How is your browsing experience?

[Gatman]

I have been playing with my Prime for a couple days now and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed in the browsing experience. I seem to have the best results with the stock browser, but I have also tried:

1. Dolphin HD (my favorite I use on my phone exclusively).
2. Dolphin for Pad V1.0 Beta
3. Opera Mobile
4. Firefox

In every case, page rendering and navigation seems to be slow (I dare say, 'laggy'). Dolphin HD on my Droid Incredible performs better than on my Prime (all settings the same looking at the same sites). I have a good strong wifi connection, so I don't think that is the problem. Everything else seems to run just fine.


If I am patient enough to wait for the page to completely load and then scroll down, large square areas of the page will not be loaded and will fill in as I scroll. The scrolling isn't that smooth, either. I've played around with settings, and even tried changing from "balanced" to "normal speed" mode, but it's still not that great. The only thing that seems to make it run smoothly is to set the user agent to something that makes me get the mobile sites designed for use on a phone.


Any suggestions for settings to tweak or other things to try? It's bothersome enough that I'm considering boxing it up and taking it back to Best Buy since browsing is one of the main reasons I picked up a tablet.


Thanks,


Gary

 

[rsmin]

Gary, Smooth as silk. No lag and loads fast. I am using dolphin HD. I keep the cache cleared up and I noticed on my droidx that sometimes other apps could cause it to get buggy, so I try to watch what I put on it. But as far as my prime its working as expected.

 

[TheSandman2236]

Gary, Smooth as silk. No lag and loads fast. I am using dolphin HD. I keep the cache cleared up and I noticed on my droidx that sometimes other apps could cause it to get buggy, so I try to watch what I put on it. But as far as my prime its working as expected.

Ditto -- Love Dolphin HD on the prime. I'm waiting for Firefox to catch up and come out with better release, just too buggy IMO. I wish DHD had some better add-on's.

 

[JAy3001]

I gave up on Firefox ages ago on Android. File size is massive, as least on a phone & it does that crap iPad scrolling where nothing appears in the browser until you stop scrolling!

Dolphin has the Android market licked as far as i'm concerned. (Although not without its issues)

 

[andygu3]

I have been playing with my Prime for a couple days now and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed in the browsing experience. I seem to have the best results with the stock browser, but I have also tried:

1. Dolphin HD (my favorite I use on my phone exclusively).
2. Dolphin for Pad V1.0 Beta
3. Opera Mobile
4. Firefox

In every case, page rendering and navigation seems to be slow (I dare say, 'laggy'). Dolphin HD on my Droid Incredible performs better than on my Prime (all settings the same looking at the same sites). I have a good strong wifi connection, so I don't think that is the problem. Everything else seems to run just fine.


If I am patient enough to wait for the page to completely load and then scroll down, large square areas of the page will not be loaded and will fill in as I scroll. The scrolling isn't that smooth, either. I've played around with settings, and even tried changing from "balanced" to "normal speed" mode, but it's still not that great. The only thing that seems to make it run smoothly is to set the user agent to something that makes me get the mobile sites designed for use on a phone.


Any suggestions for settings to tweak or other things to try? It's bothersome enough that I'm considering boxing it up and taking it back to Best Buy since browsing is one of the main reasons I picked up a tablet.


Thanks,


Gary

The browser experience for our Prime is great, no issues here. I've never liked using an alternative browser other than the stock browser, waste of time, imo

 

[rsarno]

Funny I see this thread, right now Im on my wife's iPad I wanted to see how her browsing experience compares.

I wish android was as smooth as this

 

[Gatman]

Funny I see this thread, right now Im on my wife's iPad I wanted to see how her browsing experience compares.

I wish android was as smooth as this

Ugh...I hesitated to post the same comment when I wrote this thread. I sat there last night for over an hour with my Prime right next to the wife's Ipad2 and felt the exact same way.

~Gary

 

[rsarno]

Hate to say it, this thing is butter.I can definitely see using this iPad moreso than my prime.

Something about the form factor and usability. Also I opened YouTube app and Facebook app, they are rock solid and like lure you in to use it more.

Same apps on android sucked and lagged.

