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Sense UI is slow on first-generation Android phones, and all the attempts to make it fast only result in a flaky, weird experience.
The framework and everything else is closed-source, what do you expect?
All we can do is extract the APKs and modify images and maybe tweak the AndroidManifest.xml or other xml files. Even if we can extract the bytecode (if that's what it's called for the DalvikVM), it still isn't as open as an AOSP build.
The only reason I flashed Rosie/Sense UI ROMs were to get a nice homescreen (which was slow) with nice widgets and a browser with Flash (that was slow and incompatible but still useful for simple stuff).
I would have fun with the ROM for a while, but when I needed to be productive, like Google something quickly or add a note in AK Notepad, it was painfully slow.
Android 2.2 Froyo is amazing. It has many features, the most important IMO being a reliable JIT compiler for the DalvikVM, and Flash 10.1 coming to the browser OFFICIALLY!
When the source for Android 2.2 is released and Cyanogen makes a release for the G1/Dream, I'm stuck on that until I get a super Android phone with a full QWERTY like the G1
Sense is also UGLY.
As for this flash thing... its not going to work on your phone. Compiled for a different CPU.
Nothing lost there though, flash is terrible trash that the world would be MUCH better off withOUT.
lbcoder said:
Sense is also UGLY.
As for this flash thing... its not going to work on your phone. Compiled for a different CPU.
Nothing lost there though, flash is terrible trash that the world would be MUCH better off withOUT.
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Did Flash murder you in a previous life?
It seems 50% of your posts here are about how Flash is the end of civilization?
Flash is a dreadful battery/CPU hog, and I suspect the 'net, as Apple claim, would be better off without it.
That said, given the propensity of web designers to use nonstandard, bloated, un-necessary flash widgets that break navigation everywhere in their pages, making them utterly useless to those with old machines, accessibility needs/disabilities, etc I guess it's probably better to have it than not. Flash 10.1 under FroYo is only marginally quirky on my Desire. Getting there!
Sense, OTOH, I miss... LauncherPro just isn't as pretty. But I think on older hardware like the G1, I'd agree with the OP. It's not necessary to get the most out of Android and if it's causing slowdowns, it's a bit counter-intuitive to the actual purpose of a mobile phone.
Azurael said:
That said, given the propensity of web designers to use nonstandard, bloated, un-necessary flash widgets that break navigation everywhere in their pages, making them utterly useless to those with old machines, accessibility needs/disabilities, etc I guess it's probably better to have it than not. Flash 10.1 under FroYo is only marginally quirky on my Desire. Getting there!
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How about just not visiting those websites? Most even halfway marginal websites will provide "if (no flash) then show these links instead", of the rest, you can certainly get the information somewhere else, or failing that, you probably don't want it anyway (the developer is obviously retarded...)
The big important thing to note is that the web is changing. There is MUCH MUCH MUCH less flash around than there was 10 years ago. In fact, I can't think of a single site that actually still *requires* it (except maybe a few sites hosting videos of retards doing stupid crap). I can think of a few that have flash ads -- in these cases, NOT having flash dramatically improves your experience.
Different architectures
I remember a while back that there was a bug in Sense on the Hero where the package name (com.google.maps) would be displayed instead of the actual application name (Maps).
HTC acknowledged the problem and fixed it, but that's the problem with Sense; if it were open-source, someone (probably on xda) would release a tiny patch to fix the problem. Like if Google made the same mistake in the default Launcher, it would be fixed by the devs online quickly.
And now about Flash: What!? Wasn't it built for ARM? Or do the N1 and other superphones use a slightly different architecture? This is weird...
Another problem is that there are netbooks and all sorts of smartphones with Android.
Most netbooks will have x86 processors (Intel, AMD) and though most smartphones are expected to use ARM, some might use a different architecture like MIPS, or even x86 in the future.
Normal Android applications that are made with Java are fine, but how about all the apps with native binaries built with the Android NDK?
What Google should do is implement a way to compile the same program to all popular architectures, and keep the different binaries in the APK.
Apple did something similar in Mac OS X when they switched from PowerPC to Intel... application files in Mac OS X are basically a package that holds basic information, icons, and the binaries, which make this file format similar to Android APKs, except that when someone compiles their program for OS X, both PowerPC and Intel binaries are compiled and stored in the application.
