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Hi everyone, I have been a lurker on this forum for sometime but registered recently. I bought a Nexus one to replace my 3GS on the release day, and I must say. I absolutely adore it. I have a few questions for you guys, if anyone could shed some light on this for me it would be great.
So, basically I have been looking around the internet, various forums etc to try and grasp why the nexus one does not have smoother scrolling. By smooth I mean the actual animation attributes. I am aware that the Nexus one is fast at scrolling (and faster then the iPhone 3GS in almost every way) however, the nexus one does not handle scrolling as elegantly.
Let me define what I mean by smooth. I do not mean the hardware is not fast, as it clearly is. I mean that the GUI has not been further enhanced in the way the iphone has, to actually mimic a smooth flowing operation.
From what I have gathered on my search it could be one of a few things:
1) Android is still quite new so they have simply not gotten round to adding this yet as it is not a priority.
2) The hardware (up until this point) did not have good enough power to do so, as a result it was not included in the previous and current android releases.
3) The multitasking causes interruptions to the processor cycles during scrolling so can sometimes give a jagged/laggy scroll (I already hear you thinking: AH but this is due to other apps loading at the bottom, well the iphone scrolls exactly the same and is loading apps too).
4) The scrolling element of the UI does not utilise GPU acceleration and thus is purely relying on CPU, which means it is fast but not smooth.
My reason for asking this is simple, I am wondering what I can expect from future versions of android. I absolutely have no doubt that this platform is the future (at least for me) of mobile devices, but I would very much like to see some of the (perhaps unnecessary) GUI enhancements that the iPhone has.
My other area of interest is the market place and more specifically the creation of applications, I am by trade a UI designer, so I cant help but notice that the apps on the market place are pretty... actually lets not beat around the bush - none of them really share any common UI or style.
I am aware that the iPhone SDK provides a UI library which in turn means iPhone developers have somewhat of an aid in creating their apps, and also helps to keep native consistency with the iphone experience. Is this going to be something that changes with android (or is it even something that has started to change within the 2.1 SDK?).
When you guys read this post I hope you do not see an iPhone fanboy that has come here to bash the Android platform. I am just using my experience of a previous system to try and make sense of where the Android platform may go in the future.
These questions come out of love, not frustration or criticism. I love Android and really hope some of these issues are addressed because I feel it does everything else incredibly well. I could have made a post about all the things I love, but hey, you guys already know this . Anyways, let me know your thoughts.
I honestly hope that android doesn't get a lot of standard UI stuff, boxing in developer creativity. There is more than one way to make a good UI and I don't see the need for every app to look the same.
I was more talking about making something available to developers if they need it, incase they do not have the design skill set to do it or the resources to pay someone else to do it.
This would mean that at the least apps would look as good as the stock UI if not better (when capable developers wish to do more).
i read somewhere that the reason the iphone is so smooth at scrolling is down to its very low screen resolution, at first i was thinking nah but there certainly isnt any high end or mid tier touchscreen phone with a res as low as the iphones 320 x 480 at 163 ppi
I believe the iPhone UI uses OpenGL ES 2.0, while Android still supports something like 1.0, 1.1 or 1.3. I forget.
But, we'll have OpenGL 2.0 support soon, and I think their [Google's] roadmap has it somewhere before Android 3.0
dreamdestiny said:
i read somewhere that the reason the iphone is so smooth at scrolling is down to its very low screen resolution, at first i was thinking nah but there certainly isnt any high end or mid tier touchscreen phone with a res as low as the iphones 320 x 480 at 163 ppi
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I agree. The higher res also contributes to the slowdown (versus earlier Android devices like the G1 with much less RAM). This was especially apparent on the Droid, as it has less RAM and Android 2.0 is probably a tad less slick.
Yes, the iphone is pushing lower resolution. But, previous devices to the Nexus one where too pushing lower resolution.
I feel like I am going mad here, surely people notice the fact that iphone has built in animation styles on all scrolling, zooming - android does not. why?
