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This is a must-read.
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s
I gather a couple of interesting things from this: 1) the ICS OTA will be a drastic improvement over the ICS ROMs we have now, and 2) I thought it interesting how Google will actually improve UI smoothness in the Nexus S by turning OFF hardware acceleration in some areas.
This really clears up a lot of misconceptions and wrong information people around here seem to pass around regarding UI speed and hardware acceleration
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Good find man, lot of useful info.
From Degobah
Utterly fantastic find, and a must-read for anyone concerned with Android UI performance. It's quite ironic that due to that 8-MB per-process memory hit, it's actually faster for the Nexus S to render parts of the UI in software. I wonder if the same driver limitations are present in iOS, since they use PowerVR GPUs as well.
For reference, I am including Dianne's complete post below.
Dianne Hackborn said:
How about some Android graphics true facts?
I get tired of seeing so much misinformation posted and repeated all over the place about how graphics rendering works on Android. Here is some truth:
• Android has always used some hardware accelerated drawing. Since before 1.0 all window compositing to the display has been done with hardware.
• This means that many of the animations you see have always been hardware accelerated: menus being shown, sliding the notification shade, transitions between activities, pop-ups and dialogs showing and hiding, etc.
• Android did historically use software to render the contents of each window. For example in a UI like http://www.simplemobilereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/2-home-menu.png there are four windows: the status bar, the wallpaper, the launcher on top of the wallpaper, and the menu. If one of the windows updates its contents, such as highlighting a menu item, then (prior to 3.0) software is used to draw the new contents of that window; however none of the other windows are redrawn at all, and the re-composition of the windows is done in hardware. Likewise, any movement of the windows such as the menu going up and down is all hardware rendering.
• Looking at drawing inside of a window, you don’t necessarily need to do this in hardware to achieve full 60fps rendering. This depends very much on the number of pixels in your display and the speed of your CPU. For example, Nexus S has no trouble doing 60fps rendering of all the normal stuff you see in the Android UI like scrolling lists on its 800x480 screen. The original Droid however struggled with a similar screen resolution.
• "Full" hardware accelerated drawing within a window was added in Android 3.0. The implementation in Android 4.0 is not any more full than in 3.0. Starting with 3.0, if you set the flag in your app saying that hardware accelerated drawing is allowed, then all drawing to the application’s windows will be done with the GPU. The main change in this regard in Android 4.0 is that now apps that are explicitly targeting 4.0 or higher will have acceleration enabled by default rather than having to put android:handwareAccelerated="true" in their manifest. (And the reason this isn’t just turned on for all existing applications is that some types of drawing operations can’t be supported well in hardware and it also impacts the behavior when an application asks to have a part of its UI updated. Forcing hardware accelerated drawing upon existing apps will break a significant number of them, from subtly to significantly.)
• Hardware accelerated drawing is not all full of win. For example on the PVR drivers of devices like the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, simply starting to use OpenGL in a process eats about 8MB of RAM. Given that our process overhead is about 2MB, this is pretty huge. That RAM takes away from other things, such as the number of background processes that can be kept running, potentially slowing down things like app switching.
• Because of the overhead of OpenGL, one may very well not want to use it for drawing. For example some of the work we are doing to make Android 4.0 run well on the Nexus S has involved turning off hardware accelerated drawing in parts of the UI so we don’t lose 8MB of RAM in the system process, another 8MB in the phone process, another 8MB in the system UI process, etc. Trust me, you won’t notice -- there is just no benefit on that device in using OpenGL to draw something like the status bar, even with fancy animations going on in there.
• Hardware accelerated drawing is not a magical silver bullet to butter-smooth UI. There are many different efforts that have been going on towards this, such as improved scheduling of foreground vs. background threads in 1.6, rewriting the input system in 2.3, strict mode, concurrent garbage collection, loaders, etc. If you want to achieve 60fps, you have 20 milliseconds to handle each frame. This is not a lot of time. Just touching the flash storage system in the thread that is running the UI can in some cases introduce a delay that puts you out of that timing window, especially if you are writing to storage.
• A recent example of the kinds of interesting things that impact UI smoothness: we noticed that ICS on Nexus S was actually less smooth when scrolling through lists than it was on Gingerbread. It turned out that the reason for this was due to subtle changes in timing, so that sometimes in ICS as the app was retrieving touch events and drawing the screen, it would go to get the next event slightly before it was ready, causing it to visibly miss a frame while tracking the finger even though it was drawing the screen at a solid 60fps.
• When people have historically compared web browser scrolling between Android and iOS, most of the differences they are seeing are not due to hardware accelerated drawing. Originally Android went a different route for its web page rendering and made different compromises: the web page is turned in to a display list, which is continually rendered to the screen, instead of using tiles. This has the benefit that scrolling and zooming never have artifacts of tiles that haven’t yet been drawn. Its downside is that as the graphics on the web page get more complicated to draw the frame rate goes down. As of Android 3.0, the browser now uses tiles, so it can maintain a consistent frame rate as you scroll or zoom, with the negative of having artifacts when newly needed tiles can’t be rendered quickly enough. The tiles themselves are rendered in software, which I believe is the case for iOS as well. (And this tile-based approach could be used prior to 3.0 without hardware accelerated drawing; as mentioned previously, the Nexus S CPU can easily draw the tiles to the window at 60fps.)
• Hardware accleration does not magically make drawing performance problems disappear. There is still a limit to how much the GPU can do. A recent interesting example of this is tablets built with Tegra 2 -- that GPU can touch every pixel of a 1024x800 screen about 2.5 times at 60fps. Now consider the Android 3.0 tablet home screen where you are switching to the all apps list: you need to draw the background (1x all pixels), then the layer of shortcuts and widgets (let’s be nice and say this is .5x all pixels), then the black background of all apps (1x all pixels), and the icons and labels of all apps (.5x all pixels). We’ve already blown our per-pixel budget, and we haven’t even composited the separate windows to the final display yet. To get 60fps animation, Android 3.0 and later use a number of tricks. A big one is that it tries to put all windows into overlays instead of having to copy them to the framebuffer with the GPU. In the case here even with that we are still over-budget, but we have another trick: because the wallpaper on Android is in a separate window, we can make this window larger than the screen to hold the entire bitmap. Now, as you scroll, the movement of the background doesn’t require any drawing, just moving its window... and because this window is in an overlay, it doesn’t even need to be composited to the screen with the GPU.
• As device screen resolution goes up, achieving a 60fps UI is closely related to GPU speed and especially the GPU’s memory bus bandwidth. In fact, if you want to get an idea of the performance of a piece of hardware, always pay close attention to the memory bus bandwidth. There are plenty of times where the CPU (especially with those wonderful NEON instructions) can go a lot faster than the memory bus.
