Technology Android
- Thread starter THEV1LL4N
- Start date
Messing around with an ICS build. Its in beta but a lot works. Except for wifi which sucks or id probably use it for a couple days. One thing i just noticed is when i use my trackpad in the browser a mouse pointer pops up, cool. ICS is fucking pretty lol. Cant wait til stable builds are out
The ok and cancel buttons have switched places, fucking annoying.
The ok and cancel buttons have switched places, fucking annoying.
https://plus.google.com/100838276097451809262/posts/VDkV9XaJRGS
This actually fixes Dianne's explanation on UI smoothness and hardware acceleration. A great read, really. I didn't know a lot of things here.
Especially this explains why Android isn't as smooth as iOS and Windows Phone 7:
I take back everything that I said about it being cooler that iOS feels smoother than Android.
I mean - the issue should certainly get fixed - with multicore processors they could just dedicate a core for UI rendering, which is impossible with the way it currently works. But now I understand why it happens.
This actually fixes Dianne's explanation on UI smoothness and hardware acceleration. A great read, really. I didn't know a lot of things here.
Especially this explains why Android isn't as smooth as iOS and Windows Phone 7:
I take back everything that I said about it being cooler that iOS feels smoother than Android.
I mean - the issue should certainly get fixed - with multicore processors they could just dedicate a core for UI rendering, which is impossible with the way it currently works. But now I understand why it happens.
Did we read the same G+ post? I have more respect for iOS after reading this. Did you read the edited version of the post?
and
It seems to me like the Android folk are a bit stuck in their ways and stubborn to change. While Casey always liked to mention that Android was in development before the iPhone, it's quite obvious that Android was built for non-touch screen devices and it shifted its strategy because of iPhone's release.
and
It seems to me like the Android folk are a bit stuck in their ways and stubborn to change. While Casey always liked to mention that Android was in development before the iPhone, it's quite obvious that Android was built for non-touch screen devices and it shifted its strategy because of iPhone's release.
Yeah, I saw that all. The point is that it would be problematic to change it now.
The main difference here is that smoothness on Android directly reflects if the hardware is being challenged a lot as UI slows down along with everything else. An app makes your CPU go 100% and thus slow down - you will feel it because UI will slow down by as much. Usually both the UI and other processes will run though, just with some lags and slowdown.
On another hand iOS slows down everything just to run UI smoothly. You sacrifice the speed of things that really put a strain on your hardware just to pretend that it doesn't happen. So it might choke and struggle to work but it will keep the UI smooth just to give you an impression that there's no problem and your device is super fast.
So with Android they want you to go the "brute force" way and keep the UI system as it is by ensuring that the hardware is fast enough to handle everything you throw at it - that way nothing you do will slow down, and if nothing slows down the UI will be smooth too.
Basically the Android UI smoothness is tied directly to the overall performance of your phone. If it's lower for whatever reason the UI lags will directly reflect that. While at the same time the iOS UI will be smooth but at overall performance's expense.
A perfect solution would be a separate thread for UI so you could for example have one core dedicated to that and other X cores doing everything else beneath the UI layer at the same time, without freezing anything.
It would require a total reorganization of the way it's handled, which is a lot of work and trouble.
The main difference here is that smoothness on Android directly reflects if the hardware is being challenged a lot as UI slows down along with everything else. An app makes your CPU go 100% and thus slow down - you will feel it because UI will slow down by as much. Usually both the UI and other processes will run though, just with some lags and slowdown.
On another hand iOS slows down everything just to run UI smoothly. You sacrifice the speed of things that really put a strain on your hardware just to pretend that it doesn't happen. So it might choke and struggle to work but it will keep the UI smooth just to give you an impression that there's no problem and your device is super fast.
So with Android they want you to go the "brute force" way and keep the UI system as it is by ensuring that the hardware is fast enough to handle everything you throw at it - that way nothing you do will slow down, and if nothing slows down the UI will be smooth too.
Basically the Android UI smoothness is tied directly to the overall performance of your phone. If it's lower for whatever reason the UI lags will directly reflect that. While at the same time the iOS UI will be smooth but at overall performance's expense.
A perfect solution would be a separate thread for UI so you could for example have one core dedicated to that and other X cores doing everything else beneath the UI layer at the same time, without freezing anything.
It would require a total reorganization of the way it's handled, which is a lot of work and trouble.
I'm not saying that the Android way is better. Both aren't what they should be.