I too have asked this question and haven't gotten a response. I stumbled upon this recently:http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914
This is something we've investigated a couple of years ago already and that we revisit
regularly. Of course we thought of using the GPU, but there are non-trivial issues on
many Android devices (a G1-class device for instance supports only one OpenGL
context at a time, which would prevent you from using any OpenGL based app like
games or augmented reality apps.) In our past experiments we even found many
cases in which using the GPU was slower than normal rendering.
New devices might allow us to overcome the past limitations that made GPU support
a not-so-good solution.
The "choppiness" and "lagginess" you are mentioning are more often related to heavy
garbage collection than drawing performance.
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It just seems the refresh rate is slower. The garbage collection mentioned for example. As the code matures it will get better. Plus I read about an update to the Dalvik VM that should help, "Dalvik Turbo VM" It should bump up speed a good bit. Between that and the JIT performance will increase a lot.
This isn't really an issue anymore with Froyo on Nexus One-class devices. Install Froyo, then install Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher and everything is smooth as silk. App scrolling, home screen scrolling, animations, app startup times, all of these are much smoother on my Nexus One w/ Froyo than an iPhone 3G, and at least on par with a 3GS.
The web browser still can bog down a bit when rapidly scrolling complex HTML pages though (Slashdot, Engadget, etc.), seems to be something with the way Javascript events are handled since the issue more-or-less goes away if you disable Javascript. I think the scrolling algorithm needs a bit of work in browser to make it as smooth feeling as the iPhone 3G/3GS are.
rcgabriel said:
This isn't really an issue anymore with Froyo on Nexus One-class devices. Install Froyo, then install Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher and everything is smooth as silk. App scrolling, home screen scrolling, animations, app startup times, all of these are much smoother on my Nexus One w/ Froyo than an iPhone 3G, and at least on par with a 3GS.
The web browser still can bog down a bit when rapidly scrolling complex HTML pages though (Slashdot, Engadget, etc.), seems to be something with the way Javascript events are handled since the issue more-or-less goes away if you disable Javascript. I think the scrolling algorithm needs a bit of work in browser to make it as smooth feeling as the iPhone 3G/3GS are.
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Pretty much this. I noticed what OP was talking about until I put Froyo on, now everything is silky smooth.
Froyo makes scrolling ok, so no issues here
MaximReapage said:
Pretty much this. I noticed what OP was talking about until I put Froyo on, now everything is silky smooth.
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I disagree, while yes froyo is majoy improvements from 2.1 i still get lag especially on live wallpapers its horrid. this is what i said in reference to that issue:
"I agree also, Romain guy your have been listening to the community implementing such features this should be one of them to really listen to. I can't even enjoy the standard launcher i have to use launcher pro or ADW just to have smooth scrolling even in froyo(pre-release) at times. There should be a simple switch to enable or disable 3d accelerations like how ubuntu does it with Compiz. Your seriously telling me your cannot implement a auto-detection feature to see if the phone can handle it and if it can, then the 3d accel is enabled for that phone?
THIS IS BLASPHEMY!"
I understand what people are saying by downloading ADW etc but if I'm a new user buying android most people don't know about ADW for instance my ex-coworker who have a T-mobile MyTouch 3g slide her phone is horribly slow. I had to manually add launcher pro for her to feel the difference and even she is like wow what a difference. My point is most people first hand will automatically think the phone is slow and not on pair with the iPhone. Smoothness in a nutshell should come straight out stock android without the need for a replacement. just my opinion.
mykenyc said:
I disagree, while yes froyo is majoy improvements from 2.1 i still get lag especially on live wallpapers its horrid. this is what i said in reference to that issue:
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You're complaining about lag with live wallpapers? Comparing it the iPhone which DOES NOT HAVE live wallpapers? Turn them off, stop complaining, and compare apples to apples. Same goes for pretty calendar, weather, news, facebook widgets etc.
torchedlh said:
You're complaining about lag with live wallpapers? Comparing it the iPhone which DOES NOT HAVE live wallpapers? Turn them off, stop complaining, and compare apples to apples. Same goes for pretty calendar, weather, news, facebook widgets etc.