If Google does this for Android, there will be no problem with different architectures (like with Flash not being able to run on the G1)
PSP_Hacker said:
I remember a while back that there was a bug in Sense on the Hero where the package name (com.google.maps) would be displayed instead of the actual application name (Maps).
HTC acknowledged the problem and fixed it, but that's the problem with Sense; if it were open-source, someone (probably on xda) would release a tiny patch to fix the problem. Like if Google made the same mistake in the default Launcher, it would be fixed by the devs online quickly.
And now about Flash: What!? Wasn't it built for ARM? Or do the N1 and other superphones use a slightly different architecture? This is weird...
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Click to collapse
Just like i686 binaries won't run on an i486 CPU, ARM7 binaries won't run on an ARM5 CPU. There are architectural changes that break compatibility of new binaries on old hardware.
Another problem is that there are netbooks and all sorts of smartphones with Android.
Most netbooks will have x86 processors (Intel, AMD) and though most smartphones are expected to use ARM, some might use a different architecture like MIPS, or even x86 in the future.
Normal Android applications that are made with Java are fine, but how about all the apps with native binaries built with the Android NDK?
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Click to collapse
Not all native applications are built with the NDK. Flash is a big example -- it has a lot of HAND WRITTEN ASSEMBLY CODE. There is NO automatic way to generate hand written assembly code. Each additional platform you support MUST have its own manually written code.
What Google should do is implement a way to compile the same program to all popular architectures, and keep the different binaries in the APK.
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http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html
Might not be a bad idea to read up on the ndk.
The applicable line is "You can also build for both architectures at the same time and have everything stored in the final .apk". Seems that they already thought of this
*** but it isn't applicable to flash since flash is partially hand-written. They could easily include the various binaries within a single APK file, but that won't happen unless they actually build the arm5 binary, which is extremely unlikely.
If Google does this for Android, there will be no problem with different architectures (like with Flash not being able to run on the G1)
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For reasons mentioned above, this doesn't help.
Do you think Google will make Ice Cream Sandwich even smoother? As far as I can tell, ICS doesn't have FULL GPU acceleration. It's the same with Honeycomb. How come WP7 has 100% fluid in scrolling everywhere in the OS and Google cant even put it in one place?
I have proof:
- The multitasking menu is NO WAY gpu-accelerated
- The browser is much much smoother than Gingerbread, but not fully silky smooth as iOS/WP7
-The Gallery where you swiped images left to right, it's not SILKY SMOOTH like iOS/WP7
-Swiping homescreens when having Live wallpapers
-Android market , I have never seen something this bad EVER
ICS is a great improvement in smoothness, but there are still very very small lagg here and there. I wonder if Google will put on a full GPU-Acceleration in the final build of ICS?
I love Android and I love my galaxy S, I would never support Microsoft/Apple, but I'm just confused what the problem is with Google: It's the same with their Chrome browser, there's GPU-acceleration but not fully. Do you understand the pattern here?
And I'm really bothered, because Galaxy Nexus is a nexus device and it's supposed to be very optimized with the hardware.
Gingerbread is rather laggy to me, but froyo 2.2.1 was extremely smooth with no lags at all. It's all due to ram consumption.
how do you know that there isn't "full" GPU acceleration? You don't even seem to understand what that means
ICS isn't out yet anyway so how can you say it's not smooth?
zorxd said:
how do you know that there isn't "full" GPU acceleration? You don't even seem to understand what that means
ICS isn't out yet anyway so how can you say it's not smooth?
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Exactly, Google are saying that it will be fully accelerated. What kind of proof do you got??
If what you have tried is the i9000 with the ported SDK ICS ROM, I doubt it is very optimized and fully taking advantage of the GPU.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium
ICS is fully hardware accellerated, its in the documentation and it is a system hardware requirement to be able use the os.
End of...
Well, I guess being hardware-accelerated doesn't necessarily mean it was implemented well-enough to offer silky smooth performance.
I believe Google implemented it in an higher-abstraction level, but it's not responsible for the drivers made by the phone manufacturer, so, for instance, if the GPU driver isn't optimized well enough, it would reflect on poor hardware acceleration, right?
