GPU support!! WHY NOT???????

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shrub

Member
Feb 22, 2010
36
2
Let me start by saying I love Android. I love Google. Not only is Android an extremely powerful OS with a wonderful interface but I love the whole open ethos behind it, led by Google, the good guys.

But I just can't for the life of my understand why GPU support is not being introduced, or at least acknowledged that it's missing and it's coming.

I'm running Froyo, and whilst it may well be 500 gazillion times faster crunching numbers and performing data intensive tasks and whatever, it doesn't feel it as I use the phone next to an iphone 3gs.

Manipulating every single screen, every single swipe, window, everything including menus and web browsing just doesn't feel as good as on the iphone. Even if it is is technically faster, what good is it when the thing just doesn't feel as good? It might as well be slower, because how something feels has the bigger impact on people's perceptions.

I understand it's not as easy to accomplish as apple did it being as they only have one phone etc, but surely there's got to be some way?

Why is this issue not bigger within the Android community? Everybody knows the iphone is more fluid to use no matter how much we might want to deny it to ourselves.
 

Jack_R1

Senior Member
Aug 9, 2009
4,362
964
Apple moves basically a wallpaper with icons, which is just a picture.
Android moves widgets and live wallpaper. Tons of CPU used for that. Turn off your live wallpaper, disable widgets - get the same scrolling as iPhone.
GPU is there and has nothing to do with it.
Search would have helped avoiding useless complaints in capital letters with tons of "?"s.
If the visuals are so important to you - get an iPhone. System limitations - there's only so much that can be done between battery life, multitasking and graphics. iPhone uses graphics at the expense of multitasking, Android does otherwise.
 
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bmj1086

Senior Member
Apr 11, 2008
978
6
Dallas
Let me start by saying I love Android. I love Google. Not only is Android an extremely powerful OS with a wonderful interface but I love the whole open ethos behind it, led by Google, the good guys.

But I just can't for the life of my understand why GPU support is not being introduced, or at least acknowledged that it's missing and it's coming.

I'm running Froyo, and whilst it may well be 500 gazillion times faster crunching numbers and performing data intensive tasks and whatever, it doesn't feel it as I use the phone next to an iphone 3gs.

Manipulating every single screen, every single swipe, window, everything including menus and web browsing just doesn't feel as good as on the iphone. Even if it is is technically faster, what good is it when the thing just doesn't feel as good? It might as well be slower, because how something feels has the bigger impact on people's perceptions.

I understand it's not as easy to accomplish as apple did it being as they only have one phone etc, but surely there's got to be some way?

Why is this issue not bigger within the Android community? Everybody knows the iphone is more fluid to use no matter how much we might want to deny it to ourselves.

I am the most unbiased person I've ever met and I will honestly tell you that the response on my phone is as fast and smooth as I have ever seen on any phone. I don't think it can get better. I do not like the grid popping in the Nexus Launcher though. I wish it would just scroll like the old versions.

You don't have a real question in all honesty. Your question is, why is it not like the iPhone and why is it not "smooth" to you personally. That's just the way one person feels. I like the way the N1 feels across the entire OS. They're two different OS's and Phones so they're never going to be the same. I think you really just prefer one over the other in your own opinion. Neither of them can be called better outside of an opinion so nothing will change.
 

wesbalmer

Senior Member
Oct 22, 2008
426
35
Los Angeles, CA
www.rawc.net
I will sacrifice fluidity any day for functionality.

Also, do you have any idea of what Android has come from, in the sense of versioning? I am certain that this is almost identical the iPhone OS/Hardware Saga from version 1 and up.
 

temperbad

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2009
678
1
portland
I have a question. Why is there so much comparison to iphone. I think android Smashes them but why post topic after topic about that... where's that one mod. He should delete this.
 

bmj1086

Senior Member
Apr 11, 2008
978
6
Dallas
I have a question. Why is there so much comparison to iphone. I think android Smashes them but why post topic after topic about that... where's that one mod. He should delete this.