Damnit I don't want an iPad!! But it's so nice lol

Hmmmmm

 

[rsmin]

I had the Ipad and sold it to get this. It is good, but my experience with the prime is just as good. I am not having the problems you are. There is an update out by Asus today that is supposed to help Wifi, plus we might want to see where everyone is at after ICS is sent out.

 

[rsarno]

Ok im back on my laptop .. which says something in itself. When my wife asked for her ipad back i had the choice of getting on my laptop, or picking up my prime.

Stuff going through my head

I think i am discovering the Prime might be slightly too large for my liking.

I always knew Apple had solid products, but i thought by having the newest and best android tablet would at least have a similar experience. It does not.

Im an android fan through and through .. cant tell you how many isheep i have ripped apart in my time! I love Android for what its capable of, all the options, all the settings .. but there is something about not having those settings that is sexy. I dont have to worry about what browser performs best, no worry about wifi analyzing, wallpaper cropping, etc.

I think for my phone i absolutely must have an android phone. I am constantly tinkering, changing, trying new things, etc.

But for a tablet i don't necessarily want to be bothered with any of that. I want to pick it up and use it. Be productive, or kill time, and move on. Surf web, check emails, maybe a few apps, facebook. Thats the extent of my tablet usage. With the exception of email, i think the iPad is leaps ahead of Android for them.

damnit now i have to start thinking about return policies, my case and protector are ordered and on the way ... also spent like $20 on Tegra games

CRAP ! whats happening to me!!

 

[Deleted User]

I could be wrong, but I think when people mean "smooth", they mean scrolling through a page. The Prime does, albeit very minorly, studders when scrolling.. Almost like low ... Refresh rate? Referencing my very limited experience using a friends iPad, I was amazed at the smooth scrolling.. No jitterness, etc. everything was legible as I scrolled.

That said, I love this thing heh

 

[rsarno]

I could be wrong, but I think when people mean "smooth", they mean scrolling through a page. The Prime does, albeit very minorly, studders when scrolling.. Almost like low ... Refresh rate? Referencing my very limited experience using a friends iPad, I was amazed at the smooth scrolling.. No jitterness, etc. everything was legible as I scrolled.

That said, I love this thing heh

its also how fast and perfectly the pages render. how silky and painless the zoom is

 

[Deleted User]

its also how fast and perfectly the pages render. how silky and painless the zoom is

It has to be the OS I would suspect... perhaps not being optimized for one particular set of hardware...?

 

[rsarno]

It has to be the OS I would suspect... perhaps not being optimized for one particular set of hardware...?

see thats just it. When it comes to my phone id rip every thought to pieces and determine the cause and solution (if any).

On my tablet, i dont care! I just want it to work, and be flawless lol.

 

[erry]

Ugh...I hesitated to post the same comment when I wrote this thread. I sat there last night for over an hour with my Prime right next to the wife's Ipad2 and felt the exact same way.

~Gary

The more threads like this I read, the more glad i am I went against my initial decision, Of getting an android tablet...

and bought an iPad 2


I have an android phone which suits my needs better than an iPhone would, but for the allround tablet 'experience' and sheer volume of tablet ready apps -- the iPad 2 was the better choice for me

 

[JAy3001]

rsarno & Gatman

It sounds like you guys have never used an iPad before? Which does surprise me if true especially after spending

 

[Deleted User]

I think at this point, it should be smooth as silk.

I did notice Dolphin scrolls smoother, but slower as well, than Opera. But was getting odd flashing on part of page using Dolphin... Leading me to believe its a software vice hardware issue.

 

[Gatman]

You have to remember that iPads are pure silk, everything about them is polished - But they are also locked down tighter than a nuns furry bits with terrible software that dictates your every move.. iTunes!

Android is a power house, rough around the edges because of its open source nature, you have to expect at this stage for them to not compare. But you get all the control you want to do everything you want - after all you did just pay

 

[erry]

rsarno & Gatman

It sounds like you guys have never used an iPad before? Which does surprise me if true especially after spending

 

[beallpatrick]

For those of you who think that browsing on the Prime is smooth, can you meander over to Really Long Web Page - The Board, wait for it to load, and then start scrolling down through the page rapidly.

You should see the missing blocks that fill in that Gatman mentioned. This problem was present in the stock browser, Dolphin HD, and Opera Mobile. The faster you flick down the page, the worse it gets, but in my experience it couldn't reliably keep up with my normal browsing speed. Naturally, if you aren't looking at long pages, you won't see this problem--or as mentioned elsewhere, mobile sites seem to perform better as well.

