5 days with Nexus 4

[openwheel]

We have something like 300 iPad2s at work, and whether they're running iOS 5 or 6, there's always a lag when you swipe to the left from the home screen to bring up the search box.

I suppose I could say that makes the iPad 2 laggy as hell, but then I'd be as idiotic as several others.

I thought it was just me. Never realized they all do that..

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Really? A Galaxy Nexus with project butter is "lagging like hell"?

It may be a fluke. She showed it to me the other day and asked me to help speed up her phone. I'm always on the fence on that because my choice of action usually involves a full wipe and a new ROM.

But the other Nexii I've seen fly with project butter. Still. Project Butter isn't a complete solution. Remember it's not a true GPU accelerated solution, and it just ramps up CPU more and prioritizes tasks to the CPU so that rendering isn't compromised. It's more of a brute force approach to me, and if you take the Nexus 4 for example, it ramps to 1ghz on any touch. While that keeps the phone speedy, it's quite a bit of battery drain. Even basic email reading will cause the phone to run warm. Not hot, but warm.

 

[zsdersw]

Project Butter isn't a complete solution.

Who said it was?

 

[NikolaeVarius]

It may be a fluke. She showed it to me the other day and asked me to help speed up her phone. I'm always on the fence on that because my choice of action usually involves a full wipe and a new ROM.

But the other Nexii I've seen fly with project butter. Still. Project Butter isn't a complete solution. Remember it's not a true GPU accelerated solution, and it just ramps up CPU more and prioritizes tasks to the CPU so that rendering isn't compromised. It's more of a brute force approach to me, and if you take the Nexus 4 for example, it ramps to 1ghz on any touch. While that keeps the phone speedy, it's quite a bit of battery drain. Even basic email reading will cause the phone to run warm. Not hot, but warm.

What. What kind of crack are you smoking now?

How the hell is project butter not a GPU accelerated solution. Ignoring the fact that full gpu acceleration was added in 4.0, project butter adds in Vsync and triple buffering in order to smooth out the issues of GPU acceleration. Both of which are evenly CPU and GPU distributed in terms of workload.

You keep posting utter bullcrap and never respond to getting called out on it. You just keep posting bullcrap.

And what solution do YOU have? How do you distinguish a brute force method from a more elegant method? What is your definition of either?

 

[ponyo]

I thought it was just me. Never realized they all do that..

iPad 1 & 2 both do that. Don't know about iPad 3 since we skipped it. iPad 4 does not. I used to think it was by intentional software design but now I know it was under powered hardware.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

iPad 1 & 2 both do that. Don't know about iPad 3 since we skipped it. iPad 4 does not. I used to think it was by intentional software design but now I know it was under powered hardware.

Not sure if its underpowered hardware or poor design. While the 3 and 4 have better hardware, I don't like brute force in general. Launching a search app shouldn't cause a device to lag. I'm pretty sure they could fix it via software if they wanted to.

 

[Eug]

My iPhone 4 does that too, but lag is not very noticeable in iOS 5. In iOS 6, lag on the iPhone 4 is very noticeable though. It's not really in app lag like you see in Android 4.0, but app switching and bringing up the search bar and stuff like that.

 

[bearxor]

I have an iPad 3, it doesn't happen to me. I can believe it on an iPad 1, even an iPad 2. I think iOS really needed 1GB of RAM around the launch of iOS 5. My experience going from a 2 to a 3 was pretty good. Just about as big a usability jump as going from a 3G to a 4 and then a 4 to a 5. I think iOS may be more RAM-hungry than Apple lets on. 1GB seems fine for now, but who knows in 2 years...

 

[ControlD]

My iPhone 4 does that too, but lag is not very noticeable in iOS 5. In iOS 6, lag on the iPhone 4 is very noticeable though. It's not really in app lag like you see in Android 4.0, but app switching and bringing up the search bar and stuff like that.