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Skimmed through it but it seems that its a compromise to free RAM but not really to speed up performance. Maybe faster app switching but not scrolling, animations, etc. Hopefully the Galaxy Nexus comes to Sprint.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Award Tour said:
Skimmed through it but it seems that its a compromise to free RAM but not really to speed up performance. Maybe faster app switching but not scrolling, animations, etc. Hopefully the Galaxy Nexus comes to Sprint.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
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Click to collapse
1) Faster app-switching IS improved performance.
2) Maybe you skimmed past this part?
"A recent example of the kinds of interesting things that impact UI smoothness: we noticed that ICS on Nexus S was actually less smooth when scrolling through lists than it was on Gingerbread. It turned out that the reason for this was due to subtle changes in timing, so that sometimes in ICS as the app was retrieving touch events and drawing the screen, it would go to get the next event slightly before it was ready, causing it to visibly miss a frame while tracking the finger even though it was drawing the screen at a solid 60fps."
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matt2053 said:
1) Faster app-switching IS improved performance.
2) Maybe you skimmed past this part?
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Freeing RAM to allow more background processes and faster app switching would mean (app launching) performance that is no better than what we already have. With ICS and the anticipation of HW acceleration, we all wanted BETTER INTERACTIVE performance. From playing around with it on the AOSP build, I can clearly see its faster than 2.3 on that regard. I experience constant app relaunching, much more than 2.3 so maybe that's what Google is talking about. But Google scaling GPU acceleration back because of RAM limitations is kind of disappointing to me but understandable.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
thnx for posting this again. I have read his post a while ago. And it was very informative. I am beginning to understand Android more. And I'm beginning to get more excited with the upcoming ICS update for our phone.
Award Tour said:
Freeing RAM to allow more background processes and faster app switching would mean performance that is no better than what we already have. With ICS and the anticipation of HW acceleration, we all wanted BETTER INTERACTIVE performance. From playing around with it on the AOSP build, I can clearly see its faster than 2.3 on that regard. I experience constant app relaunching, much more than 2.3 so maybe that's what Google is talking about. But Google scaling that back because of RAM limitations is kind of disappointing to me but understandable.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
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Yeah, I think the constant app re-launching is exactly what they are trying to fix by limiting the HW acceleration.
There are also several comments from other members of the Android team about how they are regularly blown away by how well the Nexus S Hummingbird processor handles SW rendering, and that it does so with such ease that you won't notice the difference, because it will be a steady 60 fps, and 60 fps is 60 fps to the user.
But the main thing that I think is important to take away from reading the post is that Google seems to know exactly wtf they're doing in this area, and they're doing a lot of work perfecting ICS performance on the Nexus S before they release it. So anyone who has felt disappointment regarding performance of ICS on the Nexus S so far can be assured that their apprehensions are indeed premature, and the Google team is keenly aware of the exact same performance issues that have been noted in this forum.
Plus they want it perfect on Nexus S because that seems to be the phone most Googlers personally own and use
Because of the overhead of OpenGL, one may very well not want to use it for drawing. For example some of the work we are doing to make Android 4.0 run well on the Nexus S has involved turning off hardware accelerated drawing in parts of the UI so we don’t lose 8MB of RAM in the system process, another 8MB in the phone process, another 8MB in the system UI process, etc. Trust me, you won’t notice -- there is just no benefit on that device in using OpenGL to draw something like the status bar, even with fancy animations going on in there.
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good enough explanation for me. So we can expect a better performing ICS for our nexus S. I am always pissed on how my nexus running on an alpha ICS rom can have a very very slow and painful app switching.
matt2053 said:
Yeah, I think the constant app re-launching is exactly what they are trying to fix by limiting the HW acceleration.
There are also several comments from other members of the Android team about how they are regularly blown away by how well the Nexus S Hummingbird processor handles SW rendering, and that it does so with such ease that you won't notice the difference, because it will be a steady 60 fps, and 60 fps is 60 fps to the user.
But the main thing that I think is important to take away from reading the post is that Google seems to know exactly wtf they're doing in this area, and they're doing a lot of work perfecting ICS performance on the Nexus S before they release it. So anyone who has felt disappointment regarding performance of ICS on the Nexus S so far can be assured that their apprehensions are indeed premature, and the Google team is keenly aware of the exact same performance issues that have been noted in this forum.
Plus they want it perfect on Nexus S because that seems to be the phone most Googlers personally own and use
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I don't know about you but third party apps with hardware acceleration on is visibly more smooth than the same app on 2.3. Night and day difference. I wonder how much of it they're scaling back. Its too bad that you can't easily upgrade RAM on a phone.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Award Tour said:
I don't know about you but third party apps with hardware acceleration on is visibly more smooth than the same app on 2.3. Night and day difference. I wonder how much of it they're scaling back. Its too bad that you can't easily upgrade RAM on a phone.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
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I didn't get from her post that hardware rendering within app windows would be disabled. Just that certain parts of the UI will be drawn with software executed by the CPU.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Good read! Thanks for posting
Not bad
Thx
matt2053 said:
This is a must-read.
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s
I gather a couple of interesting things from this: 1) the ICS OTA will be a drastic improvement over the ICS ROMs we have now, and 2) I thought it interesting how Google will actually improve UI smoothness in the Nexus S by turning OFF hardware acceleration in some areas.
This really clears up a lot of misconceptions and wrong information people around here seem to pass around regarding UI speed and hardware acceleration
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the info
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda premium
My comments, since I do some graphics work professionally:
Either I'm reading this wrong or Android has an extremely stupid rendering design. I do professional embedded GL graphics (and some Qt) so I'm not up to date with the Android framework yet:
* Why isn't drawing a client-server model where all draw commands are funneled to a unified multi-threaded draw server? That way, each app doesn't need a 8MB chunk of driver memory (which is stupid in itself already especially on embedded, Windows Mobile, Qt on Windows Mobile, etc). Only full-screen apps should have direct rendering to the framebuffer. Android is already suffering from draw consistency, resource contention by allowing each app to direct render. C-S would separate touch event contention from drawing contention that each Android app suffers from and why iOS has smoother UI.
* Why isn't Android using a multi-process scene-graph (each app is a item, and then each item has multiple sub-graphs per app) so Android can not only retain what needs to be drawn per global animation updates, but can instantly and easily cull unnecessary updates per app. Putting each app into an overlay isn't the best way to go without this culling.
* Why isn't Android using "dirty-regions" as another way to cull necessary updates (I assume this is what tiles are)? It should be since its a standard technique that dates back to QuickDraw and QuickDraw II, besides MS's windows API.
* With the pixel-overdraw bandwidth issue, Android can easily first cull through the scene-graph, then the per-app dirty-regions (or stencil buffer*), and then use the hardware-accelerated *depthbuffer to eliminate more overdraw, and draw front-to-back. This is just simplified because there's more modern GL tricks for culling. So, Android shouldn't have to touch each displayed pixel more than once.