Edit: In the Windows Phone case, Microsoft only uses SnapDragon SoC and Adreno GPU, so they might have optimized the code to take full advantage of that specific architecture.
I think Android implementation is probably a more generic one, not optimized specifically for some kind of SoC, but generic enough to run on different CPU/GPU combos.
And Androis is sometimes not smooth because you scroll in a list where certain items must still be processed, like icons fetched, a list sorted, mails fetched, and so on.
Hardware acceleration will not change that. A longer load time could mean a non choppy list...
Try miui, just as smooth as ios or even better. Especially with glitch kernel. Opens apps way faster too.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
If you are talking about the sgs ics sdk port, then it is definitely not hardware accelerated. It is using software emulation because no ics gpu driver exists yet because the source code isn't available.
People need to read more before making stupid posts about alpha/demo/dev software - but on xda I guess that is just too much to ask.
Anyway, my sgs cm7 is smoother then an iphone.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium
yeah, till they release the AOSP 4.0 code i doubt you will be able to test HW accelerated android, unless you get a galaxy nexus
I don't think so. I had so much problems with cm7 because of the stupid ram management. Tryed any combination that i knew but never managed to get smooth multitasking at all!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
In addition to decent HW acceleration, the main reason (AFAIK) that WP7.x doesn't lag is simple scheduling.
The Metro UI thread(s) have complete priority over any running 3rd party app all the time. No other sw can slow Metro UI to crawl, the scheduler will just slow those other apps accordingly instead.
Changing the scheduler priority for the UI thread(s) in Android has probably turned out to be slightly more complicated for Google, because in theory it's such an obvious change that they should have implemented it properly already at Android 2.0.
But they haven't and it shows.
I can easily lag my Galaxy S so that basic UI launcher actions take 4+ seconds to complete after a button has been pressed. That is roughly 3.8seconds too long.
dear ladies and gentlemen
sorry for not posting into the developing section but i may not due to not having enough posts (this is my first one actually)
i was just wondering if anyone has any info on gnu acceleration of the stock fire firmware or if it's gonna happen as soon as ics will get ported (as far as i understood that will be possible after there's a way to get recovery systems running)
i'm just asking before i start any attempts digging into android development, i have some iOS experience but i am not really interested if there won't be any way to end up with a smooth experience...
cya
I added:
debug.sf.hw=1
and
video.accelerate.hw=1
To the build.prop. Doesn't feel different really.
maybe the kindle fire launcher is accelerated by default, it would make sense because the launcher is much more responsive than the browser, reader app etc.
that would be just like on the GS2 then...
hey everyone. man been hearing so much about ICS.. dont know what to believe anymore.
"Hardware Acceleration Everywhere!!!"
but really what does this mean? we already have hardware acceleration in our browser, do we have it anywhere else? well as far as i know we dont. and just because ICS has this new (vague) hardware acceleration, where will we see it? and it doesnt mean our angry birds, or 3rd party browsers will suddenly improve (does it?).
"zero lag shutter" - does this apply only to stock rom, or will our samsung camera see this too?
while hardware acceleration sounds like something awesome i know nothing about.. another big point in battery life. what changes will ICS bring to battery life?
i know one of the features of ICS is face unlock, are there any other cool features like these that have gotten less coverage?
If using the GPU to do something is faster than using the CPU, then yes, probably, battery life will be better. Generally the quicker you do something (while using the same or lesser power), the better, since the SoC can deep sleep ASAP.
Yes, battery life can be improved, if it does in fact speed up the mobile even further, my device only runs out of 3% over 10 hours in standby, would like the battery to improve even when turned on though, would like to see more input on HW Acceleration though
darkgoon3r96 said:
Yes, battery life can be improved, if it does in fact speed up the mobile even further, my device only runs out of 3% over 10 hours in standby, would like the battery to improve even when turned on though, would like to see more input on HW Acceleration though
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Click to collapse
3% in 10 [email protected]#>$ i lose 20% in 10 hours.. teach me your ways...
with ICS we can finally have HW acceleration on AOSP roms too.
Limpperi said:
with ICS we can finally have HW acceleration on AOSP roms too.
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what is an AOSP rom?
Guantanamo86 said:
what is an AOSP rom?
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Android Open Source Project. Basically, a clean, un-modified version of Android - straight from Google.
