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Hi everyone, I have been a lurker on this forum for sometime but registered recently. I bought a Nexus one to replace my 3GS on the release day, and I must say. I absolutely adore it. I have a few questions for you guys, if anyone could shed some light on this for me it would be great.
So, basically I have been looking around the internet, various forums etc to try and grasp why the nexus one does not have smoother scrolling. By smooth I mean the actual animation attributes. I am aware that the Nexus one is fast at scrolling (and faster then the iPhone 3GS in almost every way) however, the nexus one does not handle scrolling as elegantly.
Let me define what I mean by smooth. I do not mean the hardware is not fast, as it clearly is. I mean that the GUI has not been further enhanced in the way the iphone has, to actually mimic a smooth flowing operation.
From what I have gathered on my search it could be one of a few things:
1) Android is still quite new so they have simply not gotten round to adding this yet as it is not a priority.
2) The hardware (up until this point) did not have good enough power to do so, as a result it was not included in the previous and current android releases.
3) The multitasking causes interruptions to the processor cycles during scrolling so can sometimes give a jagged/laggy scroll (I already hear you thinking: AH but this is due to other apps loading at the bottom, well the iphone scrolls exactly the same and is loading apps too).
4) The scrolling element of the UI does not utilise GPU acceleration and thus is purely relying on CPU, which means it is fast but not smooth.
My reason for asking this is simple, I am wondering what I can expect from future versions of android. I absolutely have no doubt that this platform is the future (at least for me) of mobile devices, but I would very much like to see some of the (perhaps unnecessary) GUI enhancements that the iPhone has.
My other area of interest is the market place and more specifically the creation of applications, I am by trade a UI designer, so I cant help but notice that the apps on the market place are pretty... actually lets not beat around the bush - none of them really share any common UI or style.
I am aware that the iPhone SDK provides a UI library which in turn means iPhone developers have somewhat of an aid in creating their apps, and also helps to keep native consistency with the iphone experience. Is this going to be something that changes with android (or is it even something that has started to change within the 2.1 SDK?).
When you guys read this post I hope you do not see an iPhone fanboy that has come here to bash the Android platform. I am just using my experience of a previous system to try and make sense of where the Android platform may go in the future.
These questions come out of love, not frustration or criticism. I love Android and really hope some of these issues are addressed because I feel it does everything else incredibly well. I could have made a post about all the things I love, but hey, you guys already know this . Anyways, let me know your thoughts.
I honestly hope that android doesn't get a lot of standard UI stuff, boxing in developer creativity. There is more than one way to make a good UI and I don't see the need for every app to look the same.
I was more talking about making something available to developers if they need it, incase they do not have the design skill set to do it or the resources to pay someone else to do it.
This would mean that at the least apps would look as good as the stock UI if not better (when capable developers wish to do more).
i read somewhere that the reason the iphone is so smooth at scrolling is down to its very low screen resolution, at first i was thinking nah but there certainly isnt any high end or mid tier touchscreen phone with a res as low as the iphones 320 x 480 at 163 ppi
I believe the iPhone UI uses OpenGL ES 2.0, while Android still supports something like 1.0, 1.1 or 1.3. I forget.
But, we'll have OpenGL 2.0 support soon, and I think their [Google's] roadmap has it somewhere before Android 3.0
dreamdestiny said:
i read somewhere that the reason the iphone is so smooth at scrolling is down to its very low screen resolution, at first i was thinking nah but there certainly isnt any high end or mid tier touchscreen phone with a res as low as the iphones 320 x 480 at 163 ppi
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I agree. The higher res also contributes to the slowdown (versus earlier Android devices like the G1 with much less RAM). This was especially apparent on the Droid, as it has less RAM and Android 2.0 is probably a tad less slick.
Yes, the iphone is pushing lower resolution. But, previous devices to the Nexus one where too pushing lower resolution.
I feel like I am going mad here, surely people notice the fact that iphone has built in animation styles on all scrolling, zooming - android does not. why?