* Is Android using pixelshaders at all to accelerate standard widgets such as buttons, etc? There's no reason to have large simplified buttons that can't be replicated by instanced models with pixel-shaders in a scene-graph.
Maybe Android should switch to the Unreal Engine for drawing instead, or some other modern game engine. These are all solved issues. Android has hardware that's generations more performant than the old game systems, but a software engine that's generations behind.
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lol in other words no iOS smoothness for us fail I hope ICS hooks up my nexus s tho
NuShrike said:
Maybe Android should switch to the Unreal Engine for drawing instead, or some other modern game engine. These are all solved issues. Android has hardware that's generations more performant than the old game systems, but a software engine that's generations behind.
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Aye, I agree with you there!!!!!
NuShrike said:
My comments, since I do some graphics work professionally:
Either I'm reading this wrong or Android has an extremely stupid rendering design. I do professional embedded GL graphics (and some Qt) so I'm not up to date with the Android framework yet:
* Why isn't drawing a client-server model where all draw commands are funneled to a unified multi-threaded draw server? That way, each app doesn't need a 8MB chunk of driver memory (which is stupid in itself already especially on embedded, Windows Mobile, Qt on Windows Mobile, etc). Only full-screen apps should have direct rendering to the framebuffer. Android is already suffering from draw consistency, resource contention by allowing each app to direct render. C-S would separate touch event contention from drawing contention that each Android app suffers from and why iOS has smoother UI.
* Why isn't Android using a multi-process scene-graph (each app is a item, and then each item has multiple sub-graphs per app) so Android can not only retain what needs to be drawn per global animation updates, but can instantly and easily cull unnecessary updates per app. Putting each app into an overlay isn't the best way to go without this culling.
* Why isn't Android using "dirty-regions" as another way to cull necessary updates (I assume this is what tiles are)? It should be since its a standard technique that dates back to QuickDraw and QuickDraw II, besides MS's windows API.
* With the pixel-overdraw bandwidth issue, Android can easily first cull through the scene-graph, then the per-app dirty-regions (or stencil buffer*), and then use the hardware-accelerated *depthbuffer to eliminate more overdraw, and draw front-to-back. This is just simplified because there's more modern GL tricks for culling. So, Android shouldn't have to touch each displayed pixel more than once.
* Is Android using pixelshaders at all to accelerate standard widgets such as buttons, etc? There's no reason to have large simplified buttons that can't be replicated by instanced models with pixel-shaders in a scene-graph.
Maybe Android should switch to the Unreal Engine for drawing instead, or some other modern game engine. These are all solved issues. Android has hardware that's generations more performant than the old game systems, but a software engine that's generations behind.
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Click to collapse
In case anyone wonders, this was Romain Guy's reply to the questions above:
"We use dirty regions and overdraw would not be eliminated through the use of a depth buffer since pretty much everything drawn by apps requires blending. We user fragment shaders and instanced models already. Apps don't have access to the framebuffer, they draw inside what we call a "surface" which is basically an OpenGL texture used by a separate process (the window compositor.) Android 3.0 already moves towards a full scene graph approach by keeping a tree of display lists (one per View) inside each window."
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barmanham said:
lol in other words no iOS smoothness for us fail I hope ICS hooks up my nexus s tho
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I don't even consider iOS that smooth. Multitasking and app switching in that OS is a big pain. My IP4 and iPod touch 4th slows down a lot when multitasking. To a point that it freezes for seconds.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
I posted with my girls pre 2 and the multitasking in that is perfect
Sent from Oxygen 2.3.2 powered Nexus S 4G
Of course not, but as far as design maybe ....
I have been looking for a phone to upgrade from my iPhone 5 for sometime.
I missed the screen size and resolution of my old Galaxy Siii and although the iPhone is very nice there are a number of frustrations. For example having to go home button-next screen-settings-WiFi-off/on just to toggle WiFi is ridiculous, or to not have any browser choices with flash, etc. etc.*
Studying the market it seems it's between the One and the S4. The Sony Z has a few unique features but is not attractive. Other phones like the Motorola HD are nice but not really comparable on features. Once you have seen a 1920 screen you can't really go back.
On paper the S4 has a slight advantage although I applaud HTC for trying to end the pointless pixel war. As a amateur photographer I can say that all mobile phone cameras are [email protected] so why have bigger files which just waste space ?*
However once the phones are in your hand it's another story. The One is just beautiful. It it a phone you really want to just pickup.
I went to buy a S4 and came out with a One, for pretty much the same price.
The S4 is not only plastic fantastic but the design is still stuck in the iPhone 3 groove which Samsung originally copied.
The S4 is a great phone, but for me the One is almost perfect. The screen size and weight, the design, the georgeous screen, the software, the speed.
Sure, nothing is perfect, the One get a bit warm in use, it would be nice to have a SD card slot, a polishing cloth would be nice in the box etc. but this really feels like sniping.
It's difficult to know where phones go from here. Apart from 1tb of flash storage and a 5000mah battery I can't think of anything. I don't need more size, resolution or speed really. I suppose a display port or HDMI would be good with a keyboard and mouse in the box to use as a computer, I mean this is more powerful then most peoples PCs and Macs right ?
I take my hat off to HTC and wish them speedy restoration of their former glory!
Just a correction... It's not as powerful to the current PCs & Macs.
It might be quad core and has almost the same ghz that CPU processors but truth is it's too tiny to be of match to computers. Perhaps the performance of quad cores here is comparable to dual cores of computers right now or might even be single cores. And much more less on the GPU side.
colonel said:
Apart from 1tb of flash storage and a 5000mah battery I can't think of anything
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I said the same about upgrading from my HD2 about 3 years ago. There wasn't anything sufficiently BOOM for me to upgrade.
I had WM6.5 and 'Droid on the SD (while Android was still effectively in beta) and the new phones back then were a bit gimmicky compared.
Can't find the post but I said I wouldn't upgrade until 2GHz/2GB RAM/Quad Core/1080p and I didn't.
So, back to your question? Where next?
1TB storage? Nah. 64/128GB will be the new 16/32 more like. With micro SD.
5 working day battery - it'll be about real world longevity rather than tech specs, which will lead to a big row as people don't get 5 days gaming
Where next? Frikkin' lasers! What else can be packed in?
Riyal said:
Just a correction... It's not as powerful to the current PCs & Macs.
It might be quad core and has almost the same ghz that CPU processors but truth is it's too tiny to be of match to computers. Perhaps the performance of quad cores here is comparable to dual cores of computers right now or might even be single cores. And much more less on the GPU side.
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yes and no
most folk have PCs with an Intel 3000 or less for graphics.
you are right about size, which is why a display port and keyboard/mouse would be great
compact_bijou said:
Where next? Frikkin' lasers! What else can be packed in?
