Hey everyone. I'm new here, and also new to the smartphone world. I've visited the site before, but just recently finally registered. I just got an EVO on contract. I really like it. It's not the best phone, but no phone is. Although the EVO is my first smartphone, I am not illiterate when it comes to tech. I consider myself pretty sound in the tech world amongst my peers. I would like to know one thing though, why does the iPhone have such better and smoother scolling/multitouch/pinch-to-zoom than Android phones do? I mean it is pretty obvious, and the scrolling on an iPhone is gorgeous. It follows the fingers so much quicker, does not lag behind the finger, and is just so snappy and quick and fluid. Is it the hardware or implementation of the software between the two operating systems? Is it because iOS supports only one device and is perfectly tweaked to fit that device whereas Android is ran on a plethora of devices/hardware/UIs? And will Android ever be this good? I thought that Froyo would fix this or at least be somewhat comparable to the iPhone, but it's not. And remember the iPhone has been this smooth since the first gens. You'd think Android phones would be up to par by now. I've never understood this and would really like to know why. I still love Android though, and even though the smoothness of the iPhone rocks, Android is still the better OS in my opinion overall. Oh yeah, I thought this was because the EVO has the stupid 30fps cap, but after using other Android phones, this is not true. Speaking of which, is HTC ever going to fix the cap and lift it? Sorry to get off topic.
Thanks for any responses, and I'm looking forward to spending time on this forum!
try overclocking it , you will find android to be just as smooth if not more smooth even in things like pinch and zoom. In android, it even auto focuses while pinch and zooming. Try pinch and zoom on an iphone and you will notice it doesn't focus until after letting go
but i totally agree, stock android just isn't quite as smooth as my ipod touch, unless i do a bunch of crap really fast on it. Apple tends to focus on how pretty things are and how pretty they look while doing things. rather than focusing on letting it do lots of things but maybe not quite as pretty, like android does.
Actually, I think it is mostly because of the 30fps cap. I have a kernel with the cap disabled, it makes a huge difference.
Froyo added alot of performance enhancements, but they did not mess with the GUI much. Gingerbread will focus on improving the UI elements. Android is still very much a work in progress, it's only a year and a half old after all. I'm expecting big things from Gingerbread, I think it will set the bar for user experience.
Well one of the things I was once told is that Apple has a patent on some of the so called "bumper scrolling" technology. But, TBH, I don't think that this was the Android programmer's major focus. I think Google's primary focus was "functionality" instead of Aesthetics. They have tried to make inroads in that department with features like live backgrounds and sprucing up the look in "froyo" a bit. I'm told that aesthetic looks will be a major focus in the 3.0 (Gingerbread) update. Hardware Manufactures have worked to compensate by writing their own UI, like Sense, Touchwiz and MotoBlur and NinjaBlur
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Hey everyone. I'm new here, and also new to the smartphone world. I've visited the site before, but just recently finally registered. I just got an EVO on contract. I really like it. It's not the best phone, but no phone is. Although the EVO is my first smartphone, I am not illiterate when it comes to tech. I consider myself pretty sound in the tech world amongst my peers. I would like to know one thing though, why does the iPhone have such better and smoother scolling/multitouch/pinch-to-zoom than Android phones do? I mean it is pretty obvious, and the scrolling on an iPhone is gorgeous. It follows the fingers so much quicker, does not lag behind the finger, and is just so snappy and quick and fluid. Is it the hardware or implementation of the software between the two operating systems? Is it because iOS supports only one device and is perfectly tweaked to fit that device whereas Android is ran on a plethora of devices/hardware/UIs? And will Android ever be this good? I thought that Froyo would fix this or at least be somewhat comparable to the iPhone, but it's not. And remember the iPhone has been this smooth since the first gens. You'd think Android phones would be up to par by now. I've never understood this and would really like to know why. I still love Android though, and even though the smoothness of the iPhone rocks, Android is still the better OS in my opinion overall. Oh yeah, I thought this was because the EVO has the stupid 30fps cap, but after using other Android phones, this is not true. Speaking of which, is HTC ever going to fix the cap and lift it? Sorry to get off topic.
Thanks for any responses, and I'm looking forward to spending time on this forum!
How many times will this be ask over and over again? if that's what you keep telling yourself so be it.