I too have asked this question and haven't gotten a response. I stumbled upon this recently:http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914
This is something we've investigated a couple of years ago already and that we revisit
regularly. Of course we thought of using the GPU, but there are non-trivial issues on
many Android devices (a G1-class device for instance supports only one OpenGL
context at a time, which would prevent you from using any OpenGL based app like
games or augmented reality apps.) In our past experiments we even found many
cases in which using the GPU was slower than normal rendering.
New devices might allow us to overcome the past limitations that made GPU support
a not-so-good solution.
The "choppiness" and "lagginess" you are mentioning are more often related to heavy
garbage collection than drawing performance.
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It just seems the refresh rate is slower. The garbage collection mentioned for example. As the code matures it will get better. Plus I read about an update to the Dalvik VM that should help, "Dalvik Turbo VM" It should bump up speed a good bit. Between that and the JIT performance will increase a lot.
This isn't really an issue anymore with Froyo on Nexus One-class devices. Install Froyo, then install Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher and everything is smooth as silk. App scrolling, home screen scrolling, animations, app startup times, all of these are much smoother on my Nexus One w/ Froyo than an iPhone 3G, and at least on par with a 3GS.
The web browser still can bog down a bit when rapidly scrolling complex HTML pages though (Slashdot, Engadget, etc.), seems to be something with the way Javascript events are handled since the issue more-or-less goes away if you disable Javascript. I think the scrolling algorithm needs a bit of work in browser to make it as smooth feeling as the iPhone 3G/3GS are.
rcgabriel said:
This isn't really an issue anymore with Froyo on Nexus One-class devices. Install Froyo, then install Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher and everything is smooth as silk. App scrolling, home screen scrolling, animations, app startup times, all of these are much smoother on my Nexus One w/ Froyo than an iPhone 3G, and at least on par with a 3GS.
The web browser still can bog down a bit when rapidly scrolling complex HTML pages though (Slashdot, Engadget, etc.), seems to be something with the way Javascript events are handled since the issue more-or-less goes away if you disable Javascript. I think the scrolling algorithm needs a bit of work in browser to make it as smooth feeling as the iPhone 3G/3GS are.
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Pretty much this. I noticed what OP was talking about until I put Froyo on, now everything is silky smooth.
Froyo makes scrolling ok, so no issues here
MaximReapage said:
Pretty much this. I noticed what OP was talking about until I put Froyo on, now everything is silky smooth.
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I disagree, while yes froyo is majoy improvements from 2.1 i still get lag especially on live wallpapers its horrid. this is what i said in reference to that issue:
"I agree also, Romain guy your have been listening to the community implementing such features this should be one of them to really listen to. I can't even enjoy the standard launcher i have to use launcher pro or ADW just to have smooth scrolling even in froyo(pre-release) at times. There should be a simple switch to enable or disable 3d accelerations like how ubuntu does it with Compiz. Your seriously telling me your cannot implement a auto-detection feature to see if the phone can handle it and if it can, then the 3d accel is enabled for that phone?
THIS IS BLASPHEMY!"
I understand what people are saying by downloading ADW etc but if I'm a new user buying android most people don't know about ADW for instance my ex-coworker who have a T-mobile MyTouch 3g slide her phone is horribly slow. I had to manually add launcher pro for her to feel the difference and even she is like wow what a difference. My point is most people first hand will automatically think the phone is slow and not on pair with the iPhone. Smoothness in a nutshell should come straight out stock android without the need for a replacement. just my opinion.
mykenyc said:
I disagree, while yes froyo is majoy improvements from 2.1 i still get lag especially on live wallpapers its horrid. this is what i said in reference to that issue:
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You're complaining about lag with live wallpapers? Comparing it the iPhone which DOES NOT HAVE live wallpapers? Turn them off, stop complaining, and compare apples to apples. Same goes for pretty calendar, weather, news, facebook widgets etc.
torchedlh said:
You're complaining about lag with live wallpapers? Comparing it the iPhone which DOES NOT HAVE live wallpapers? Turn them off, stop complaining, and compare apples to apples. Same goes for pretty calendar, weather, news, facebook widgets etc.