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thats the thing
I always say I don't need more and then someone comes up with something I never thought of and I can't live without LOL
4K Screens, PS3 graphics and flexible screens. Unfortunately, not many companies focus on the battery life which is the sad reality.
mahay_love said:
4K Screens, PS3 graphics and flexible screens. Unfortunately, not many companies focus on the battery life which is the sad reality.
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Battery tech is the NBT. Has to be.
Otherwise, if they add anything else in to devices, we'll have to be no more than 12 feet from a plug.
I sincerely hope the race for bigger marketing numbers ends at 1080p displays: 1080p is already absolutely 100% pointless on a phone-sized screen. However, in other ways, screen performance has a long way to go: I want something that goes brighter than my HTC One (which still has legility issues in bright sunlight), has less reflection from the screen, has more resistance to damage and scratches, and combines an OLED-like black level with properly calibrated colour accuracy and white point, and no screen-burn. (And a way to calibrate the screen that doesn't require a custom kernel).
More performance is never a bad thing.
2GB of RAM is nowhere near enough, especially with 0.5GB being dedicated video memory. I'm looking forward to 4GB devices.
Mobile GPUs have quite a way to go, too, especially in terms of memory bandwidth: I'd like to see manufacturers experimenting with EDRAM.
Camera sensors could also be massively much better than the sensor on the One (although whether the market would accept that is another story: you'd probably have to make the phone significantly thicker). I'd like Xenon flashes to become more common, too.
Personally I'd like more onboard storage available at a lower price. Phones which have 16, 32 and 64GB models charge a ludicrous premium for the larger capacities.
The lack of USB 3.0 is a problem using OTG storage.
Headphone output, while quite respectable on phones like the One, could still be a lot better.
Probably the single biggest thing that needs improving is battery life. I'm lucky if I get four hours of real-life use out of my One if I'm browsing the web over 3G. Really you need at least twice that.
Dissipating heat will, I think, increasingly become a problem in the future. I can't see a smartphone ever incorporating an audible cooling fan.
HDMI output still has a few issues.
And finally the whole thing needs to become more rugged. Sony's Xperia Z is decidedly undesirable in many other ways, but the water-proof and dust-proof features are great (or at least they would be if they didn't require a compromise in terms of speaker quality).
Shasarak said:
More performance is never a bad thing.
2GB of RAM is nowhere near enough, especially with 0.5GB being dedicated video memory. I'm looking forward to 4GB devices.
Mobile GPUs have quite a way to go, too, especially in terms of memory bandwidth: I'd like to see manufacturers experimenting with EDRAM.
Camera sensors could also be massively much better than the sensor on the One (although whether the market would accept that is another story: you'd probably have to make the phone significantly thicker). I'd like Xenon flashes to become more common, too.
Personally I'd like more onboard storage available at a lower price. Phones which have 16, 32 and 64GB models charge a ludicrous premium for the larger capacities.
The lack of USB 3.0 is a problem using OTG storage.
Headphone output, while quite respectable on phones like the One, could still be a lot better.
Probably the single biggest thing that needs improving is battery life. I'm lucky if I get four hours of real-life use out of my One if I'm browsing the web over 3G. Really you need at least twice that.
HDMI output still has a few issues.
And finally the whole thing needs to become more rugged. Sony's Xperia Z is decidedly undesirable in many other ways, but the water-proof and dust-proof features are great (or at least they would be if they didn't require a compromise in terms of speaker quality).
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yes, thats pretty much the whole 9 yards
battery life is the main thing for me and it seems most other people
I am sceptical of camera. physics demands a bigger sensor and it ain't going to happen in the form factor.
most people don't need better quality, judging from alot of DSLR shots I see
a display projector, or holographic display would be nice. then I can show people photographs when I am visiting wihout any other equipment
I'm still waiting for a phone that turns into a plane and flies me to my own desert island id be really happy with that
jiggle_ said:
I'm still waiting for a phone that turns into a plane and flies me to my own desert island id be really happy with that
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there is a real danger they get the spec of the island wrong you could get dumped here:
http://www.theworld.org/2012/11/the-history-of-hashima-the-island-in-bond-film-skyfall/
colonel said:
a display projector, or holographic display would be nice. then I can show people photographs when I am visiting wihout any other equipment
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I'm a little doubtful about putting a projector into a device that's hand-held and uses a touch-screen interface: the picture will wobble around like crazy every time you tap a button.
---------- Post added at 02:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:55 PM ----------
There's one very important development that's needed on the software side, incidentally: at the moment mobile web-browsers still don't do a sufficiently good job of parsing desktop-oriented websites. There are a number of issues involved, but one of the more significant ones is that there's no accepted way to emulate moving the mouse cursor to a specific position without actually clicking on something. This means websites that depend on mouse-over events - things like menus that pop up when you move the cursor over a link - never work correctly.
One of the things I had hoped Samsung might do with the GS4 (but, as far as I know, didn't) is use their "air gesture" technology to achieve this: hold your finger close to the screen to move the cursor, and actually touch it to click. A device like the S-Pen could achieve the same thing if it's pressure sensitive: move while pressing lightly to move the cursor, press harder to click. There have been other attempts at this in the past: the original Blackberry Storm, for example, had a touch-screen that was effectively one large physical button, so it could tell whether you were gently tracing your finger over the screen or actually pressing. But I've yet to see a way of doing this that works nicely.
Shasarak said:
I'm a little doubtful about putting a projector into a device that's hand-held and uses a touch-screen interface: the picture will wobble around like crazy every time you tap a button.
There's one very important development that's needed on the software side, incidentally: at the moment mobile web-browsers still don't do a sufficiently good job of parsing desktop-oriented websites.
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actually that reminds me of another aweful thing about the iphone.
when you are editing online forms, e.g. an ebay advert, the iphone just goes mad.
firstly spelling suggestions go out of the window. it starts making odd suggestions about words you have never heard of.
secondly it does weird additions. so you are typing and it suddenly replaces the last three words with something totally out of context.
apple have improved this. It used to be impossible to even use on web forms, but it stil needs alot more work.
chrome and webkit (and IE on Windows Phone for that matter) are vastly superior in this aspect.
I thought I'd start a thread to talk about my research in to this tablet and the conclusions and decisions i have taken in choosing it, setting it up and the mods i choose to incorporate or leave out. Dont know if it will help other people in choosing to buy one of these or not or if it will help others into expanding the capabilities of their stock unit, but I appreciate the feedback I've been getting on the individual threads I've been looking at.
