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Why so choppy?

Supraman21

Well-Known Member
Nov 2, 2009
126
45
Chicago
I currently don't own a Nexus 1 but plan on purchasing one when it comes to Verizon. Every video I have seen and every person I have talked to said scrolling through anything on the phone is still choppy compared to the iPhone. I really don't understand this. Some say its because of the Nexus's high resolution screen but really a 1 Ghz processor is not powerful enough to move 800x480 screens. I really think its due to the software and my question really is towards the developers of Android. Why come out with a phone that cannot even scroll as smoothly as a 3 year old iPhone?
 
Dating back to the old Mac OS's that I used in grammas school... They always had smoother scrolling than say.... Windows.

Something in the rendering that Apple has always done very well to make all of their animations smooth. If you look at something as simple as the mouse cursor on Macbooks, you'll notice how smooth it is. Windows and LInux on the other hand, aren't as smooth.

The smoothness carried over to the iPhone. But you're right, it's software that's lagging the android phones. I don't think that's enough reason to NOT release a phone though.
 
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It is simple. iPhone uses GPU acceleration and OpenGL to make their animations and scrolling smooth. Android does not and relies solely on the CPU. The CPU isn't the most efficient way to do these things, the GPU could do them way better, but Google just chose to design Android that way because it is probably easier to develop.

Until Android gets hardware acceleration for things like this, or until CPUs get ridiculously powerful, these things are going to still be choppy next to an iPhone.
 
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It is simple. iPhone uses GPU acceleration and OpenGL to make their animations and scrolling smooth. Android does not and relies solely on the CPU. The CPU isn't the most efficient way to do these things, the GPU could do them way better, but Google just chose to design Android that way because it is probably easier to develop.

Until Android gets hardware acceleration for things like this, or until CPUs get ridiculously powerful, these things are going to still be choppy next to an iPhone.

What would be the additional hurdle in programming ?
Wouldnt it be easier knowing you have dedicated processing power to your visuals ?
 
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It is simple. iPhone uses GPU acceleration and OpenGL to make their animations and scrolling smooth. Android does not and relies solely on the CPU. The CPU isn't the most efficient way to do these things, the GPU could do them way better, but Google just chose to design Android that way because it is probably easier to develop.

Until Android gets hardware acceleration for things like this, or until CPUs get ridiculously powerful, these things are going to still be choppy next to an iPhone.

I know a little more than the average consumers about whats in my phone and whats better and whats worse. I try to put the mindset of an average person buying a phone and if id pick up a Nexus and started playing around with it the first thing I would say is " Hey this phone is slow. The iPhone is faster" with ought even seeing everything the phone can do. This thing sucks". Google is obviously trying to get people to purchase the phones with there platform so I just don't understand why they wouldn't try to overcome this problem. You really seem to know what your talking about and what im getting from your reply is its just a software problem. Do you think this will come in an update?
 
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Not sure if this related but.. when I looked into enabling multi touch on my G1, I found an article that was quite useful. The solution the guy came up with did actually work. But it was pretty choppy and hard to control the zoom, almost unusable. I followed up with him and he told me that it would need to work with opengl to become usable.
 
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Well. . . . .This is how I see it.

There are 3 OS's for mobile phone: Apple, WinMo and Android.

WinMo is garbage. I mean come on, it reminds me of Windows 2000. . .

Apple is the best. Yes, it does have it's quirks like single app at a time shit. But, it pretty much has bee over come. Run BackRounder and the iPhone still runs way better with three Apps running at the same time compared to my Behold 2 with nothing open.


Then, we have Android. . . . It seems like it's so close to beating out Apple, but just does not. I have no idea why. Maybe it takes a special group of people to design extremely smooth running software. . . . But, I have no idea.


I truly do not like apple. Everything is so proprietary it's not even funny. . . . That's why a lot of "tech" people still have a iPhone, just totally modified to meet their need.

I don't know exactly how at all, but Apple still leads the pack :(
 
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Apple is the best. Yes, it does have it's quirks like single app at a time shit. But, it pretty much has bee over come. Run BackRounder and the iPhone still runs way better with three Apps running at the same time compared to my Behold 2 with nothing open.


Then, we have Android. . . . It seems like it's so close to beating out Apple, but just does not. I have no idea why. Maybe it takes a special group of people to design extremely smooth running software. . . . But, I have no idea.


I truly do not like apple. Everything is so proprietary it's not even funny. . . . That's why a lot of "tech" people still have a iPhone, just totally modified to meet their need.