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I said especially with live wallpapers meaning even worst. Please don't tell me to stop complaining because i am not complaining I'm voicing a opinion that can benefit us all. So if your not here to help on the benefit please leave.
thanks.
mykenyc said:
I said especially with live wallpapers meaning even worst. Please don't tell me to stop complaining because i am not complaining I'm voicing a opinion that can benefit us all. So if your not here to help on the benefit please leave.
thanks.
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You're also using a pre release version of Android that is very well documented to not be ready for general usage, of course there's going to be issues with it, really goiing to have to wait for the official release to compare scrolling
quantic01 said:
Yes, the iphone is pushing lower resolution. But, previous devices to the Nexus one where too pushing lower resolution.
I feel like I am going mad here, surely people notice the fact that iphone has built in animation styles on all scrolling, zooming - android does not. why?
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The iPhone uses animations to help reduce the perception of the amount of time it takes to load things. It's eye candy to cover up a fault. The N1 just about instantly switches everything, there is no waiting, so that the few animations it does have take more time than just loading.
It's why I've turned off animations. The eye candy just wastes seconds and CPU cycles.
My biggest concern isn't the launcher since it can easily be remedied by a 3rd party launcher. I think the bigger problem is the scrolling in the web browser.
On Android because scrolling isn't a separate process given to the GPU, scrolling gets progressively slower as the number of dynamic elements(javascript and especially flash) increase.
However, on an iPhone, scrolling is independent of what elements are displayed on the website. Therefore, as the dynamic elements on a webpage increase the scrolling is still just as smooth as a simple website like these forums.
I think using the GPU for scrolling has been needed for a while now but Android really needs it with the addition of flash.
z0phi3l said:
You're also using a pre release version of Android that is very well documented to not be ready for general usage, of course there's going to be issues with it, really goiing to have to wait for the official release to compare scrolling
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regardless of the fact i think you'd be pretty naive to think the stable ota will magically be lag free. it have everything to do with launcher2 and the fact everything is handled by cpu. We have powerful phones no reason why we shouldn't be able to let GPU handle the UI...instead of defending google we should all be asking them to be able to toggle between gpu acceleration or not same way animation is toggled on and off.
Does anyone with a D2 bother using Live Wallpapers, such as the ones included with the stock ROM or custom versions? I generally didn't care for them until I noticed some really nice ones included with custom ROMs, but actually applying them causes a large amount of screen lag. Transitions between homescreens becomes very choppy and bothersome, and even the app drawer is choppy when the actual wallpaper is not visible. Performance as a whole seems to be hindered significantly, as well. The only animation that doesn't seem choppy is the wallpaper itself...
Is there any way to use Live Wallpapers without these ill effects? I can deal with the shortened battery life, because ROMs like Fission are already great in this regard, but when the transitions between homescreens are reduced to about 3 frames in total, it's pretty annoying. Even the custom transitions included with LauncherPro aren't very smooth, and one is flat out unusable. Considering the D2 is one of the better phones on the market right now in terms of performance -- at least when you look at benchmark results -- how can people even bother with Live Wallpapers? Do they ignore the slowdown, or do they simply not experience it?
I get some slowdown even without live wallpaper if I'm flicking between home screens just after booting up or coming out of standby.
depends on how complex the live wallpaper you are using is
im using the gingerbread microbes one and my phone still flies, i used to have the super mario and doom ones and they would bog the phone down some.