Why I chose the Note 8.0
Since tablets first started becoming mass market items, I always had a problem with the 10 inch format that is most popular. I myself own a 10 inch tablet (an ASUS Transformer) and while I enjoy using it at home, I find it too bulky to take out with me yet too small to replace my laptop for any serious tasks. Having played with many tablets in stores over the years I soon decided that the 8-9inch form factor was one that was most ideal. 7inches was too small and too close to a mobile phone for my liking. Going up 1 inch adds about 25% more screen real estate and this is significant for me. Saying that, I never found a tablet in that size range that was up to standard in terms of tech spec. They always seems over priced, underpowered or were missing an important feature for my liking. The original note phone came out. I loved the idea and benefit that the spen brought to the table but thought it was too small to be useful for any serious input.
On an average day I will carry a camera, my phone, a note pad, my 10 inch tablet and sometimes a sketchbook as well. While I feel the 8.0 is a little overpriced (not alot overpriced like many reviews seem to lable it) the benefit of the spen allows me to ditch the notepad and sketchbook as well as the 10 inch tablet. This is huge for me as although the other items arent heavy, a whole day carrying my bag can start to take its toll on my shoulder.
Initial thoughts
My tablet arrived in my hands late last night so I havent had much time to spend with it. I love the responsiveness of the spen although I'm not used to the pressure sensitivity of it yet for drawing applications.
I'm a little overwhelmed by the additional apps, functions and settings added to the OS by Samsung at the moment. There seems to be a lot to go through and at least a few things that I have no use of. After I've spent a few days with it, I will talk about what I have enabled and disabled and why but in the mean time I expect to start at least one thread asking a few questions.
Waiting on my microSD card to arrive before I attempt to root it.
A few days in
Rooted the tablet using the method in the link in the mods section bellow. The process was smooth although I no longer am able to access Readers Huib as it displays "Rooting detected"
Installed SetCPU, Trickster, Greenify and FolderMount.
Installed 18GB of games with the assistance of my 64GB microSD and FolderMount.
Set 2 underclocking profiles using setCPU (screen off and battery <= 15%). Dont think ill overclock (at least not at the moment anyway) as everything seems to be running smooth as it is.
Set a few apps to hibernate with Greenify but will build up the list as i notice more apps unncessarily running in the background.
Not really sure if ill get much use out of Trickster yet.
Not had any issues with battery life, but I tend to disable anything I dont need at the time. went the whole weekend with out needing to charge with my current set up and regular use.
Will put up pictures to show my set up when I'm next home and remember (I mostly use forums at work...).
A few weeks in
Had a bit of an extended play now and can report back some more information. I havent used it for drawing as much as I had intended so far as i've been getting carried away with the amount of games that I can store on the device. The overall experience has been extremely positive. I have found that ive not really used the "S series" apps at all. I have S calendar on there but think i preffer google callender. I've been using Awesome note to take most of my notes although I havent figured out how to sync it with evernote yet. Thats the main reason I'm using that app. Im using LayerPaint as my main drawing app. So im only using S note when Im really in a hurry and need to jot something down.
For gaming I'm finding it a pleasure to use. The screen is extremely responsive and i have had little in the way of stuttering issues. The one thing I will say is that a section of the screen gets uncomfortably warm when playing a CPU/GPU intensive game. The CPU shows a temp of 40 degrees but the screen feels warmer than that making me think it may be the GPU thats getting hot. I've not had the chance to explore this further, but it is putting my off wanting to overclock them.
The GPS signal is great and im finding having an 8 inch satnav (with navfree) a really good companion in the car. The battery life is draining about about 20% per hour as a rough estimate through my initial tests with it. volume 60%. screen 60%. GPS on. All other conections off. Power saving mode enabled (not sure this makes much difference for me. Set CPU locks the CPU at my preffered settings, so this is just reducing the refresh rate and lowing the brightness slightly).
A month in
Switched from setCPU to TricksterMod. Although you cant set up specific scenarios with it, there are guvernors that do what I intended with scenarios anyway (luzactiveQ limits the CPU when the screen is off). I overclocked and undervolted both the GPU and CPU and have been pretty stable on my current settings (in the summary section bellow). It seems to be running cooler now as well and I'm no longer getting a hot patch on the left hand side of the screen. Got a new case based on the recomendations on this forum and a few more apps. Art Flow - recommend, although I'm still stuck on LayerPaint. Reviewing a few art reference apps I noticed on FaeMinx's post your homescreen post.
Accessories
Case
I decided to try a cheap case to start me off. Reported issues with magnetized cases on older notes has me spooked (see this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2288809). I liked the idea of the "Hidden Note" (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2254176) but I think its a little overkill for me.
I'm starting off with this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mulbess-Lea...TF8&colid=2SV9ALFBCBWRE&coliid=I21F5LS9DX0EES cheap and cheerful, plus the slight lip on the bezel it has will help prevent me accidentally triggering the capacitve buttons on the bottom of the tablet while holding it in landscape. This seems to be working. There are magnets in place to hold it closed. Im not sure how I feel about this...
Now got the Poetic Revolution case. Its a little pricey but not compared to the official one, but it does everything i wanted in a case. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2311243
Additional Spen
Bought the 8pi pen a few weeks ago once I had decided I wanted a note. It works very well with the tablet from my initial tests. I plan on doing a lot of digital art on this device.
Want to get a few days of usage under my belt before I decide if I want to do this or not though http://phandroid.com/2012/12/05/how-to-adjust-s-pen/ (adjust spen sensitivity)
microSD card
Due to the small amount of internal storage i decided a large microSD card is a must and will use an app or combination of apps to either move apps or app data onto it to allow me to install more than would otherwise be avialable. Ordered a Scandisk 64GB class 10 card.
Screen Protector.
Currently undecided whether I will use one or not. The case I have should keep the screen protected in transit and I cant see myself doing any damage to it with the sylus. The Revolution comes with a screen protector built in. If it starts to annoy me, I'll just pop it out.
Car Mount.
As this device has GPS I figure I'll take full advantage and use it as my Satnav (Nav Free) / in car entertainment system. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BXFLYTW/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Mods
Root - A must for me to be able to take advantage of the microSD card. used this method http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2251033 was a smooth process.
ROM - undecided. waiting to try out touchwiz to see if I like its features and to see what I can disable / uninstall if necesary to boost performance if i find a feature of no benefit
Kernel - Flashed Civs kernal. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2272917 Really pleased with it. allowed me to both undervolt and overclock the CPU and GPU and not had any performance issues.
CPU
100 - 1704
lulzactiveq (a modified interactive but also with the benefit of limiting the cpu when the screen is off). also set ignore_nice_load to 1. so that nice to have processes are now no longer run. only the higher priority ones are.
row
uv -75
GPU settings on
160 - 837500
350 - 912500
440 - 962500
533 - 1025000
1 up - 90
2 down - 41
2 up - 90
3 down - 70
3 up - 90
4 down - 73
System Apps
Trickster - Was using setCPU but foudn the additional functionality of Trickster to be useful. Specificy with the GPU tweeks.