If anyone with the Prime doesn't see this, feel free to let us know anything you may have done that alleviated the problem. (or if you have another HC device that doesn't have this problem as well).

 

[jdbaker82]

Only smooth browser I've found on Prime is Opera mini even Dolphin can't compare.

 

[newtech]

The Prime is supposed to have five cores. One is a lower clock speed just to minimize battery use. I wonder if it isn't the one being used while browsing? Four fire-breathing cores should make for an awesome browsing experience. It will come and if I am right pretty quickly.

 

[JAy3001]

Great reply Gatman. I know what you mean and I was and have been tempted with the almost perfect ipad and may even go that route yet if the Prime does not perform as I expect it to.

Even though I have yet to receive mine I will be waiting for ICS before making any rash decisions. Lets not forgot Android was never designed to run on Tablets and could only just keep it together on 7" tablets not so long ago.

So hopefully ICS will resolve most issues and put Android on a more even keel with iOS.

Going back to the browsing issue.

I agree the Prime should be ultra smooth with all its cores and I look forward to testing it out myself.

Drifting off a little. I use Firefox on my PC and have done for years, but if your compare scrolling smoothness between IE and Firefox, IE blows it out of the water everytime!!

But yet I stick with Firefox! Probably because I like to be different. And that is why i'm going Android and not iOS.

 

[Gatman]

For those of you who think that browsing on the Prime is smooth, can you meander over to Really Long Web Page - The Board, wait for it to load, and then start scrolling down through the page rapidly.

You should see the missing blocks that fill in that Gatman mentioned. This problem was present in the stock browser, Dolphin HD, and Opera Mobile. The faster you flick down the page, the worse it gets, but in my experience it couldn't reliably keep up with my normal browsing speed. Naturally, if you aren't looking at long pages, you won't see this problem--or as mentioned elsewhere, mobile sites seem to perform better as well.

If anyone with the Prime doesn't see this, feel free to let us know anything you may have done that alleviated the problem. (or if you have another HC device that doesn't have this problem as well).

Before I even start, let me say I know the above-referenced page is massive and isn't necessarily indicative of "normal" browsing. I did this simply for comparison purposes and wanted to share the results for anyone who is interested.

I went ahead and pulled this up on the wife's iPad2 and my Prime just now. I clicked the link and watched how long it took the progress bar to indicate the page had loaded. iPad took 7 seconds and Prime took 12 seconds.

I waited until the progress bar completed in each case, and then I started scrolling down - not crazy fast, but at what I'd call a 'scanning' speed - as if I was looking for something in particular and needed to be able to see pieces of what was going by. The iPad handled it really well - only pausing once for a split second about halfway down the page. The stuttering with the prime was very noticeable, and large blocks of the page would appear as I scrolled as if what was below the bottom of the screen was being rendered as I scrolled. Often, the page would stop, and the bottom inch or two would flash on and off and on and off. I took a video of it with my phone and posted it to Youtube here.

I see this kind of boxy rendering of pages when I surf various sites (Phandroid is one of the worst, btw). The flashing on and off only happens very rarely. You can see in the video that I am not scrolling this thing crazy fast. Faster than I would read, but still not crazy fast. This is after installing today's update and with the Prime set for the "normal" power setting (not balanced or power saver).

I would love to find something that would make this smoother.

Thanks,

Gary

 

[beallpatrick]

Before I even start, let me say I know the above-referenced page is massive and isn't necessarily indicative of "normal" browsing. I did this simply for comparison purposes and wanted to share the results for anyone who is interested.

Gary

This forum is pretty bad as well. Take even this very thread page. If you browse like I do you flick to the bottom of the page much faster than was shown in the video to see the most recent posts. When I do this I'll sometimes have as few as 2-4 rendered blocks visible once I hit the bottom (if it doesn't totally freeze for a second on the way down). Conversely, one might do this trying to get back to the top of the page if they're using a browser that doesn't show the address bar until you reach the top of the page.

If you're actually reading the page as you scroll you'll never outpace the browser (I hope), but even on a normal page under normal browsing circumstances this shows up.