So i got the OTA update (i actually wiped my phone to start clean).. and the phone runs snappy, except for the home screen... scrolling through them is pretty laggy..
best described its like having 2.2 with a live background. just not smooth at all.
my atrix with 2.2 ran ALOT smoother on the homescreen (and yes this bothers me)... apps are fast etc, but its just choppy.
has anyone noticed this? i installed launcher pro to use for now and its smooth as butter..
me too felt the same .. had to install launcher pro in order for a smoother experience. Overall, i felt the screen seemed to be less responsive .. except for Gingerbread goodies .. i completely disliked this update. Battery issues, homescreen scrolling slow, touchscreen less responsive ..
it definitely is slower
and i miss the little buttons at the bottom for jumping to a screen
@viper: it is only changed. You can "swap Home" swiping from bottom (over fixed icons area) upwards the middle of the screen. In this way you can choose quickly what "home" to reach.
first post for me actually used to search thing found this thread, but besides alot of the awesome new features the lag on the home screen has really be bothering me
Even alot of my apps that were fine in froyo are now lagging, i haven't rooted, unlocked the bootloader or anything, i was personally waiting for this update to come out before i started to mess with any of that stuff, but for me everything besides opera mobile is noticably laggy. But for some reason opera is alot smoother
Slower?
My stock gingerbread runs so much better than Froyo. Infact even the Live Wallpapers have no effect on home screen scrolling. For the first time since I bought the phone I am not running any launcher as the new Blur runs just fine.
I did a factory reset soon after upgrading. May be you guys should try that.
opposite for me gingerbread much snappier.
launcher pro noticeably faster than ADW EX (which was what I used to use) so made the jump
wintermute000 said:
opposite for me gingerbread much snappier.
launcher pro noticeably faster than ADW EX (which was what I used to use) so made the jump
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tried that
seems to have had the opposite effect lol
noticeably slower now
for giggles i ran smartbench again and i'm now only getting around 2500 for productivity
1000 worse than before
My phone (completely stock) also lags since the upgrade. Home screen lags and some apps lag. Battery life is worse. The task bar looks horrible and many of the symbols hard to recognize. Froyo, with the exception of the unlock lag, was faster and smoother on my phone. I regret upgrading now but, unfortunately, I did not make a contingency plan for downgrading.
geekalok said:
My stock gingerbread runs so much better than Froyo. Infact even the Live Wallpapers have no effect on home screen scrolling. For the first time since I bought the phone I am not running any launcher as the new Blur runs just fine.
I did a factory reset soon after upgrading. May be you guys should try that.
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Yeah i may try a factory reset... just not sure how much it will help me though because i reset my device before i upgraded.
On another note, i actually rather like launcher pro... i might just keep it.
Hello,
So I bought this device a week ago and the lag really bothers me. I noticed this device runs 70+ processes in the background and uses half of its memory on boot!
I remember when I installed cyanogenmod on my original Samsung Galaxy Tab, the thing was flying, even web browsing was several times smoother. Also it gives CPU clock options, and it gave me an option to adjust minimum CPU clock, this way a lot of lag just went away.
Thanks!
No custom ROMs yet. We just got a recovery so custom roms can now be used. Also what little lag I saw went away with the latest update. It is a good idea to get all the updates then wipe and start fresh.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2513532
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2508143
none of those do much of anything to speed up my device overall. just faster homescreen swiping. i've always used alternative launchers mainly for the customizations, whatever speed they grant is negligible since i spend so little time in the launchers themselves. the majority of the apps disabled in that list i've had frozen since root came out. i even refreshed for the hell of it and no difference.
i love the device, but samsung has done some crappy work on the software.
madsquabbles said:
none of those do much of anything to speed up my device overall. just faster homescreen swiping. i've always used alternative launchers mainly for the customizations, whatever speed they grant is negligible since i spend so little time in the launchers themselves. the majority of the apps disabled in that list i've had frozen since root came out. i even refreshed for the hell of it and no difference.
i love the device, but samsung has done some crappy work on the software.
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The only issue I see with custom roms is the loss of spen functionality which is really a shame. Without the spen this is just another 10in tab. Samsung has added some great functionality with snote, the air dock, multi Windows.. Etc.
