on a device lacking hardware acceleration, but then again those white spots on screens where a occasional youtube video shows up on the HD2 is equally if not more annoying than the choppy Android browser. In the end, if you enjoy smoothness and text reading, and perhaps a bit of speed due to the lack of flash, the GPU accelerated WP7 browser will do you well, but if you prefer functionality and watching videos, go with Android 2.2.
I cannot provide information on camera quality due to having an HD2 hacked WP7.
The music player on WP7 is about the same in functionality as the Touchwiz version.
I will gladly provide more information if you need. Remember to click thanks if I helped.
The Windows Search button is context sensitive.
Maybe you're having trouble finding it on the HD2 (keymappings different, etc. /shrugs/ ), but you bring up marketplace search (or search in any app) by simply hitting the search key.
Flash was a huge deal to me, until I see how badly it nerfed the Vibrant's browser performance. Any setting other than off makes the browser perform terribly. The WP7 IE browser runs laps around it. Cutting it off boosts it a bit, but that's terrible since it has Flash Lite before and we didn't have to deal with such terrible performance... I don't hear any of my iPhone-using friends complaining about the lack of Flash.
App are meh. The only thing that matters are complex apps and games. Most mobile apps (non-game) tend to be encapsulations of mobile websites. An Engadget app doesn't make any sense to install, IMO, since I can just go to Engadget.com and the site is optimized for mobile browsers... Same with CNET, etc.
Some apps just aren't worth bringing to WP7. Office apps aren't worth bringing over. NoteTaking apps aren't worth bringing over. SMS Replacement Apps aren't worth bringing over. Exchange Clients. WP7 has Find My Phone/Lock/Wipe functionality built into it, so stuff like LookOut isn't much use (don't care about the sirens, a phone thief/finder will almost always shut the phone off immediately).
I'd say no browser except maybe Skyfire is worth bringing over at this point, because the chances of them outperforming IE on WP7 is slim to none. As far as apps are concerned, WP7 is probably the most consistent (in Look and Feel) and complete OS released to date when it comes to having all this stuff integrated and from a single vendor. Andorid manufacturers usually license different components from dispirate software vendors to "complete" the experience.
Cameras are comparable. Vibrant takes better pictures during the day. HD7 better at night due to the dual flash. The Vibrant tends to get a better framerate on video, but when blown up on a larger screen it looks a bit grainy and washed out (sort of like a painting). The HD7 doesn't suffer that issue, but the framerates are a big lower. I'd say it's a bit of a wash, with a slight edge to the HD7 because the Vibrant simply cannot compete at all in terms of night time picture shooting... It just can't, even with night mode, etc.
As far as the Navigation and smoothness of the system... The animations have nothing to do with it. It's basically iOS performance with extra eye candy to look better. The only thing that lags a bit is scrolling through lists (Android does this as well, but I think the fact that lots of applications load internet data on the fly has something to do with it in some instances) and resuming from apps (which will see significant performance boosts in the March update, among other things).
The animations aren't hiding any lag. We're seriously comparing a phone that lags switching home screens to a phone that can animate pretty much every transition without as much of a hickup. Let's not go there...
The Music Player is not the same functionality wise. WP7 uses Zune. The Vibrant uses the TouchWiz Music/Video player. Zune has FM Radio, can Stream Music if you have Zune Pass, and interfaces with the Zune software on the computer.
Galaxy S has nothing like XBox Live, which is useful even if you don't have any XBL games on your phone because you can send and recieve messages, etc. There are some good games on XBL/Marketplace, though.
I had an hd7,
Wp7 is smoother and more eye candy and better core functions.
Android has apps and open source support.
Sent from my Galaxy S using Tapatalk
I appreciate an actual HD7 owner coming in to improve my points.
And as to the transition animations, it is very likely that those are completely controlled by the gpu while the cpu is controlling the app openings and lifecycles. I seriously doubt that WP7 opens apps instantaneously, instead separating the gpu and cpu tasks for smooth animation while the cpu opens the app.
The Touchwiz music player is similar to that of the IPhone, which is comparable to Zune. I meant comparable, but Zune is milestone above that of the stock android music interface.
Camera on the HD2 really is a meh. Flash pics get overblown due to the dual flash and the pics are a bit grainy even with the replacement ShCameraApp. Most probably software issues, but the HD7 uses the same or similar hardware camera.
The IE browser really is just smoother than the android browser. You won't mind the lack of flash until you come across an embedded youtube video on a page with a black spot.
After the initial surprise by the smoothness of WP7, the lists and tiles do get a little boring.
The thing that bothers me the most is the need for zune to do everything from load pics and videos, to albums and anything onto the phone. Not that zune is bad, but it just hinders an otherwise easy drag and drop.