Logi_Ca1 said:
If using the GPU to do something is faster than using the CPU, then yes, probably, battery life will be better. Generally the quicker you do something (while using the same or lesser power), the better, since the SoC can deep sleep ASAP.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you should read this:
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s
GB has hardware acceleration capabilities already - this is not new for ICS. The only difference is that in GB developers would have to specify to use it, whereas apps use it by default in ICS.
codeworkx said:
you should read this:
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s
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Thanks for the enlightenment. It's always nice when the developers enlighten noobs like me (no sarcasm intended!)
ive seen the camera app in stock ICS.. dang its pretty sick.. it seems to be more featured than ours, the contrast even goes from -3 ~ +3, unlike ours which is 2/2. but i wonder, are there parental controls placed on the stock camera app like the samsung? like parental controls on battery threshold, and when the camera can and cant be used, how it wont work during music being played, or during a call?
im thinking of going to cm9 if it means getting this camera. can anyone tell me about those features?
I have also wondered what all the hoopteedoo for ics is for. If someone could please convince me that it is the biggest update ever, that would be great. (I don't want to hear anything about the UI or how pretty something is, I really could care less)
With ICS the biggest edtion to our galaxy devices is true multi thread operating system. Gingerbread never supported dual core phones. With ice cream sandwich we will see the true performance of our phones.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
One more thing if you don't have multi threaded phone then there really is no difference.
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Isnt the zero shutter lag dependent on the hardware of the camera?? I.e. if the camera doesnt have the capability we wont get it?
Ricey
Yep, if the hw does not support it, will have minimal improvement.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA App
The Wicker King said:
With ICS the biggest edtion to our galaxy devices is true multi thread operating system. Gingerbread never supported dual core phones. With ice cream sandwich we will see the true performance of our phones.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
sorry, but there's no increase for "smooth as butter"
gingerbread = smooth as butter
ics = smooth as butter
your second core is sleeping the most time because there's nothing to do. ;-)
Limpperi said:
with ICS we can finally have HW acceleration on AOSP roms too.
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Click to collapse
I'd guess for most on here, this will be the major benefit.
I *think* the browser is already HW accelerated as is the TWLauncher, so I'm guessing if you compared AOSP ICS with any TW ROM the performance will be fairly similar in most areas.
For me, I'm looking forward to trying an AOSP version of ICS, as for me, it is the first AOSP version of Android I've actually liked the look of, I've never really been a fan of older iterations. Gingerbread was an improvement but still not there yet; I actually prefer TW over AOSP gingerbread, but ICS definitely moves the game on.
The improved notifications and task switching is also something I'm looking forward.
However, I'm happy to wait, as my phone with CheckROM Revolution and Verts ICS Domination theme and the ICS keyboard from the market makes the phone pretty damn nice to use already IMHO.
From what i understand though, what do we need this hw for? Our browser already has it, and that seems to be the most intensive of tasks we can do aside from games. What a launcher? It's already smooth enough to me. What the opening speed for menus. Wait lemme check how much fps lagg I get from opening a menu, oh wait can't see. Please, anything else other than hw? I still don't see the importance of ICS. And please i am not bashing it or anything, but i genuinely want to feel excited for this update.
Kailkti said:
From what i understand though, what do we need this hw for? Our browser already has it, and that seems to be the most intensive of tasks we can do aside from games. What a launcher? It's already smooth enough to me. What the opening speed for menus. Wait lemme check how much fps lagg I get from opening a menu, oh wait can't see. Please, anything else other than hw? I still don't see the importance of ICS. And please i am not bashing it or anything, but i genuinely want to feel excited for this update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well if you don't see any point to it, then don't update your bloody phone.
Stop crying about something you feel is useless and just don't update. You don't have to, and no one will care if you don't. Stick with gingerbread and stop complaining.
When I bought the Xoom last year I installed the latest Tiamat rom (now Nandroid' at 2.2.2) and it ran really well, although the limitations of the hardware occasionally reared it's ugly head; I guess tablets can't come close to laptops at the mo now matter what mega ROM is installed.