Hopefully we get a de bloated rom soon. But as others have said, the lag has somewhat improved with the latest patch. But I feel where you're coming from, the first thing I noticed when I turned it on was lag. In fact, I should post the gtalk conversation I had with my tech buddy the dash I got it.
Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk
a TW based custom ROM won't lose any of the S Pen stuff.
Design
More horrible is the Design of the Firmware. I mean look at that statusbar with that buttons for WLAN , GPS and so on. It looks like some ugly quaters.
I recently bought a Tab Pro 10.1 and I was quite disappointed with the performance of it. For a device that -- on paper, at least -- was really powerful, I felt like the entire experience was very sluggish and clunky.
I wanted to share a couple of tweaks I made that helped boost performance dramatically.
1. Ditch the Samsung launcher. As cool as some of those tiled screens looked, it felt really slow and choppy to me. I gave Nova Launcher a try (I've also heard good things about Apex and Launcher Pro) and was extremely impressed with it. The tweaks that yielded the best performance gains were:
Scroll Speed - Faster Than Light
Animation Speed - Faster Than Light
App Animation - Slide*
* The stock animation on the Galaxy devices [the window that starts out minimized and then grows in size] is very choppy; let me add that the "Icecream Sandwich" option offers even better performance, but I thought it looked a little tacky.
Because the device is running such a huge resolution, these animations still look fine when set to such a fast speed. On my phone (Galaxy S4), I toned the settings down a little bit, because they were too fast. On a huge tablet though, they feel great to me.
2. Tweak the Scale Multipliers
In order to do this, I had to unlock Developer Options. Unlocking this mode can easily be done without rooting. Simply go into Settings -> General -> About Device and click on "Build Number" tab 7 times. This will unlock Developer Options (it'll show up as an entry in your left menu). After unlocking this, go into it and change the following settings:
Window Animation Scale - 0.5x
Transition Animation Scale - 0.5x
Animator Duration Scale - 0.5x*
This settings netted huge gains. The tablet felt so much more responsive for me, especially with regards to animations. In particular -- and perhaps this is a complete placebo effect -- I felt that scrolling (web pages, app lists, etc) was dramatically improved. Sluggish scrolling has always bothered the hell out of me with Android devices. This seemed to help a lot (again, it could just be a placebo, but I genuinely think it helped).
After making these two changes, it seriously feels like a brand new device (okay, well, I just bought this 2 days ago, it already is a brand new device). I went from being extremely disappointed in the performance to blown away by how snappy / responsive everything feels now. I know the 10.1's are sort of lacking with the ROMs we have available, but these tips will help a lot. Please note that all of this is sort of generic advice -- you can find most of this info available on other sites. However, I just wanted to share the changes I made that netted me the most dramatic performance improvements.
I'm guessing a lot of people are probably well-versed in suggestions like this, so hopefully I'm not preaching to the choir.
I hope this helps!
Thanks a lot. I am looking to buy one. but can't decide which one I should get, the 8.4 or 10.1
I don't like that samsung cpu alot. And I think the 8.4 come with snapdragon 800. but I like the size of 10.1. sigh....
Thanks for the info. You're right, just switching to Nova Launcher (and rebooting) made a difference in the RAM usage. Tried your settings, they're nice and snappy. Plus I must admit having the launcher bar at the bottom feels a lot more natural.
I did not believe it really fast .. I do not recognize tablet .. thank you
This worked wonderfully!
Sent from my SM-T520 using Tapatalk
thanks for all the info bud:good: I think the best option is to use the stock rooted de bloated rom! Something you can trust,,, i always use the stock rom on all the tablets, where is different on the mobile phone lol,
I am pissed off with all these stupid samsung apps and stuff i never use... keeps updating all the time, so bloody annoying, it's been a week and is so tempting to root it haha, cannot resist the temptation
Not sure if you're referring to the same tablet. The T520 that the I have is super fast and responsive!
Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk
dknotty said:
Not sure if you're referring to the same tablet. The T520 that the I have is super fast and responsive!
Sent from my GT-I9505G using Tapatalk
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The tablet is not necessarily "slow" per se, but it feels slow and sluggish. For whatever reason, stock Android animations have always been terrible. Have you ever used an iOS device before? I prefer Android for about a billion reasons, but one thing iOS absolutely nails is their animations in their user interfaces. Everything on those devices feels as smooth as butter. One thing I've found is that that this is all a matter of perception; for some people, it doesn't bother them at all. For others, it drives them crazy. It's subtle, but once you notice it, it's really annoying. It's almost impossible not to notice if you've used an iOS device for an extended period of time (I owned an iPhone for a couple years). Responsiveness is something that Google has focused on (check out search Google for "Project Butter" for more info).
With every Android device I've used, the animations have looked cheap and clunky. They're not smooth (and never have been). They are choppy and they stutter; the best way I can describe it is like when you're playing a computer game on high settings and your framerate starts to drop. It doesn't look smooth and natural anymore -- it looks inconsistent. Android animations often look like frames are missing.
With the stock settings, go to your home page and start cycling through the pages quickly. For me, whenever it loaded those tiled pages (the thing with the calendar/email widgets, or the digital newspaper page), there was a noticeable hiccup. Successive cycles through the home pages would often feel smoother -- it seems that the device must temporarily cache some of the rendered data for a while. However, when it's of memory and needs to render again, the stuttering returns.
Also, try opening an app. By default, it plays that animation that looks like a window maximizing from a taskbar. That animation was always very choppy for me. Again, it looked like it was missing frames. Using Nova Launcher, I've switched to the Ice Cream Sandwich-style animation (sort of looks like a tube TV turning on), and it feels way more responsive and instantaneous to me.
Again, none of these changes are actually speeding up the device. It's just lowering animation times so that things feel faster.
Fresh owner of Pro Tab 10.1 T520 here :fingers-crossed:
i'm also kinda disappointed, i've rooted, changed kernel for better performance ditch the Samsung bloadware but still kinda lagy
I'm really considering to replace it with Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) i need Snapdragon power
I already had a 8.4 and bought a 10.1 because they are selling them so cheap. After disabling all the bloatware, I think that the speed is just fine, no lags, stutters or whatever. Make sure you really disable everything. To me it's not a big difference in speed with the 8.4.
Hello everyone,
I'm waiting to receive my SM-T520 10.1, replacing a Galaxy Note 10.1 (GT-N8010) broken.
I just tested these settings on my Note2 (GT-N7100). Antutu gives me before your adjustment in economic mode: 17941 And after with your settings. 18476, a real gain.
@ New tricks.
My SM-T525 runs fantastic with Cyanogenmod 11!
I've been hoping to get rid of Magazine UX and the rest of the bloat since I first fired up the device!
Hey guys,
i am about to get a 10.1 and i was wondering if i can use the multi-tasking feature (2 screens on the display) with Nova or Apex launcher or is it only for TouchWiz?
Best regards
I use it with Apex Launcher just fine.
Works fine with Nova too.
I tried these settings, along with cybertronics v5 kernel and graveds rom. I am not disappoint! Very impressive responsiveness and feels ridiculously smooth. Everyone should do this. Thanks!
Hello,
I have my Pro Tab 10.1 and 8 days, with your settings and it is the bomb ! :good:
Thanks, guys, i ordered it today!
I hope i will receive it on Monday!
Have a nice weekend! :good:
drbilliedds said:
Thanks, guys, i ordered it today!
I hope i will receive it on Monday!
Have a nice weekend! :good:
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Thank you, courage and patience you ! :victory:
I am about to get delivery of a 12.2 Tab Pro. Really excited at having all that real estate to play with. I travel a lot for work and can't wait to be able to watch movies on that monster screen. Anyone else here have one of these beasts?
BTW upgrading from a Asus Prime that served well and will now be handed down to my kid