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Why is iOS so much smoother than Android?

josh48315

Newbie
Aug 5, 2010
20
0
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.
 
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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.
 
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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.

-Mike
 
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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
cool.gif
 
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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.

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.
 
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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.
 
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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.

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.

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:

bumptop-desk2_600.jpeg
 
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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.
 
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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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@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.

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.
 
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@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.
 
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