FolderMount - I dont want to swap the internal and external memory as I plan on still being able to hot swap SD cards if I wish to review some of the photos I've take. I hope that by only moving the app data and not the app itself, I should have no issues doing this.
Auto Airoplane Mode - switches all connections off when the screen is off
Greenify - identify apps that open in the background looking for updates and dissabling that ability in order to preserve battery. I only want some apps to update if I open them.
Other Useful Apps
Titanium Backup
ES File Explorer
DiskUsage - true view of storage space in a easily understood layout. Helps identify wasted space and erase unused files.
Apps for use with Stylus (creative)
Sketchbook Pro - still learning how to use this
LayerPaint - simple lay out, but powerful tool. My favourite at the moment. The fadein/out pen is especially good for line art.
ArtFlow - relatively new app, but good support and growing features.
Lecture Notes - Better than S Note according to sources on here. Not tried it yet
Art reference tools
Handy
Pose Tool
All comments, feedback and suggestions welcome. I've had some great feed back so far on here but would like to have my entire set up in one thread so that people can make advice for me in complete context. Any performace enhancing or battery saving tips appreciated.
Special thanks to @FaeMinx for your general art app help and discussion and @civato for your general support to the comunity. Others have been helpful as well and hopefully I've clicked thanks where appropriate, but these two have been particularly helpful to me.
thank you
Thank you for your comprehensive note.
Please report here any eventual experience with an alternative ROM.
I'm not a Note 8 owner yet, waiting for a 32GB 3G version.
hertsjoatmon said:
I thought I'd start a thread to talk about my research in to this tablet and the conclusions and decisions i have taken in choosing it, setting it up and the mods i choose to incorporate or leave out. Dont know if it will help other people in choosing to buy one of these or not or if it will help others into expanding the capabilities of their stock unit, but I appreciate the feedback I've been getting on the individual threads I've been looking at.
Why I chose the Note 8.0
Since tablets first started becoming mass market items, I always had a problem with the 10 inch format that is most popular. I myself own a 10 inch tablet (an ASUS Transformer) and while I enjoy using it at home, I find it too bulky to take out with me yet too small to replace my laptop for any serious tasks. Having played with many tablets in stores over the years I soon decided that the 8-9inch form factor was one that was most ideal. 7inches was too small and too close to a mobile phone for my liking. Going up 1 inch adds about 25% more screen real estate and this is significant for me. Saying that, I never found a tablet in that size range that was up to standard in terms of tech spec. They always seems over priced, underpowered or were missing an important feature for my liking. The original note phone came out. I loved the idea and benefit that the spen brought to the table but thought it was too small to be useful for any serious input.
On an average day I will carry a camera, my phone, a note pad, my 10 inch tablet and sometimes a sketchbook as well. While I feel the 8.0 is a little overpriced (not alot overpriced like many reviews seem to lable it) the benefit of the spen allows me to ditch the notepad and sketchbook as well as the 10 inch tablet. This is huge for me as although the other items arent heavy, a whole day carrying my bag can start to take its toll on my shoulder.
So. Here I am, about to receive my new tablet this weekend and very excited to do so. I would have bought one sooner, but I was waiting for news of a higher capacity device but according to Samsung Westfield and Samsung Customer Support that is unlikely to arrive anytime soon.
Accessories
Case
I decided to try a cheap case to start me off. Reported issues with magnetized cases on older notes has me spooked (see this thread http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2288809). I liked the idea of the "Hidden Note" (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2254176) but I think its a little overkill for me.
I'm starting off with this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mulbess-Lea...TF8&colid=2SV9ALFBCBWRE&coliid=I21F5LS9DX0EES cheap and cheerful, plus im hoping the slight lip on the bezel it has will help prevent me accidentally triggering the capacitve buttons on the bottom of the tablet while holding it in landscape. Will report back my experience.
Additional Spen
Bought the 8pi pen a few weeks ago once I had decided I wanted a note. I tried it will my girlfriends original note and it felt nice in my hands. I plan on doing a lot of digital art on this device.
microSD card
Due to the small amount of internal storage i decided a large microSD card is a must and will use an app or combination of apps to either move apps or app data onto it to allow me to install more than would otherwise be avialable. Ordered a Scandisk 64GB class 10 card.
Screen Protector.
Currently undecided whether I will use one or not. The case I have should keep the screen protected in transit and I cant see myself doing any damage to it with the sylus.
Car Mount.
As this device has GPS I figure I'll take full advantage and use it as my Satnav (Nav Free) / in car entertainment system.
Mods
Root - A must for me to be able to take advantage of the microSD card
ROM - undecided. waiting to try out touchwiz to see if I like its features and to see what I can disable / uninstall if necesary to boost performance if i find a feature of no benefit (Peel Remote?, Multi-Windows?, spen on pull ou?t, touchdown push?)
Kernel - Will be flashing a custom kernel. I plan on overclocking the CPU slightly but will also be looking to do the same with the GPU as if it is like the S3 it can be pushed a little harder with out upping the voltage.
System Apps
SetCPU - will overclock slightly but also set it to underclock when the battery is getting low and when the screen is off.
FolderMount or link2SD - I dont want to swap the internal and external memory as I plan on still being able to hot swap SD cards if I wish to review some of the photos I've take. I hope that by only moving the app data and not the app itself, I should have no issues doing this.
That will do for now. I better get back to work. Been typing this for a while now. Will talk about about what theming I plan on doing and some of the other apps I intend on using. Wont bother talking about games or anything like that though.
All comments, feedback and suggestions welcome. I've had some great feed back so far on here but would like to have my entire set up in one thread so that people can make advice for me in complete context. Any performace enhancing or battery saving tips appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lautunno said:
I'm not a Note 8 owner yet, waiting for a 32GB 3G version.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may be waiting a while... As I stated in my post, according to both the official store and the online customer service there is no current planned release date for a 32gb model (at least not here in the UK). They say that the demand isnt there (which is a joke in my opinion). Having been told this I decided to go down the "transfer app data to microSD" route.
Honestly, peel is useful to me solely for turning on the television. It's painfully slow to send commands like channel selection to the set.
Multiwindow is very valuable. Comparing things to instructions (ie, have root explorer and a browser open simultaneously to look at files; have a browser and a terminal emulator open simultaneously to read commands in the browser and issue them correctly without swapping between apps.)
I don't know if the multiwindow app in Play supports non-touchwiz roms, but at this point the alternate roms are still touchwiz based, afaik.
Civato has a kernel with underclock, undervolt and overclock support. The recommended app for working with it is trickster, and folks are getting good results.
So far the s-pen handwriting recognition has been disappointing to me. I used some of my 25 dollar Play credit to buy My Script Notes Mobile.