There is always a comparison of the top two of anything. Android and iPhone are very similar and they're they top devices so they're going to get compared. 99.999% of the comparisons are biased in some way but the fact is that neither of them are factually better than the other. They both have amazing features that the other doesn't and the word "better" and your decision come down to your personal preferences. I don't like iTunes, I think widgets are a MUST for me and I enjoy modding my phone without going through hell to do it or getting the cops called on me so I chose Android. Also I have been behind everything Google has done for many years and I will continue to love the company but biased attitudes are something I try to avoid. Not only do you not learn anything but you look foolish acting that way [I'm not talking about you personally I'm speaking in general].
 

dalingrin

Inactive Recognized Developer
Nov 6, 2007
1,433
2,756
Wow, I'm surprised to see that I'm one of the only people who completely agree with the original poster.

This isn't limited to the launcher. As the OP stated, literally every on screen motion is smoother on the iPhone.
This isn't because of the lack of multitasking on the iPhone because iOS 4 looks just as smooth.

It is either a consequence of the threading used in gui programs and/or better use of the GPU for animations and scrolling. It seems to me on my Nexus that in most cases scrolling and animations are slower when the CPU is processing something where as on an iPhone the scrolling seems smooth regardless of the processes involved.

One of my complaints along these lines is scrolling in the Android web browser isn't nearly as nice as even the slower iPhone 3G, much less an iPhone 3GS.
 

DMaverick50

Senior Member
May 1, 2009
1,274
1
San Antonio, Tx
Wow, I'm surprised to see that I'm one of the only people who completely agree with the original poster.

This isn't limited to the launcher. As the OP stated, literally every on screen motion is smoother on the iPhone.
This isn't because of the lack of multitasking on the iPhone because iOS 4 looks just as smooth.

It is either a consequence of the threading used in gui programs and/or better use of the GPU for animations and scrolling. It seems to me on my Nexus that in most cases scrolling and animations are slower when the CPU is processing something where as on an iPhone the scrolling seems smooth regardless of the processes involved.

One of my complaints along these lines is scrolling in the Android web browser isn't nearly as nice as even the slower iPhone 3G, much less an iPhone 3GS.


Agreed, Ill take Android's greater capabilities over Iphone's fluidity any day but both would be sweet.
 

mortzz

Senior Member
Jan 14, 2010
346
17
I disable screen animations. I have no need for worthless eye-candy. Just give me whatever I tapped on as fast as possible.
Love it.
 

dalingrin

Inactive Recognized Developer
Nov 6, 2007
1,433
2,756
I disable screen animations. I have no need for worthless eye-candy. Just give me whatever I tapped on as fast as possible.
Love it.

I either turn the animations off or turn their speed up. IMO scrolling is more of an issue than animations.

Example:
Goto www.androidcentral.com or www.anandtech.com on a Nexus One and with the page zoomed all the way out try scrolling. At the top of the page my frame rate is <15.
Now do the same on a wee iPhone(even first gen) and see how smooth the scrolling is.

Is it end of the world? No, of course not. I am very satisfied with my phone compared to my previous iPhone 3GS and 3G. That said, considering my main use of my phone(beyond being a phone) is web browsing, I would still love to have the scrolling of my "crap" iPhone.
 
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xManMythLegend

Senior Member
Dec 1, 2008
1,505
134
NYC
Its a genuine complaint.
The lack of smooth visuals is getting silly. I think Google bringing in the guy from Palm/Danger is an ackowledgment of this.
Its not cpu , its not ram, its not multitasking. Its Apple that has some if not the best UI guys in the business in terms of visuals. Id say WebOS guys were the tops but they were mostly old Apple guys so go figure.
Apple spends a ton of time and offort making sure everything looks fluid across the entire experience. Android does not. Its simply not something theyve taken seriously until 2.1. They are the best engineers in the world..not GUI designers. The fact the Gallery still has 16 bit depth is a tell tale sign they arent emphasizing visuals.