The HD2 is a keeper for me due to the solid metal and rubber build and its ability to run 4 OSes, 3 natively or almost natively (android, winmo, wp7, and hopefully meego). Plus I got it free from the Executive Response Team, no contract extension either (don't ask, long story).
And N8ter, I was not directly comparing WP7 to the Vibrant since I came from a Nexus One, but gave it up due to several power button failures and screen burn ins.
Yes the hd2 is the dev device of the century, the hd7 is just a slick version of it with a kickstand.
I loved the wp7 everything about it I just couldn't deal with lack of good app support.
It just works, well. No roms or anything needed.
That being said android has more possibilities and capabilities and of course dev support
Sent from my Galaxy S using Tapatalk
Android is the new windows mobile in my eyes. It has better marketing but the same problems with wm are still present. Lack of manufactures support, drivers for custom roms, and mostly manufactors adding there crapware on top of a great os.
I personally needed a break from Android and specifically the vibrant. I was constantly trying to fix problems. I think Android needs to set some rules/guidelines for OEMs that have the resources to put out great product. Open source is great for the community but letting companies put out crap with googles Android written crossed it.
I too tried wp7 on my hd2 and was surprised at the user interface. Almost lag free device, and no need to change SMS, browser, music player etc. Everything works great out of the box besides YouTube. I've only installed slacker, flashlight, wp7 tapatalk, news/ RSS reader, Google voice and that's about it.
I will be back to Android later in the year but for now I just need something that works. With me bring a heavy user I was able to get thru a full day on a single charge.
I will miss my screen a little, my torrent app, and my remote desktop app. Out of all the apps in Android maybe 20 apps were useful to me besides pulling out the ruler vs my friends.
Zune computer software is great. Syncs extremely fast and haven't had a problem yet. No more fighting with my external sd.
Things that are important to me:
Browser
Music
Google voice
Text and email
Little facebook/twitter.
Battery life.
A couple snap shots occasionally
Wp7 does these with no problem.
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
I don't think any Mobile OS or device should be dependent on third-party dev support to make the phone function as advertised. That is part of the issue with Android (not as a whole, but specific [even most] manufacturers). The initial Honeycomb tablets may be different, though, since the manufacturers aren't initially skinning the OS.
The Motorola ATRIX, with all its great hardware goodness, lagged it's way to a 9/10 (cause it has lots of accessories?!) on Engadget. Maybe when their brain catches up (apparently lagging as well) they will get around to giving it a believable rating...
These reviews have been unchanging for the past year, year and a half. No matter how much hardware you throw at Android: "phone lags a lot", "you should be able to get a day out of it with moderate usage (some phones piss the users off if they have to charge more than ever other day - smartphones mind you)" "bad UI yada yada" "skin this and that" "still running older version but update coming *soon*".
XPLANE9 said:
I appreciate an actual HD7 owner coming in to improve my points.
And as to the transition animations, it is very likely that those are completely controlled by the gpu while the cpu is controlling the app openings and lifecycles. I seriously doubt that WP7 opens apps instantaneously, instead separating the gpu and cpu tasks for smooth animation while the cpu opens the app.
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Hardware accelleration means graphics processing is offloaded to the GPU. Apps open as fast as they do on any other mobile OS, and faster than others. Of course if you're running a mobile game with (relatively) large files to load when it starts up this will not happen instantly. The use of the term instantaneous wasn't really meant to be taken uber literally...
Android runs less efficiently on better hardware because the system taxes the CPU more, since the GPU is going unused as far as the general UI/widgets are concerned. This is why the devices are usually overspecced and/or have functionality ripped out of them.
One of the biggest failures of Samsung was releasing this phone with such great GPU hardware in it, but not putting hardware accelleration into their firmware. Perhaps if they had done that the system would have run a bit smoothly. Nothing could save it from RFS, however.
The Touchwiz music player is similar to that of the IPhone, which is comparable to Zune. I meant comparable, but Zune is milestone above that of the stock android music interface.
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I'm talking beyond the user interface. I'm accounting for functionality as well The TouchWiz music player is not comparable to iPod Touch in the iPhone. DoubleTwist makes an app that looks like iTunes, but iTunes obviously blows it away when it comes to features and functionality, for example.
Camera on the HD2 really is a meh. Flash pics get overblown due to the dual flash and the pics are a bit grainy even with the replacement ShCameraApp. Most probably software issues, but the HD7 uses the same or similar hardware camera.
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The HD2's camera is actually pretty bad. I'm sure the cameras are similar, they are both 5MP cameras with 720p. But, I'm also sure they aren't the same, because the picture qualities are IMO a bit too different for that to be the case (even across multiple OSes on the HD2). That being said, I've never done a teardown, so I don't know for sure.