I don't know exactly how at all, but Apple still leads the pack :(

They do if you just look at the UI but having just 20 icons on your homescreen is getting outdated...
What I love about Android is the customization: widgets, folders, icons where I want them, (moving/ interactive) backgrounds...

I admit that 1.5, 1.6 & 2.0 were a bit ugly to look at. But now with 2.1 Google finally shows that they can design too. That's how it should be: first get a solid base and then add the fancy stuff.

The reason why the iPhone may feel smoother is because the OS only runs on 1 device, same with the Apple computers. The OS is made for that specific hardware and that's it, any manufacture can make an Android phone
 
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I know a little more than the average consumers about whats in my phone and whats better and whats worse. I try to put the mindset of an average person buying a phone and if id pick up a Nexus and started playing around with it the first thing I would say is " Hey this phone is slow. The iPhone is faster" with ought even seeing everything the phone can do. This thing sucks". Google is obviously trying to get people to purchase the phones with there platform so I just don't understand why they wouldn't try to overcome this problem. You really seem to know what your talking about and what im getting from your reply is its just a software problem. Do you think this will come in an update?

I don't think so.

I mean, they have been relying solely on the CPU for these things since day one with the G1. They have had all the time in the world to offer up hardware acceleration for things like scrolling and for menu animations, but they didn't do it. To do it now would take a lot of work. Assuming there are the proper drivers and hooks to do it, they would need to go back in and rewrite all those animations in OpenGL to get the iPhone level of performance. I think that is a lot of retrofitting they would need to do.

My guess is they are hoping that a year from now all devices are running on crazy 1.5ghz CPUs that can handle scrolling fairly well. It is a sloppy approach, but an easier approach.
 
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Mines not choppy and im using live wallpapers..

it's not as SMOOTH as the iphone's UI is.. but it's not laggy

I agree. Mine is not choppy at all. As a software engineer, i can tell you exactly why the iphone 'seems' to scroll smoother.

1. I does not multitask. In android, the processor may be split between 20 different proccesses(apps) at the same time (including widgets).

2. The iphones OS limits the ability for the "user" to overload the processor. For instance, when scrolling through a web page on the iphone, you are limited to a certant speed(also known as kenetic scrolling). In android you can scroll as fast as you want throu a web page, but this also requires more processing thus reducing "smoothness" at times.

Once apple allows multitasking, the smooth thing will go out the window.
 
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I've seen a tiny bit of choppiness in a few demo's but in others it looks really quick, not quite as fluid as the iPhone, but not in anyway does any of the slow down look to be something that makes the phone any less usable - it's still very responsive. I guess it comes down to how many apps are running and how many widgets / what kind of background is running.

At the end of the day, if you want a phone with great scrolling get the iPhone. With an Android though you are free to use the handset how you like, yes you may put some strain on the CPU, but at least you can have your phone the way you want it. For me the positives of Android massively outweigh the luxury of smooth scrolling... that's my two cents.
 
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Something will. It's called iPhone 4.0. And if Apple remains true to form, you'll see some really cool 3D elements on the new iPhone, not gimmicky rolling App Trays and tilting Gallery pics. Apple filed a bunch of patents for 3D OS environments. As you know, 3.1 is based on OS X. So, it's my belief that's what's up their sleeve.
 
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It shouldn't be that hard to use GPU on devices which support it and CPU only on those which don't. Google has a lot of great developers (and money to support them) so that can clearly be done.

As a geek and a mobile and embedded developer I just want the best I can get from any device I buy, regarding both hardware and software. So it is a bit odd that my 1Ghz (GPU accelerated) N1 looks slower than an old Iphone.

Apple's software are indeed top notch, nevertheless I don't see anything stopping google from having the same top quality software.

Come on... put more attention into those small "details" as they make a big difference for many users.

I'd much rather get improvements through software than rely only on new and more powerful hardware. Google, please don't take the Microsoft approach.

Cheers
 
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as of now iPhone 3GS > Nexus One
but i still wanna try it out...

Whoa whoa I wouldn't say that. With scrolling yes but everything else Nexus knocks the iPhone oughta the park. Double the screen resolution, AMOLED which is a different technology then LED ( Better I might add ), Multitasking, Customization, thinner, better camera, faster processor,Crystal talk, you don't have to use iTunes, basically most the apps you use on the iPhone are most likely in Marketplace.
 
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