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I said especially with live wallpapers meaning even worst. Please don't tell me to stop complaining because i am not complaining I'm voicing a opinion that can benefit us all. So if your not here to help on the benefit please leave.
thanks.
mykenyc said:
I said especially with live wallpapers meaning even worst. Please don't tell me to stop complaining because i am not complaining I'm voicing a opinion that can benefit us all. So if your not here to help on the benefit please leave.
thanks.
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You're also using a pre release version of Android that is very well documented to not be ready for general usage, of course there's going to be issues with it, really goiing to have to wait for the official release to compare scrolling
quantic01 said:
Yes, the iphone is pushing lower resolution. But, previous devices to the Nexus one where too pushing lower resolution.
I feel like I am going mad here, surely people notice the fact that iphone has built in animation styles on all scrolling, zooming - android does not. why?
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The iPhone uses animations to help reduce the perception of the amount of time it takes to load things. It's eye candy to cover up a fault. The N1 just about instantly switches everything, there is no waiting, so that the few animations it does have take more time than just loading.
It's why I've turned off animations. The eye candy just wastes seconds and CPU cycles.
My biggest concern isn't the launcher since it can easily be remedied by a 3rd party launcher. I think the bigger problem is the scrolling in the web browser.
On Android because scrolling isn't a separate process given to the GPU, scrolling gets progressively slower as the number of dynamic elements(javascript and especially flash) increase.
However, on an iPhone, scrolling is independent of what elements are displayed on the website. Therefore, as the dynamic elements on a webpage increase the scrolling is still just as smooth as a simple website like these forums.
I think using the GPU for scrolling has been needed for a while now but Android really needs it with the addition of flash.
z0phi3l said:
You're also using a pre release version of Android that is very well documented to not be ready for general usage, of course there's going to be issues with it, really goiing to have to wait for the official release to compare scrolling
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regardless of the fact i think you'd be pretty naive to think the stable ota will magically be lag free. it have everything to do with launcher2 and the fact everything is handled by cpu. We have powerful phones no reason why we shouldn't be able to let GPU handle the UI...instead of defending google we should all be asking them to be able to toggle between gpu acceleration or not same way animation is toggled on and off.
Just read this article here:
http://androinica.com/2010/02/08/wa...ts-3xs-faster-myriad-wants-to-give-it-to-you/
Wonder what that's going to mean for us?
Exactly as described in the article: better performance and better battery life.
Sounds cool, hopefully they're working on integrating this.
Sounds good.
Currently, though, the N1 can sometimes be choppy because the homescreen uses processing power instead of the GPU. I'm hoping Google will get around to fixing that, because as it stands the GPU is utilized very little.
grainysand said:
Sounds good.
Currently, though, the N1 can sometimes be choppy because the homescreen uses processing power instead of the GPU. I'm hoping Google will get around to fixing that, because as it stands the GPU is utilized very little.
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Do you have a source for this information? It makes sense and I've been wondering why my homescreen lags a bit sometimes while my buddies Sprint Hero runs smooth.
Would be awesome if they found a way to fix it like you say
that would be AMAZING! Mostly for G1, MT3G... owners but i also wouldn t mind it on my N1!!!
Add a better keyboard and open up the RAM, to that new engine and we will have the ultimate phone!
I'm assuming that this 'turbo' dalvik uses some kind of just in time compilation to achieve it's speed increases.
As such, this is already available in android 2.*, but disabled currently as it's experimental.
noodles12 said:
Do you have a source for this information? It makes sense and I've been wondering why my homescreen lags a bit sometimes while my buddies Sprint Hero runs smooth.