Using it basically requires disabling the use of the GPU for 2d rendering at this time. That's too bad, because doing so does have some impact on overall performance at least in benchmarks. I'm undecided on whether it's also a real issue in use (just learned of the fix last night) and the handwriting recognition is very good.
roustabout said:
So far the s-pen handwriting recognition has been disappointing to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Really?
I found the handwriting recognition to be amazing... Perhaps I'm just lucky, but my messy inconsistent poorly formed chicken scratch gets recognised perfectly every time... I was actually surprised because I thought I would have to learn to write carefully and slowly to make use of this feature.
I'm thrilled I can whip out the S Pen and scrawl across the screen at speed and the device just understands... Hell, even I can't make out my letters sometimes.
@herts,
Thanks for liking the Hidden Note 8 concept. I'm designing the 3rd version of it with an integrated micro USB wired 3mm thick keyboard. The TPU protected Note 8 and the keyboard would be housed in a 16mm thick notebook.
Yup, it's overkill but it works for some people. More on that thread one i finish making it.
I've been trying to use Directory Bind so that large data would be on the external card and "ghosted" on to the main device memory when the app is used. Initially it works, but then the links disappear on a restart. This was successful with my Note 2, where the direct-wifi file transfers go directly onto my large capacity micro SD card.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using XDA Premium HD app
Finally got my Note 8.0 last night (a week later than planned) and will add my initial thoughts to the OP.
Basically its that I love the tablet but am a little overwhelmed at the additional features and applications added by Samsung. Need to get comfortable with them and remove those which I dont use. As a fan of efficiency, even if i only get a few extra minutes of battery life or a few extra mb free, ill still get rid of functionality I wont make use of...
FaeMinx said:
Really?
I found the handwriting recognition to be amazing... Perhaps I'm just lucky, but my messy inconsistent poorly formed chicken scratch gets recognised perfectly every time... I was actually surprised because I thought I would have to learn to write carefully and slowly to make use of this feature.
I'm thrilled I can whip out the S Pen and scrawl across the screen at speed and the device just understands... Hell, even I can't make out my letters sometimes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me too, unfortunately the default settings aren't necessatily the best.
HasC in the note 10.1 Tips and Tricks thread has a great video on setting up recognition which is applicable for the note 8:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=30747569
Do you find the 8PI accurate? I use another pen and found it okay by two pixels at a perpendicular angle and at a slant is of by as many as five MM.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using XDA Premium HD app
Bonisaur said:
Do you find the 8PI accurate? I use another pen and found it okay by two pixels at a perpendicular angle and at a slant is of by as many as five MM.
Sent from my GT-N5110 using XDA Premium HD app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had no issues with it with the initial test sketches I've been doing with it.
I have found I leave the battery saving option in the spen settings on as I am a bit OCD about saving battery. It means I have to pull the supplied spen out a small amount when I want to use the 8pi, but I have no issues in doing this.
I read alot about the pens being slightly off, I even started a thread about it in the Q&A section of this forum, but I'm finding it to be very accurate with this device, even when using it at an angle.
There doesnt seem to be a left handed or right handed option in this tablet which makes me thing that an offset with an older Note may be purposely put there to account for people holding a pen at an angle. What ever orentation I'm using the tablet in, the pointer on the screen seems to be at the tip of the nib, so I am happy.
Added some more comments to the OP about my experience having had the tablet a few days now. added a link to the root tool i used. and a few extra comments on some of the apps i am using.
Some screen shots of my desktop area and settings...
added a but more of my experience having had the tablet a week or 2 now.
My stylus is pretty much perfect. I dont know with the others but mine is fine. Maybe because my hand are not shaky? hahaha.
alicepattinson said:
My stylus is pretty much perfect. I dont know with the others but mine is fine. Maybe because my hand are not shaky? hahaha.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Shaky hands? Are you refering to the person who was complaining about the handwriting recognition? I've had no issues with both the supplied stylus or the 8pi. Both are working fantastically and I preffer the handwriting input to the keyboard when inputting text and even better with the drawing applications I've tried so far.
Added further experience. switched from set CPU to Trickster Mod and included my current settings. Got a new case and few new apps.
Not decided whether I will condence my experience progress into one section with my final result or leave it as it is showing how I came to the conclusions I have...
We're currently working on a handwriting app using a stylus for Android platforms. We can draw plenty fast enough to keep up with the user using a simple SurfaceView implementation. The problem is the ubiquitous Android touch lag that has been so well documented. I have not seen much of any improvement from ICS to JB. What we're currently seeing is a good 100+mS of lag when following a touch swipe on Android and actually being able to grab the coordinates from the OS. Our code basically runs the same now(as far as lag) whether it's on a quad core Galaxy Note or a dual core Marvell processor running at 800MHz. At this point I am frustrated with the state of the speed of the touch plumbing on Android. Now, I will be fair and state that I've tried some of the drawing apps on the iOS platform and at least in the drawing department, iOS isn't that much better than Android. The lag on iOS is nearly equivalent to Android. But note this is for drawing on the screen and following the touch events. All else; scrolling, swiping, iOS crushes Android as far as responsiveness. I recognize these devices are running a high level OS and we shouldn't expect real time performance but I am still frustrated to say the least. A good handwriting app needs a responsive touch system otherwise the human brain starts to disconnect their hand motion from what they see on the screen.
I've looked at the Seeder app but to be frank haven't used it since it requires a rooted device.
Can anyone chime in on the current state of the lag problem on Android? Are there are any solutions out there where we can get our apps to closely follow the touch coordinates without 100+mS of lag? I am willing to have to code my own plumbing to get the touch coordinates with less lag if that's what it takes.
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/21/iphone-5-touch-screen-twice-as-fast-as-android-touch-screen/
You've probably sorted this by now, but... specifically where do you observe 100ms lag ? From touching the screen to some point in your code ?
Even basic events like a button click don't fire for over 150ms after the user touches it. It's the same even when dealing with touch events directly.
i have some answer - sort of
microsoft is aiming for 1ms response time (other cmpys they wont say anything)
i dont think they have implemented in windows phone yet , but still i think response are pretty good compared to overloaded android
balance is must for any operationg system .
KurianOfBorg said:
Even basic events like a button click don't fire for over 150ms after the user touches it. It's the same even when dealing with touch events directly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm a bit surprised by that, hadn't really noticed it on our app (which is a keyboard...) - how are you doing the measurement ? Would be interesting to give it a try.
My main, 4-5 year old macbook pro, seems to slowly be dying. HDD making weird noises, dead pixels on edges, power randomly turning off all the way, the works. I know some of this stuff is fixable, and I'll probably come around to it later, but right now I'm looking into getting a new computer, preferably a windows 8/ windows 8.1. While looking around for what my replacement would be, I know that some tablets, such as the surface pro, run windows 8. I think it would be cool to have a computer i could develop on and then go to class and turn it into a tablet and take notes on it. I don't know much about development, since I am a noob at it, and I'm going to collage in computer science next year, I don't know much about computer specifications for development. So, what would be a good choice for a tablet pc for developing? I do understand that a laptop or a full on PC would probably be better, but I'm just looking at options right now.