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I think the smoothness of iOS has quite a bit to do with extremely tight hardware integration, a very limited feature set, and a very, very strict eye for UI aesthetics.
For example, launchers on Android would be much faster without widgets. Imagine how fast the older Android devices would be if they didn't multi-task.
Hopefully, Google will one day hire a couple graphics designers and actually polish the platform instead of leaving it up to the device manufacturers to tweak the UIs.
Stock Android is just plain ugly (like WinMo ugly), hell even BB6 is more pleasant looking. Having said that, I'm really looking forward to Android 3.0.
I have the Captivate and I've compared my phone with a friend's iPhone 4 and I honestly (and neither did he) notice any sort of "smoothness" issue when comparing the two phone. I mean I'll give it up to the iPhone for looking shiny and sparkly , but I'm no longer 5 years old so shiny and sparkly things just doesn't give me that giddy feeling it used to
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The first thing I do when I install a new version of Windows is switch to classic mode and turn OFF all those animations and other crap. All that stuff just gets in the way.
The first thing I do when I install a new version of Windows is switch to classic mode and turn OFF all those animations and other crap. All that stuff just gets in the way.
But it looks so pretty.....anytime I get a new comp (which just happened a week ago) I simply install my own copy of windows to get rid of any bloatware on the comp. I don't even bother trying to uninstall them. Hell this time I loaded a new copy right off the first boot.
I downloaded LauncherPro and I didn't notice much of a difference...could it be the 30 FPS cap? I also liked Sense more than LauncherPro, but that could be just because I'm used to Sense. Maybe I'll redownload it and try it out for a few days rather than just a few minutes. I wonder if running LauncherPro will lag my phone since it's just another thing the phone has to worry about, on top of all the other apps running? Will Sense still run in the background even if LauncherPro is the UI being used? And does anyone know if HTC will ever fix the FPS cap, or is HTC going to leave us EVO users high and dry with our only option to root it?
For the guy who asked, download an app called Fps2D on the Android market, that is the benchmark used to see your frames per second.
And yeah, hopefully Gingerbread will fix this. But I remember when people said Froyo would fix this, but it didn't. People always have a lot of hope for newer versions, and say "such and such is going to be better/fixed in the new version" but we really don't know that until it gets released.
Sorry I'm filled with a lot of questions, but like I said I'm knew and I'm trying to absorb as much knowledge on this stuff as I can. Thank you to everyone who responded.
Last edited by josh48315; August 11th, 2010 at 12:59 PM.
Reason: punctuation
The Evo, and the Evo alone, suffers from a 30fps cap.
My Froyo'd up Nexus One doesn't show any lag. Pretty much menus, app drawer, and apps load up as fast as I can press buttons. No delay. Huge difference from Eclair.
I wonder if running LauncherPro will lag my phone since it's just another thing the phone has to worry about, on top of all the other apps running?
Your evo has a lot of on board memory unless you are running a ton of active processes, you shouldn't notice any lag.
Quote:
Originally Posted by josh48315
Will Sense still run in the background even if LauncherPro is the UI being used?
AFAIK, yes. Older versions of Sense allow you to turn it off. I'm not positive, but I don't think you can turn it off in the EVO (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). When running Launcher pro, you will not see sense or be able to access any of it's fancy widgets. That said, Launchepro PLus (the new paid version of LP), is loading up with a bunch of sense-like widgets of its own. They only have three right now, but are getting new updates every 2 or 3 days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by josh48315
And yeah, hopefully Gingerbread will fix this. But I remember when people said Froyo would fix this, but it didn't. People always have a lot of hope for newer versions, and say "such and such is going to be better/fixed in the new version" but we really don't know that until it gets released.
YOu weren't reading the official releases. Google specifically said that 2.2 was fixing a ton of technical issues and introducing some other technical features. yes there were some stylistic enhancement, but not as many or as thoroughly as some have wished. they also specifically said that Gingerbread will target UI look and feel.
Personally, I can't wait for google to integrate the bumptop's 3d desktop into Android, either for use in a phone or better yet in a tablet:
I have an Incredible (stock), and just tried comparing it to my daughter's iPod Touch. I can't see a difference in scroll, pinch, etc. responsiveness. I think the Incredible is very responsive.