If anyone wants a great camera on a phone, it would behoove them to get an N8. That phone can compete with some DSLRs when it comes to picture quality.
The IE browser really is just smoother than the android browser. You won't mind the lack of flash until you come across an embedded youtube video on a page with a black spot.
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I went from Vibrant to HD7 and don't mind the lack of flash. Flash, IMO, was not ready for mobile devices when it was released for Android. It's too bloated and resource intensive. It has this same issue on the desktop, but fortunately those machines are powerful enough to just shrug it off in most cases. Flash 10.2 is supposed to bring hardware accelleration, but I'm not sure how much that will help Galaxy S devices...
It causes a lot of Pinch-Zoom and Pan lag, and scrolling on a page with a few flash artifacts on it can be a PITA on some websites.
I do know some sites that crash the Android browser 100% of the time, though...
In the case of moving from Android to WP7, the lack of Flash was actually a bonus for me. If the Vibrant had shipped without Flash (needed it from the market) and Flash Lite was also available in the market, I'd probably have just installed Flash Lite 5 minutes after installing the FroYo update and trying Flash. The irony, though, is that Flash Lite worked for most of the crap that I needed Flash for... I regret even asking for [full] Flash.
After the initial surprise by the smoothness of WP7, the lists and tiles do get a little boring.
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9 of the tiles on my WP7 home screen are Live. I'll take Live Tiles and normal tiles over walls of icon and widgets with no unified Look and Feel cluttered across 3-7 Home screens. Don't really care about the list. IIRC Android has an option to make the App "Page" a list as well...
The thing that bothers me the most is the need for zune to do everything from load pics and videos, to albums and anything onto the phone. Not that zune is bad, but it just hinders an otherwise easy drag and drop.
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A phone is not a USB thumb drive.
Yes, however managing media on a WP7 or iOS device is much better than on Android, where this sort of stuff is non-existent in the stock builds and requires you to duplicate tons of functionality on the device, set defaults, etc.
There is DoubleTwist, whose Desktop App runs like a 1200lb Gorilla from my experiences (at least on Windows - I thought it was my computer, but I have 5 computers; fortunately), requires a redundant media player to be installed, and sells WiFi media synching (free in Zune).
WinAmp has media synching, but again requires a redundant media player.
WiFi Synching, Automatic Transcoding to the best possible format, etc. This is all done transparently. Once Microsoft Adds Skydrive support and that other stuff in Mango, I don't forsee many complaints about WP7.
But even now, it's a very polished experience. I even prefer the notifications on WP7 to Android, and I don't have to worry about numbers getting burnt into the top of my screen anymore.
The HD2 is a keeper for me due to the solid metal and rubber build and its ability to run 4 OSes, 3 natively or almost natively (android, winmo, wp7, and hopefully meego). Plus I got it free from the Executive Response Team, no contract extension either (don't ask, long story).
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Yes, it's a great device that ran well even on WM. Marred by bad QA on the part of HTC. I never saw a reason to run another or a non-stock OS on my HD2s, personally.
And N8ter, I was not directly comparing WP7 to the Vibrant since I came from a Nexus One, but gave it up due to several power button failures and screen burn ins.
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Meh, this is the Vibrant forum
All that said, I have all three phones and can choose to use whichever one I please whenever I want to. The Vibrant and the HD7 both have active SIM Cards in them with Data plans, so I can care less what anyone else choose, likes, dislikes, or doesn't choose. I don't have to choose anything, I just have to "prefer at that specific moment." XD
Kinda funny comparing a HD7 to a vibrant. Consider the Vibrant is now 9 months on the market and older tech than the HD7 2 months on the market.
So, The only things I have seen that i would like on the Android platform that the HD7 has over Vibrant
1. A better voice command
2. Flash on the camera
3. More user friendly custom contact menu (add custom ringtones and pics)
4. The Browser revised to integrate flash better.
5. Improve on the sound by adding a onboard equalizer.
That would make the phone alot more ZAPPY..... The S2 maybe ?
The HD7 is using HD2/Nexus One-level hardware. So the hardware is really like 6 months older than what's in the Vibrant. I have no clue how you can say the Vibrant has older tech than the HD7...
The S2 will be snappier than the Vibrant, but most likely because in typical Android OEM fashion, they will just throw hardware at it.
If the ATRIX 4G is any indicator, I don't expect this hardware to make too much of an impact. I think as time goes on Android's performance issues will start to work against it.
It's getting harder and harder to find a performant device and people make fun of Android because it is universally known as a laggy smartphone OS (check out BB or iOS forums, among others, and see).