I'm running Miui on an HTC DHD and it is an AWESOME Rom and nothing at all like vanilla Honeycomb, just on another level. I was hoping that when ICS came out there would be something similar for the Xoom. So I waited like a hungry dog for ICS to land and a stable(ish) build to come out and have now tried both EOS and Kang CM9 and both run well but how are they so vastly different from Vanilla ICS? I do really appreciate all the effort that's gone into getting these roms to us but if they're the same (or similar) in terms of looks, performance, usability etc what's the advantage with ICS over Honeycomb apart from a pretty small performance upgrade? Sure ICS does look a little different but only a bit, nothing drastic.....so can someone who knows more about these things tell me, what's the biggy with ICS?
Perhaps I'm expecting too much here but it seems a lot like the forums just got crazy giddy waiting for ICS to come out so then whipped themselves up into a lather (for maybe no valid reason) and that now the insanely mad push to get ICS working efficiently across the Android universe is more of a case of why man went to the Moon?.....because it's there, not because we needed to.
I think your sort of neglecting the big picture. Your looking at it from the perspective of someone who is already running Honeycomb on your Xoom. I think if you were running a HP Touchpad (for example) with Gingerbread you would be warming up a lot closer to ICS. Not every tablet has honeycomb on it so lets face it you are spoiled by the Xooms OS.
Oh and ICS has some nice features for example I can remove app from the recent app list by dragging it out of the list.
HC was a beta; ICS is a stable release
GrandMasterPlank said:
what's the advantage with ICS over Honeycomb apart from a pretty small performance upgrade?
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Its not small by any means. The performance increase is night and day.
A lot of the hype in general for ICS is for previous gingerbread users. Its a huge change for them in terms of UI. For honeycomb users, ICS is more like finally getting a stable release of the OS; honeycomb was IMO a beta test. Limited to tablets (which was a pretty small portion of Android users) and very buggy with quite a bit of work that needed to be done. Now we have a full release with some nice new features, proper performance and support for tablets and phones.
As for the custom roms, I'm pretty certain stock ICS Xooms don't have face unlock. The EOS settings are nice as well as built-in overclocking. I'm sure somewhere down the line the ad-hoc support will be sorted out and I remember reading a post by one of the EOS devs that they haven't even begun to work on performance optimization so this ROM could get even faster/smoother/better on battery.
The biggest reason to move is that ICS actually takes advantage of your second (or more) cores more efficiently than HC 3.x ever did.
Gingerbread for the most part, will not utilize a 2nd core at all even if you had one. That 2nd core would sit there idle. AFAIK.
So, ICS on Xoom is a huge boost in performance. You can see this as you use the device. Lag is completely removed from almost all tasks. With EOS Wingray/Stingray, you can even over clock to get even more performance out of the old Tegra 2.
Stability, smoothness in the UI, and overall polish. The browser is also WORLDS better.
+1 on previous comments RE: smoothness, performance. I was able to start playing with official ICS a couple of Thursdays ago when it rolled onto my Xoom as I was introducing myself to my nursing students.
AFAIK, and have tested, read/write to "external" SD card issue is partially fixed from the standpoint of apps directing r/w to the actual name Xoom gives the ext SD... with HC, the only way I could get it working was by using the File Manager for Honeycomb (can't recall the dev's name off the top of my head). Now, as more devs are updating their apps for ICS tablet compatibility, some are making the change and some aren't.
~ BereanPK
anyone knows when the 3g version in europe will get ics?
Well for one thing we won't really see all the benefits of ICS for awhile.
Remember ICS is the attempt to standardize App compatability between Phone and Tablets.
Until more phones get ICS we won't truly see the entire benefit of it.
And it's still relatively new and not fully fleshed out by the community yet.
They are still struggling with getting it up and running on devices (like ours which Team EOS is doing a great job with!)
HC was specifically written for Dual Proc units.
ICS' main goal is to support ANY number of internal procs which is a boon to Single proc devices and future multicore devices.
It also allows consistency of OS so that cheaper android tablets can be made. I can see single proc bargain Tablets on the way soon now that ICS doesn't care how many cores you have!
And the fact that it runs on phones and tablets just means easier coding for App developers because they can write one set of code to work on EVERY android device and have better compatability.
ICS was a very smart move by Google and provided the Manufacturers don't mess it up with bloatware creating problems we are all better off having it!
I don't think ICS has even scratched the surface of what it can do!
HC may be a bit more mature and stable but thats only because it's been in development longer...ICS will get there and more!