Android is smooth as butter on the Nexus One, just as iOS is smooth on an iPhone. Those who work on a product from the hardware to the software generally have a better integration that those simply running the software.
Having said that, a large number of the newer Android devices run Android quite smoothly, and even better with a little bit of tinkering.
There are many many things that attributes to iOS being smoother, the reasons following are but not limited to:
No 30fps cap
iOS efficient physics coding
Screen sensitivity (not all capacitive touch screens are the same)
GPU acceleration
Faster GPU
Android not optimized (wait for gingerbread)
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@Iowa
links to m(dot)youtube dont work for some reason when posting here. I found out the hard way lol.
To add, I do find scrolling to be smoother overall on the iphone but still less effective. A hard flick hardly scrolls down far at all so to get to the bottom of this forum we are in now, it would take long time and many flicks and thats annoying. On my android, it only takes a few flicks to reach the bottom. Also, if you scroll to fast on the iphone (even iphone 4), it will cause the checker pattern to appear.
I must say that the galaxy s phones have the smoothest scrolling of Android at the Moment. Sometimes on very light webpages my scrolling on the Samsung Moment is just as smooth as the iphone.
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links to m(dot)youtube dont work for some reason when posting here. I found out the hard way lol.
To add, I do find scrolling to be smoother overall on the iphone but still less effective. A hard flick hardly scrolls down far at all so to get to the bottom of this forum we are in now, it would take long time and many flicks and thats annoying. On my android, it only takes a few flicks to reach the bottom. Also, if you scroll to fast on the iphone (even iphone 4), it will cause the checker pattern to appear.
I must say that the galaxy s phones have the smoothest scrolling of Android at the Moment. Sometimes on very light webpages my scrolling on the Samsung Moment is just as smooth as the iphone.
People have their preferences when it comes to scrolling. I prefer ios scrolling because it's more life like resulting in better control. Some android devices get to the bottom faster but what I've noticed, when I had my evo, is that it would shoot me to the bottom when really I wanted to go to the middle of the page.
Something on Android makes the browser not recognize varying acceleration of your finger. This is the difference between finesse and clunky. Not to say android browser is clunky, I think it has speed down, now it just needs some polish.
Btw a lot of 3rd party browsers on the iPhone has a jump to bottom or jump to top feature.
Last edited by MrX8503; August 12th, 2010 at 09:53 AM.
@mrx8503
If you look to the right of your screen when scrolling it has a guider to help you.
I shouldn't have to tap the screen a second time to stop it from scrolling all the way to the bottom. The iPhone scrolls depending on how hard you flick it. Android does this to some extent, but from my experience it has a hard time differientating a fast flick or a slow one.
I shouldn't have to tap the screen a second time to stop it from scrolling all the way to the bottom. The iPhone scrolls depending on how hard you flick it. Android does this to some extent, but from my experience it has a hard time differientating a fast flick or a slow one.
Well, which is it? your previous post was about having a hard time scrolling to the middle thats why i said you have a guide bar when scrolling now you saying its scrolling to the bottom shouldn't take two try, sound to me its all on the individual user of his or her phone.
Well, which is it? your previous post was about having a hard time scrolling to the middle thats why i said you have a guide bar when scrolling now you saying its scrolling to the bottom shouldn't take two try, sound to me its all on the individual user of his or her phone.
Re-read my posts carefully. I'm still saying the same thing.
I like Android I really do but the juttery herky jerky scrolling is annoying as hell. Yes even on an Nexus 1... I've owned a Nexus 1 and an Incredible and the scrolling was actually annoying enough to make me want to take them back... It's not just the scrolling in the lists but also herky jerkiness when switching home screens... It's almost like you flick, it responds and hiccups towards the end of the scrolling motion when moving home screens. It's been noticeable on every single Android phone I've tried so I don't think it's isolated to a particular bad phone. That being said I love the little tab on the side that let's you tap hold and guide... the iPhone could definitely use that... On the same hand I actually like when the scroll comes to a rolling stop by slowing down until it's completely stopped after a scroll ala iPhone. It's much more realistic physics and feels more natural to me rather than a forced induced scrolling without much thought in it just to say you have scrolling. Anyhow the clunkiness of these things and the small hiccups when moving in and out of apps have kept me from truly committing to an Android phone. I keep trying them and they keep letting me (me personally as in my preferences) down. I've owned 4 Android phones so far: Sprint Hero, European Hero, Nexus 1, and Droid Incredible. I've also test driven the Droid X... On each one of these my annoyances were the same:
1.) Jerky scrolling in lists
2.) Jerky/hiccuping scrolling on home screens
3.) Touch screen responsiveness as a whole (as soon as my thumb hits my screen on my iPhone the screen responds and starts moving).