Would be awesome if they found a way to fix it like you say
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'Fraid I don't--I remember having read it somewhere, likely on this forum. People've noted that some home replacement apps will run smoother than the stock launcher, however, as those apps make full use of the GPU.
I tried out home replacements for a while, didn't like any of them, and have since set my "window animation" under Settings -> Display to "Some animation." Homescreen no longer lags unless I'm using one of those questionably-optimized third-party live wallpapers.
grainysand said:
'Fraid I don't--I remember having read it somewhere, likely on this forum. People've noted that some home replacement apps will run smoother than the stock launcher, however, as those apps make full use of the GPU.
I tried out home replacements for a while, didn't like any of them, and have since set my "window animation" under Settings -> Display to "Some animation." Homescreen no longer lags unless I'm using one of those questionably-optimized third-party live wallpapers.
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reading this does remind me i have noticed something that I did find strange.
Using the stock launcher with only 3 pages of widgets and shortcuts, it shows I have about 230mb ram free in Taskpanel.
But when i use Home++, with the same layout, icons and widgets i get near the 270mb free ram mark.
I understand Task Panel may not be the most accurate or whatever but I've done this a few times and it must be something different.
Sorry for the off topic. Im starting to notice something with posts is all... using taskpanel i have never seen more than 80Mb RAM free. thats after killing all background tasks. How the hell are you showing 230Mb?
He is presumably using the highmem kernel.
I was looking at this t-mobile HD2 commercial and noticed that the tab transition from the contacts tab to the home tab was very much like the senseUI transition on android devices. It's smooth and doesn't just instantaneously jump. Is this real, or is it just a gimmick? Because mines obviously doesn't transition like that at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DogVofsUHHQ&feature=player_embedded
Of course its not going to be like the commercial, nothing ever is.
I wish it looked like that
Short of looking great it does do that though. Swiping to the right will take you to the panel to the left and vice versa.
Lazarpandar said:
I wish it looked like that
Short of looking great it does do that though. Swiping to the right will take you to the panel to the left and vice versa.
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So are you guys telling me that this transisiont we see is not real for sense 2.5 2 on WM6.5?
In the commercial it is written "SCREEN SEQUENCE COMPRESSED AND SIMULATED" so ... !!!
Yeah, transition is ... probably... fake !
Like mabold said, the screen is simulated on the commercial but in real life, it's much faster to the point where you dont see the scrolling animation at all (which I prefer).
No, it doesn't do that. It never has done that and never will. Also, it's not "much faster to the point where you dont see the scrolling animation". It just doesn't do it.
Just a quickie...haha My wifes ipad will run iphone apps, it just blows them up and it looks like a$$. Does anyone with an android tab know how this works with android apps? Are all apps pretty much for all android devices?
Google has taken into account a "Fragmentation API" this will ensure that all apps off your phone will work and look good on your xoom.
kenhunt said:
Google has taken into account a "Fragmentation API" this will ensure that all apps off your phone will work and look good on your xoom.
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Click to collapse
But, this is assuming the app has been coded using the new SDK. It does not automatically take in to account apps that have been coded for Froyo or before.
My guess is that it will be the same as the iPad. Until the app is made specifically for large screen devices, it will be like blowing up a low resolution image.
This is kind of stupid. there should be an option to resize it or just center it. I got a g tablet and it is horrible that some apps just get to the left corner but the controlls get where ever they want. Some apps are unusable with this kind of things. I bet that some apps for froyo will do the same thing on the xoom if the same thing happens and it get resized by default.
Pazzu510 said:
This is kind of stupid. there should be an option to resize it or just center it. I got a g tablet and it is horrible that some apps just get to the left corner but the controlls get where ever they want. Some apps are unusable with this kind of things. I bet that some apps for froyo will do the same thing on the xoom if the same thing happens and it get resized by default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the ipad you have iphone size which is centered or 2x...2x looks like a$$ and I didn't buy a 10 in screen to look at a cell phone sized app. Thanks for all the replies.