Anyways the GPU is underused. UI , Games , Codecs theres a alot of room for improvement. Androids UI is "better"...but lets not kid ourselves..the animations and fluidity are heavily in Apples corner. Loks are important; otherwise go date a fat hairy girl.
 

md2

Member
Jun 9, 2007
34
0
I thought I was quite picky but I don't notice any problems with my nexus :)

Maybe I haven't spent that much time playing with iPhones but when I have seen people using them they press something and have to wait for it to load, they get a grey checker pattern when they scroll too fast in the browser. Sometimes their swipes didn't register either.
 

Eclair~

Senior Member
Dec 21, 2009
1,183
30
Its a genuine complaint.
The lack of smooth visuals is getting silly. I think Google bringing in the guy from Palm/Danger is an ackowledgment of this.
Its not cpu , its not ram, its not multitasking. Its Apple that has some if not the best UI guys in the business in terms of visuals. Id say WebOS guys were the tops but they were mostly old Apple guys so go figure.
Apple spends a ton of time and offort making sure everything looks fluid across the entire experience. Android does not. Its simply not something theyve taken seriously until 2.1. They are the best engineers in the world..not GUI designers. The fact the Gallery still has 16 bit depth is a tell tale sign they arent emphasizing visuals.

Anyways the GPU is underused. UI , Games , Codecs theres a alot of room for improvement. Androids UI is "better"...but lets not kid ourselves..the animations and fluidity are heavily in Apples corner. Loks are important; otherwise go date a fat hairy girl.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Android really just isn't the most aesthetically pleasing user interface around, I've never owned an iPhone - and don't plan to, but Apple simply knows their stuff when it comes graphic design..
 

staples17

New member
May 22, 2010
1
0
There's been some info on this issue on the android-platform groups and the skia rendering engine group (Skia acutally has an experimental OpenGL rendering branch).

From what I understand, hardware acceleration can't be implemented in older devices (ex: G1) because they only support one OpenGL instance at a time, meaning the launcher could be in conflit with apps. It also seems as if the stuttering we feel is actually caused by Android's garbage colletor because it blocks the UI thread when it kicks in and not because the phone's cpu cant keep up with scrolling. If you watched some of the Google I/O 2010 videos, they said they know of the issues with the garbage collector and they are working on it.

My guess is that hardware acceleration will come sooner or later (specially with the Tegra 2 chips and tablet format :rolleyes:) but if you want to make things move a bit you can always go to code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914 and star the issue (consider it a vote :p).

New here btw, hello all :D
 

SBS_

Senior Member
Jul 13, 2007
506
19
Bergen
I either turn the animations off or turn their speed up. IMO scrolling is more of an issue than animations.

Example:
Goto www.androidcentral.com or www.anandtech.com on a Nexus One and with the page zoomed all the way out try scrolling. At the top of the page my frame rate is <15.
Now do the same on a wee iPhone(even first gen) and see how smooth the scrolling is.

Is it end of the world? No, of course not. I am very satisfied with my phone compared to my previous iPhone 3GS and 3G. That said, considering my main use of my phone(beyond being a phone) is web browsing, I would still love to have the scrolling of my "crap" iPhone.

I just tested anandtech.com on my N1 using Dolphin HD and have Froyo installed. The page was pretty much butter smooth except the top which had a flash banner ad and a flash "news reel". Of course the iPhone is going to be smoother at the top of that page since it doesn't show any flash elements. Not to say I don't want smoother scrolling when there are flash elements, but I'd rather have them showing with a little choppy frame rate than not at all.
 

nexus5894

Senior Member
Mar 9, 2010
78
0
RE: GPU Support

It's a common misconception that Android is slow changing windows and stuff- just go to Spare Parts and turn the window animations off.
 

RogerPodacter

Senior Member
Apr 12, 2010
5,654
425
Los Angeles, CA
my nexus next to the iphone, the nexus is just as smooth and fast to my eyes. the nexus is actually buttery smooth. using launcher pro. maybe that is what makes the difference i bet.