4.) Little annoying pauses while moving in and out of apps and then sometimes the phone freezes just for a sec to catch up...
Anyhow I tested a Galaxy the other day and it seems to be better at these things and palatable at least... so I'm giving it another go. At this point I'm resolved to having 2 phones. I don't want to get rid of my iPhone 4 as it's really fast, does the things I like really efficiently and the quality and polish of the actual applications and especially games are just second to none right now (this is due in part because their IDE and SDK are top notch due to their experience with providing developers with really good tools because of their desktop OS experience). I'm getting the Galaxy because even with the things I find annoying, the iPhone OS is boring to me now... not the applications, or the games, or the functionality but just the UI is just stale and I need something to play around and tinker with...
I like Android I really do but the juttery herky jerky scrolling is annoying as hell. Yes even on an Nexus 1... I've owned a Nexus 1 and an Incredible and the scrolling was actually annoying enough to make me want to take them back... It's not just the scrolling in the lists but also herky jerkiness when switching home screens... It's almost like you flick, it responds and hiccups towards the end of the scrolling motion when moving home screens. It's been noticeable on every single Android phone I've tried so I don't think it's isolated to a particular bad phone. That being said I love the little tab on the side that let's you tap hold and guide... the iPhone could definitely use that... On the same hand I actually like when the scroll comes to a rolling stop by slowing down until it's completely stopped after a scroll ala iPhone. It's much more realistic physics and feels more natural to me rather than a forced induced scrolling without much thought in it just to say you have scrolling. Anyhow the clunkiness of these things and the small hiccups when moving in and out of apps have kept me from truly committing to an Android phone. I keep trying them and they keep letting me (me personally as in my preferences) down. I've owned 4 Android phones so far: Sprint Hero, European Hero, Nexus 1, and Droid Incredible. I've also test driven the Droid X... On each one of these my annoyances were the same:
1.) Jerky scrolling in lists
2.) Jerky/hiccuping scrolling on home screens
3.) Touch screen responsiveness as a whole (as soon as my thumb hits my screen on my iPhone the screen responds and starts moving).
4.) Little annoying pauses while moving in and out of apps and then sometimes the phone freezes just for a sec to catch up...
Was that before or after the Froyo update for the N1? 'Cause I dunno what you're doing, but my N1 doesn't do that anymore.
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@MrX
I guess this is a matter of preference. But on a side note, you can simply do a very small flick and the page scrolls only slightly (if you only wanted to go down slightly). If you do it slightly harder, it will go slightly farther, etc., etc.
To go the same distance as an iphone hard flick, you only need a light flick on android. Maybe it takes some getting used to if you (not you personally) are used to iphone type scrolling cause you constantly use hard flicks to navigate up and down on it. Also, if I want to get to the middle of a LONG page, I can simply do a hard flick and once I reach the destination I can stop it. For me it seems pretty simple. Btw, Opera Mini 5 for Android has iphone like scrolling if that is what you like. I hate it though, the only thing opera is good for is speed but once I get the Epic 4G I'm leaving opera for good lol
Was that before or after the Froyo update for the N1? 'Cause I dunno what you're doing, but my N1 doesn't do that anymore.
My personal N1 was before Froyo but I tried several different ROMs... and I tried my friends After Froyo... Her's was jerky mostly when scrolling through applications in the app drawer.
I guess this is a matter of preference. But on a side note, you can simply do a very small flick and the page scrolls only slightly (if you only wanted to go down slightly). If you do it slightly harder, it will go slightly farther, etc., etc.
Currently from what I've seen and my experience, Android 2.1 is not capable of this. It is capable of two speeds:
I think the smoothness of iOS has quite a bit to do with extremely tight hardware integration, a very limited feature set, and a very, very strict eye for UI aesthetics.