My 4S does it as well. I always assumed the search function was actually just an app that gets launched when you swipe to the left most screen. It seems like once you have swiped over there (999/1000 times by mistake) the lag is gone for quite some time if you try it again. I think it stays resident in memory once activated, but that first launch takes a little bit of time.

 

[ponyo]

Not sure if its underpowered hardware or poor design. While the 3 and 4 have better hardware, I don't like brute force in general. Launching a search app shouldn't cause a device to lag. I'm pretty sure they could fix it via software if they wanted to.

Poor design? Maybe. Could Apple fix it? Apparently Apple fixed it on iPad 4. So maybe Apple couldn't fix it on iPad 1 & 2. They had like 2 years to fix it and didn't it. The only difference is the hardware on 4. It's all running the same OS. If iPad 1 & 2 lags while swiping to the search screen and iPad 4 doesn't, it makes sense that under powered hardware on 1 & 2 is the reason for the lag.

 

[Eug]

While that lag you describe is real, personally I find the in-app lag in Android 4.0 much worse. Just in scrolling and such in an older 4.0 dual-core device would give you delay or even stuttering.

I haven't seen much of that with my Tegra 3 Nexus 7 and 4.1, but I'm curious if I'll see that again with my Razr HD that's coming soon. That's dual-core Snapdragon 1.5 GHz and 4.0 (to be upgraded to 4.1 early next year in Canada).

That's one reason I've always said that I've been unimpressed with anything Android before 4.0, and that 4.0 was only "almost there". It seems 4.1 was a significant improvement.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

My 4S does it as well. I always assumed the search function was actually just an app that gets launched when you swipe to the left most screen. It seems like once you have swiped over there (999/1000 times by mistake) the lag is gone for quite some time if you try it again. I think it stays resident in memory once activated, but that first launch takes a little bit of time.

seems to be my analysis too. makes a lot of sense.

Poor design? Maybe. Could Apple fix it? Apparently Apple fixed it on iPad 4. So maybe Apple couldn't fix it on iPad 1 & 2. They had like 2 years to fix it and didn't it. The only difference is the hardware on 4. It's all running the same OS. If iPad 1 & 2 lags while swiping to the search screen and iPad 4 doesn't, it makes sense that under powered hardware on 1 & 2 is the reason for the lag.

I'm less inclined to believe that faster hardware is a fix. Instead I view it as a method to mask the issue. But perhaps it is true that iPad 2-level hardware simply cannot handle such a task. Perhaps they can keep the search app in memory or something, if it does't take up too much space, etc. Unless the issue is unfixable on older hardware, I think using brute force speed to mask performance issues is in general not really solving the problem.

While that lag you describe is real, personally I find the in-app lag in Android 4.0 much worse. Just in scrolling and such in an older 4.0 dual-core device would give you delay or even stuttering.

I haven't seen much of that with my Tegra 3 Nexus 7 and 4.1, but I'm curious if I'll see that again with my Razr HD that's coming soon. That's dual-core Snapdragon 1.5 GHz and 4.0 (to be upgraded to 4.1 early next year in Canada).

That's one reason I've always said that I've been unimpressed with anything Android before 4.0, and that 4.0 was only "almost there". It seems 4.1 was a significant improvement.

I agree with you again. I think a lot of that also happens to deal with how apps are coded. Gmail list of emails seems to scroll really smoothly. The settings menu is smooth when scrolling. But apps like Twitter scroll much slower. GoSMS is like a slideshow going through the list of settings, but the list of SMS seems to perform pretty decently.

It's quite bothersome. You can blame the apps or people not using the correct APIs when coding, but the fact that performance varies so much app to app that should run on minimal hardware is definitely more glaring. It's an issue that's slowly getting corrected, but we're not there yet. It's just bothersome that we've been saying "it's almost there" for 3 years now.