The main criteria for serious development (note: nothing you do in the first year or two of a CS curriculum is likely to qualify, unless you're going to MIT or something) are:
A) High-resolution display (1920 x 1080 is what I'd consider to be the bare minimum for a dev box) with a large enough screen that you can read it easily at default DPI. This is needed so you can have multiple code views, or code + documentation, open at once.
B) A pretty good supply of RAM. Depending on the languages and IDEs you're using, and the size of the code bases you're working on, just what is *enough* RAM will vary, but I wouldn't want to use anything less than around 8GB in a dev box. That lets me have multiple IDEs open, and a ton of browser tabs and history (for documentation), all at the same time without swapping.
C) SSD if you can afford it; the performance boost on stuff like compiling is substantial. You'll want to make sure you have plenty of space, though; source code even for large projects is only occasionally into and rarely much past single-digits of gigabytes, but the full repository history for a long-running project can be huge, and you will probably want to have room for virtual machines too (which are literally full additional OS installations) so you can test on different systems, or learn to develop for both Windows and Linux on the same machine, etc.
D) A really good keyboard is a must. You'll spend a long time using it, and you'll use a lot of weird keys that you aren't used to hitting right now. You want a full keyboard (no missing keys; did you know that there are actually times when Scroll Lock is useful? No joke...) with full-sized key-spacings (a cramped keyboard will slow you down and be uncomfortable really quickly). What type of "feel" you want to the keyboard is up to you, but most people really like the Lenovo keyboards for laptops, for example; your basic cheap membrane keyboard is probably *not* going to be pleasant to use.
Surface Pro 2 might work, if you got the Type Cover, but I wouldn't really recommend it. You want a bigger display on a dev box, usually, and the keyboard is optimized for everyday use but not for development.
Different people have different preferences for development machines. However I think GoodDayToDies suggestions are all good ones.
I am currently a first year computer science student at the university of northampton. I went with just getting a laptop rather than a tablet hybrid of some sort. Ultimately settled on the HP Sleekbook 14. Its only an intel core i3 @1.8ghz with HD4000 graphics and 6gb of RAM, but for everything you do in first and 2nd year (and potentially 3rd if there is a 3rd year not really sure how things work in the US) thats actually plenty powerful. It isn't a solid state drive, which would have been nice. There is only one criticism with it for programming and that is the screen resolution, at 14" the physical size is fine, but it is only 1366*768 which I can fit my stuff onto but it would be much nicer to have a higher res screen as with a higher res you can fit more code on without having to decrease font sizes or hide task bars in your IDE or whatever (I decrease font size and unpin the solution explorer and toolbox etc in visual studio, eclipse I dont unpin anything because I am still trying to get used to it, its only when you use something else that you realise how good visual studio is).
I did computer science as one of my A-Level subjects. I didn't bother with getting a laptop for that, I used the school machines in lesson, took bus home, used my desktop PC at home (and seeming as I commute to northampton daily from home instead of staying on halls, I can still do the same, but for convenience sake I use the laptop still, with my setup its more comfortable). I did have a friend though that didn't have a desktop PC at home or anything, his only computer was a 10" netbook, 1.3ghz dual core atom on 1gb of RAM and one of those really sucky 600p displays. He did his entire A-Level computing coursework on it, didn't use the school machines for anything other than testing and viewing documentation (as in that school we weren't allowed details for the WiFi which also had a hidden SSID, even if we did connect to the network via wifi or plain old ethernet, there was a proxy server nobody had details for either, so no internet for unauthorised machines). He was perfectly happy to bash out code on a tiny keyboard and only see a few lines of it at one time, I really wouldnt recommend it though. Visual studio was also perfectly happy to run on that machine (albeit with about a 10 minute load time when first opening it), compiled and debugged ASP.net applications perfectly fine too.
Under default settings in eclipse and with the console window thing pinned open at the bottom of the display. I can fit 28 lines of code on a 768 pixel tall screen.
Tablets for taking notes dont last long. Only people still doing that since the beginning of term are either using a surface with touch cover and typing yet still having a pad of paper for drawing diagrams or there are 2 people with surface pro's who use the digitiser stylus. Under lecture note taking conditions capacitive pens and virtual keyboards dont cut it. Also seen a small handful of people using bluetooth keyboards with iPads. One of the 2 surface pro guys does also use the surface in lab sessions for doing his work, the other switches to a uni machine. If your fine with a small keyboard then yeah, you might be able to do devwork on a surface pro, but there are @"keys"^Which>'R'|arely {if ever} get touched during daily usage; They are often placed on smaller buttons on smaller keyboards, much harder to hit. If your going to spend a few seconds trying to hit shift+2 to type a " (I'm british, our keyboards arent the same) then its going to slow you down considerably, my mate with the netbook didn't have a problem with this, I couldnt do it though. I have used the apple wireless keyboard and can type reasonably well on that (even though its about netbook size), but I cannot use it for programming, although in my case thats because apple are morons who don't know what a british keyboard looks like so the symbols are in the wrong place for me (their idea of a british layout keyboard, because they do sell one, is slap a £ sign on the 3 key and give us a double height enter/return key, that is it, all of their changes), that wouldnt effect you in the US.
I would say anything with a core i3/i5 or even i7 will have the CPU horsepower to get your work done.
For first year stuff I highly doubt more than 4gb of RAM will be needed. but I will recommend 6-8 anyway for future proofing.
Unless you are doing a specialised pathway with graphics or gaming, don't bother with an integrated GPU, you won't really need it.
1366*768 screen res should be the absolute bare minimum, 1080p highly recommended though. When this machine is replaced one day, I will definitely be going 1080p.
You need a keyboard which is comfortable to use. Go to best buy or whoever else sells computers out there, use a few machines, see what features you do or do not want.
I cannot recommend something 10" in size for most people. I use 14", I wouldnt go smaller than 13". For that reason I wouldn't recommend a convertible. If you were to go convertible, at least go active digitiser to make up for it. Some of my lectures I just type up, most I just go old fashioned with active digitiser mk1 (also known as pen and paper).
I am however looking at either the dell venue 8 pro or the EVGA tegra note tablets as a note taking tool. Can't really justify the expense though on something that would purely be that, a note taking tool.
4 GB of RAM should be enough unless you plan to use emulators. If you use emulators, you might wanna boost that up to 8.
A video card is also useful, regardless of how "weak" performance it has in gaming. If you use a CPU built-in one, you will lose up to 1 GB of RAM depending on what you do.
The display is probably the most important of them all. You will spend lots of time looking at it trying to figure out what is going wrong, and if your eyes do not agree with the display, you will find your efficiency greatly reduced.