It's just that I gave props to Apple and their Ipads for running smooth compared to Android on tablets, but it's not really the OS performance that is higher there - it's the UI that is smoother because of that little trick.
I still think that for an average human being the Ipad way will look way more appealing. But reality is that the Android UI lags because it does shit at the same time. So it sacrifices on both equally. While iOS sacrifices everything for UI performance.
Perfectly it should sacrifice only enough performance to be able to keep the UI smooth while still running other things in the background - without freezing anything but without sacrificing on UI performance because it's more important than a few percent faster process completion.
Also perfectly if you have a 4 (5) core CPU if one core is enough to handle "the UI process" you could make it do only that, while other 3 cores would do everything else. The problem is that only Apple could do that. With Android they can't do that because they have various types of devices with different CPU architectures and different amounts of cores so they have to make a different, more universal solution that would do at least okay on all devices.
The current solution seems to be good enough and universal, despite not being perfect. If you have a fast enough processor you will rarely encounter any problems.
I think that the Android way is pretty outdated and that's also what that guy pointed out. It's just hard to change.
It's just that I gave props to Apple and their Ipads for running smooth compared to Android on tablets, but it's not really the OS performance that is higher there - it's the UI that is smoother because of that little trick.
I still think that for an average human being the Ipad way will look way more appealing. But reality is that the Android UI lags because it does shit at the same time. So it sacrifices on both equally. While iOS sacrifices everything for UI performance.
Perfectly it should sacrifice only enough performance to be able to keep the UI smooth while still running other things in the background - without freezing anything but without sacrificing on UI performance because it's more important than a few percent faster process completion.
Also perfectly if you have a 4 (5) core CPU if one core is enough to handle "the UI process" you could make it do only that, while other 3 cores would do everything else. The problem is that only Apple could do that. With Android they can't do that because they have various types of devices with different CPU architectures and different amounts of cores so they have to make a different, more universal solution that would do at least okay on all devices.
The current solution seems to be good enough and universal, despite not being perfect. If you have a fast enough processor you will rarely encounter any problems.
I think that the Android way is pretty outdated and that's also what that guy pointed out. It's just hard to change.
No. That post is mostly complete and utter bollocks and actually a lot of Goog employees are laughing at how wrong he is.
Number 1) The guy is a fucking intern. If you want, I'll talk to my cousin, a REAL software engineer on the Android team to clear it up.
Number 2) The guy is about to work for Microsoft on WP7 - trash the competition to try and get a full time job at MS perhaps? Laughably transparent.
Number 3) I have Z.E.R.O lag on my Samsung Galaxy S2 because it has a fucking badass Exynos processor in it. Believe, I've TRIED to make it lag. I've updated over 50 apps at once with about 20 background processes running. It doesn't fucking break a sweat. And I haven't even clocked it above 1.2GhZ.
Is it more of a challenge to make Android run without lag? Of course, it's open-source software designed to run on any and as much hardware as possible. Believe it or not, that's a MUCH tougher challenge than designing a dedicated OS for ONE fucking piece of hardware.
Number 4) Everybody likes to throw this picture around:
and say "ooooooh android was supposed to be blackberry style, when iphone came out they had to change it".
THOSE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DUMB AND WRONG.
Yes, that's a prototype Android device from early 2007.
But guess what?
So is this:
Hmmmm what's that? Oh yeah - a touch screen.
Conclusion - pwned
Number 1) The guy is a fucking intern. If you want, I'll talk to my cousin, a REAL software engineer on the Android team to clear it up.
Number 2) The guy is about to work for Microsoft on WP7 - trash the competition to try and get a full time job at MS perhaps? Laughably transparent.
Number 3) I have Z.E.R.O lag on my Samsung Galaxy S2 because it has a fucking badass Exynos processor in it. Believe, I've TRIED to make it lag. I've updated over 50 apps at once with about 20 background processes running. It doesn't fucking break a sweat. And I haven't even clocked it above 1.2GhZ.
Is it more of a challenge to make Android run without lag? Of course, it's open-source software designed to run on any and as much hardware as possible. Believe it or not, that's a MUCH tougher challenge than designing a dedicated OS for ONE fucking piece of hardware.
Number 4) Everybody likes to throw this picture around:
and say "ooooooh android was supposed to be blackberry style, when iphone came out they had to change it".
THOSE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING DUMB AND WRONG.
Yes, that's a prototype Android device from early 2007.
But guess what?
So is this:
Hmmmm what's that? Oh yeah - a touch screen.
Conclusion - pwned
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