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk
yep, it would look like a$$, but it is much better to have a centered app than an unusable app. XD
i will add this question to "for those on the borderline, what do you want to know" thread
Android scales apps. So for something like a music player it will probably look like ass. For a game it will scale very well and should look relatively OK until they update the graphics to fit the resolution the Xoom is hitting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJpkQ2flss
That should show you approximately what will happen.
muyoso said:
Android scales apps. So for something like a music player it will probably look like ass. For a game it will scale very well and should look relatively OK until they update the graphics to fit the resolution the Xoom is hitting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJpkQ2flss
That should show you approximately what will happen.
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Click to collapse
This is 100% what i wanted to see thank you.
muyoso said:
Android scales apps. So for something like a music player it will probably look like ass. For a game it will scale very well and should look relatively OK until they update the graphics to fit the resolution the Xoom is hitting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJpkQ2flss
That should show you approximately what will happen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep some of them do, but they are usually the high quality apps like angry birds and tank hero. Some other´s, many, just get deconfigured in the screen or just force close.
Hope honeycombs fix this in an inteligent way. I agree that games might not be playable, but many apps that can be just not resized and used well enough.
Cheers for honeycomb.
Hoping once its hacked up, i can run lcd density on it also
App developers are already updating their apps to Xoom resolution, like SpeedX.
Rockin' DJ05, Liberty Gingerbread, Clocked at 1.2ghz Voodoo
-----------------------------------
Yes, still on 2.1, waiting on some Gingerbread goodness, but might flash Vanilla Froyo.
-----------------------------------
DD username: TheSonicEmerald
The apps look fine. The only thing that would look like ass is really low quality, low resolution images. The phone scales properly made elements so apps coded right will scale. They might not utilize the space properly.. but they wont look bad. I used ES File Explorer and it scaled really well.. and a comic reading app was perfect.
Nice explanation from google regarding hardware acceleration, a must read one
http://blog.gsmarena.com/googles-dianne-hackborn-talks-about-hardware-acceleration-in-android-says-it-had-it-in-it-all-along/
Original post
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s
Very interesting indeed.
What do you guys notice with enabled hw acceleration (build.prop tweak and set in most custom ROMs)? Do you think it is always smoother? Do you even feel a difference?
great find.. ICS is starting to infect my urge to upgrade
but it says that hw acceleration wont be available for nexus s and below..
so on default hw accel. is only enabled on dual-core phones?
Gorjess said:
great find.. ICS is starting to infect my urge to upgrade
but it says that hw acceleration wont be available for nexus s and below..
so on default hw accel. is only enabled on dual-core phones?
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It seems to be like that, also the GPU should be strong enough to handle it,else only cpu rendering
The article is enlightening, but comes across as an excuse for laggy interfaces on Android when one considers IOS manages much smoother transitions with apparently lower spec hardware.
Frostfree said:
The article is enlightening, but comes across as an excuse for laggy interfaces on Android when one considers IOS manages much smoother transitions with apparently lower spec hardware.
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Well.. that is so true. And probably one of the reasons iOS still rulz
A quick visual overview between and android device vs and iDevice.. would have the android device cry
This is one of the reasons I am really eager to have ICS on my sgs2!
I want to see some smoothness
I saw on Beyond3D linked Andrew Munn's thoughts to Dianne Hackborn's post
https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
Its a bit of a downer and still a long ways to go.
At last. All this hw acceleration 'hacks', enablers, tweaks, bull****...
it really got on my nerve.
Can't say i've ever had a problem with smoothness on SGS2 with touchwiz. Seems it must be hardware accelerated. That's why the phone can do any live wallpaper I throw at it and won't slow down, lag or skip. Stock.
Throw on a home screen replacement like Launcher Pro, ADW or Go Launcher and live wallpapers are useless mind.