 

[dguy6789]

Every time I try to use an android device I'm reminded about how terrible the scrolling is. It's just jerky. I used a RAZR HD with 4.1 all this weekend and just web browsing was cringe-worthy. Scrolling isn't smooth, zooming isn't smooth, tap to zoom is just... Off. There's just something about the way it LOOKS that doesn't sit right with me. The problem is that it CAN be smooth. Sometimes I'll start using it and it will be fine, and then 30s later it's not. "Lag" really isn't the word I would use. It's just jerky. Like its spending system time somewhere else other than what I'm doing and then when I got to scroll in a web page it's like "Oh, hey? You want to do that now? Ok, just give me a few... Nano... Seconds... THERE!"

Of course, it's perfectly functional, it's just not elegant.

Sounds like you have something running in the background consuming a lot of resources(Majority of all Android lag complaints are caused by this as well, very reminiscent of the days when people had 50 programs start up with their Windows PC and wondered why it was slow) . My Razr HD web browsing puts pretty much everything to shame in terms of smoothness.

 

[Eug]

I'm starting to get the impression that part of "project butter" is just to install quad core or faster clocked CPUs in everything Nexus.

I'm not complaining about that, but I do think Google needs to add some configuration options for battery life conservation.

 

[bearxor]

Sounds like you have something running in the background consuming a lot of resources(Majority of all Android lag complaints are caused by this as well, very reminiscent of the days when people had 50 programs start up with their Windows PC and wondered why it was slow) . My Razr HD web browsing puts pretty much everything to shame in terms of smoothness.

I wipe my work device every couple of days because of testing and stuff. When I took it off the charge, it was basically a fresh install of 4.1. Even now it's on the corner of my desk, wiped, ready to face a new round of MDM testing.

I did install some apps. But I installed everything I would install if I were using the device as a daily driver. Nothing really outrageous. And, again, when it works, it works well. It just doesn't not work well a little too often for my tastes. The N4 could very likely allieviate that.

 

[zerocool84]

I'm starting to get the impression that part of "project butter" is just to install quad core or faster clocked CPUs in everything Nexus.

I'm not complaining about that, but I do think Google needs to add some configuration options for battery life conservation.

I will say that even on the old Nexus S it did smooth out a lot of the animations even if the phone is slower now than it was on ICS or Gingerbread. We all know though that Android needs more HP than other phone OS's because it does so much more. Flexibility has a cost.

 

[Eug]

I don't think it's the flexibility that is slowing it down, but the lack of optimization.

Make it run, and then make it run fast. Android has been good at the former, but is only now tackling the latter better.

 

[Red Storm]

Have not experienced any unusual slowness on my N4. Screen looks great, and have been pleased with the camera thus far (though I'm no photographer. If I was I sure wouldn't be using a cell phone to take pictures).

 

[Eug]

With a quad-core CPU without LG's battery optimizations, I would hope not.

 

[Red Storm]

With a quad-core CPU without LG's battery optimizations, I would hope not.

Battery life has been quite good too.

 

[AkumaX]

Have not experienced any unusual slowness on my N4. Screen looks great, and have been pleased with the camera thus far (though I'm no photographer. If I was I sure wouldn't be using a cell phone to take pictures).

Could you use your Browser and vertical scroll through some webpages?

 

[TuxDave]

Camera test:

Is this two different cameras or the same one? The top pasta is much better than the 2nd pasta one. The two pizza ones are hard to figure out. It's not very obvious on which one is capturing accurate colors (if that red is just over saturated or not). I would say the pizza photos are on the same order of quality.

 

[Red Storm]

Could you use your Browser and vertical scroll through some webpages?

Sure. Got any particular sites in mind?

 

[kyrax12]

I hope the next SG SIII phone will be 4.5 inches instead of 4.8 inches. Bigger screens eat more battery.

 

[Eug]

I hope the next Razr M II gets a higher resolution. It's perfectly sized at 4.3", but the resolution of 960x540 is a bit low.