I think there are 2 major issues that really affect the different; Age & Many Manufactures.
Apple has been developing computers since the 70s. The first Iphone was introduced in January of 2007, in July 2008 came the 3g and June 2009 came the 3gs followed this June with the Iphone4. Apple controls the hardware, software, everything about the devices and in the last 4 years, they really have only released 4 devices that aren't that much different.
Android 1.1 was originally released on February 9, 2009, merely 18 months ago. It is new but developing fast. Unlike Apple that tends to do a single software/hardware release each year, Android had 5 released in 16 months and Gingerbread scheduled for 4Q 2010. In that same time period Apple had only released 1 Iphone.
It is not a closed platform, there are hundreds of devices being released each year from almost as many manufactures, some better than others but none from the same company developing the OS. Some of these devices are similar, but some aren't and they have to deal with those differences.
I personally think that it would make things more stable if the OS releases weren't so close. (1.1 1/9/09 1.5 4/30/09 1.6 9/15/09 2.1 1/10/10 2.2 5/20/10), but they do seem to be slowing down a little bit
It would also make it easier for the Manufactures to develop devices and not have to worry about releasing a device on an OS that is "outdated" so soon.
Skip to 12:15 to see him scrolling on each phone. This is why I like the Scrolling on the Galaxy S phones much more
Such a pain in the wrist (literally) to scroll like that constantly on the iphone (or any phone with that kind of scrolling). Also the iphone 4 checkers out at 12:28! LOL! It cant handle heavy scrolling which sucks, I am a heavy scroller and it its a pain on my iphone. I'll admit that its MUCH better on the iphone 4 than the 2g though in terms of checkering out...
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^Hmmm. Seeing that, I dont think I would like the iPhone scrolling either. Its hard to tell. There are times I wanna scroll to the end of a long list of mp3's or pics and wanna get there as quick as possible.
I think a good mix of both scrolling types would be perfect. A soft flick goes like the iPhone, a hard flick like Android.
And I dont like the iPhone bounce. I hate it...lol
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Last edited by jroc; August 22nd, 2010 at 07:00 AM.
Here is a link Android google code thread that discusses this and reveals some good bits of info. It all boils down to iOS was designed from the ground up to use GPU acceleration for all things have to do with movement and gestures, ie. scrolling, pinching, zooming, etc... and Android does not have built in GPU acceleration for these things thus uses CPU only to complete these tasks which is fine if you don't have anything else running however most Android phones have a crazy amount of startup items so the CPU on average is already being used a lot before it even has to work on animation based requests.
The reason is that iOS is designed for the iPhone hardware. Apple only has one phone, with a set hardware configuration. Android has to work with many different hardware configurations, so it uses generic drivers for everything.
Whilst certain elements of the iPhone are arguably better than Android, I think it's also fair to say that Androids usability is far in excess of anything Apple throws at you. My partner's had her iPod Touch for a couple of years but she refused point-blank to consider an iPhone when it came to buying our first Smartphones (we both went with Droid Incredibles).
So Apple wins some, and looses others in my book. Now we do have Gingerbread heading to us at a vast rate of knots
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My wife has an iPod Touch and I have a Droid Incredible and we've compared them side-by-side and have not noticed any lag or latency for the Droid.
So I don't agree that there is any inherent performance difference in the OSes.
The one fact you may not be taking into account is that one HUGE advantage of Android over iOS is that Android can multitask. So if you load it up with lots of apps that are all running in parallel, that can certainly slow down your Droid.
My Incredible is running 2.2, and I don't know if that factors in, but I find all the scrolling and paging silky smooth and perfectly responsive. I scroll a lot through my contacts list before making calls, and I've organized my extended home pages by category (media apps in one, news, weather, and stocks in another, etc) so I flick between pages a lot and it's very smooth and I like the snap and bounce feature when I do a flick. I honestly don't understand what some people in this thread who are having problems are talking about!
Last edited by plnelson; September 20th, 2010 at 02:52 PM.
On the Galaxy S, you can "throw" the screen and watch it fly. To bring it to a halt, you simply tap on the screen and it will stop without clicking any link you might have placed your finger on by accident. Quite useful.
Why is iOS so much smoother than Android?