I-phones are nice and smooth, but that's because the whole screen is filled with lovely la la baby icons, you can't see the wallpaper, it has nothing running in the background, no widgets, the operating system stays the same with every iteration bar some crap additions like notification centres and Siri, and has no live wallpaper.
I know which phone I would choose.
biffsmash said:
Can't say i've ever had a problem with smoothness on SGS2 with touchwiz. Seems it must be hardware accelerated. That's why the phone can do any live wallpaper I throw at it and won't slow down, lag or skip. Stock.
Throw on a home screen replacement like Launcher Pro, ADW or Go Launcher and live wallpapers are useless mind.
I-phones are nice and smooth, but that's because the whole screen is filled with lovely la la baby icons, you can't see the wallpaper, it has nothing running in the background, no widgets, the operating system stays the same with every iteration bar some crap additions like notification centres and Siri, and has no live wallpaper.
I know which phone I would choose.
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Click to collapse
And that's my friend why I now love samsung and my GS2 so much
It is the only android that makes android really proud
i would love to know you are getting TW to run smooth without lagging, because mine lags like hell on fresh stock rom. especially when the wallpaper scrolls with the homescreen. TW just never worked for me.
I'm running cyanogen and never seen any lag, even with very heavy customization.
Sent from my GT-I9100
As said, twlauncher is really butter smooth even with a live wallpaper, the only problem with twlaucher is resizing and multi dpi. Twlauncher wont use fullscreen when using 200 or 180 dpi.
djunited said:
i would love to know you are getting TW to run smooth without lagging, because mine lags like hell on fresh stock rom. especially when the wallpaper scrolls with the homescreen. TW just never worked for me.
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Then you must have a faulty phone? Touchwiz has been buttery smooth on every single TW rom I have tried.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
Android can never be as smooth as iphone?
Android will be laggy even with HW acceleration, the reason is
http://www.tipb.com/2011/12/06/android-ui-smooth-ios/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n1e89/follow_up_to_android_graphics_true_facts_or_the/
But i am very much happy with my SGS2.
hariprs said:
Android will be laggy even with HW acceleration, the reason is
http://www.tipb.com/2011/12/06/android-ui-smooth-ios/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/n1e89/follow_up_to_android_graphics_true_facts_or_the/
But i am very much happy with my SGS2.
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Click to collapse
""UI rendering occurs on the main thread of an app
UI rendering has normal priority"""
As long as the task is running in cpu we can talk about threading and setting thread priority, but once the task switches to GPU(as in ICS) there will be no need for thread priority and where the rendering of UI takes place.
So if any apps makes use of hw feature in ICS, they should be smooth enough to run at 60fps for rendering.
King Shady said:
Then you must have a faulty phone? Touchwiz has been buttery smooth on every single TW rom I have tried.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium
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Not sure about that.other launchers are very smooth.phone runs everything fine.what fault coupd there be thats making tw not as smooth as most describe it to be.
Agree with the posts that say TWLauncher is the smoothest on the SGS2, I've tried most of them. Live wallpapers have little effect on that smoothness, and that can't be said for other launchers.
Overall, the SGS2 is as smooth as the iPhone 4 I had.
However, I did play with a WP7 Lumia 800 the other day, and it is definitely the smoothest UI I ever used.
The ip4s is pretty smooth too... but I'd trade a tiny bit of smoothness for the sheer possibilities with Android.... but I have to say I was really quite impressed with WP7.
Was using my mobile clocked down to 500 mhz.. as a downside my go launcher started to lag like anything, switched to stock TW, to my total disbelief, the stock launcher is insanely smooth even when downclocked to 500 mhz. Stock launcher is purely hardware accelerated for sure.
I use hyperdroid which uses a build.prop tweak to enable hardware acceleration. Now even if i place go launcher's apk in system/app folder, still i cant see it running as smoothly as touchwiz. So is that tweak really working with other launchers. I deleted original touchwiz and rebooted but still go launcher lags a lot as comapared to tw. Anyone knows what exactly that tweak does?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda premium