Does android use graphic hardware acceleration?

[amdforever2]

Does Android really use the hardware acceleration of something like the Tegra?


From a horsepower standpoint is a mytouch 4g slide with dual core 1.2ghz and adreno 205 really faster than the g2x?




Does Android really even care about the "GPU" or does it just render everything in software anyways?

 

[her209]

I believe the Samsung Epic 4G Touch uses GPU acceleration.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

for what? for the UI? barely? the only way the launchers are smooth in Android so far is because of brute force. yet they were smooth from day 1 on iOS.

People keep saying the next iteration of Android will fix it, but I've been hearing this from 2.0. Maybe ICS?

 

[zerocool84]

What instances are you talking about being faster? Games, benchmarks, general use? The G2X is stock Android which will mean in day to day use, it'll feel faster than your myTouch 4G Slide because there's nothing on-top running on Android to render. Gingerbread 2.3 is hardware accelerated for some things now but Ice Cream Sandwich is going to bring much more hardware acceleration.

 

[s44]

Does Android really even care about the "GPU" or does it just render everything in software anyways?

Depends on the app or launcher.

TW4, the latest Blur, Launcher Pro, and some other misc. launchers use the GPU.
The Touchwiz browser, Opera Mobile, and maybe some other browsers do as well.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Base Android Launcher? No.

Other launchers? Sure. Launcher Pro is on the same level as iOS, webos launchers

 

[Nintendesert]

for what? for the UI? barely? the only way the launchers are smooth in Android so far is because of brute force. yet they were smooth from day 1 on iOS.

People keep saying the next iteration of Android will fix it, but I've been hearing this from 2.0. Maybe ICS?

From what I've seen it badly needs it for the UI. That stuttering mess was what pushed me to WP7 when I was phone hunting. IOS is very very smooth too.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

From what I've seen it badly needs it for the UI. That stuttering mess was what pushed me to WP7 when I was phone hunting. IOS is very very smooth too.

The Galaxy S2 has a hardware accelerated UI and broser so not only is it massively faster than WP7 it should still be perfectly smooth.

 

[makken]

Depends on the app or launcher.

TW4, the latest Blur, Launcher Pro, and some other misc. launchers use the GPU.
The Touchwiz browser, Opera Mobile, and maybe some other browsers do as well.

hmm is the sense 2.0 launcher GPU accelerated? sometimes it is smooth as butter, other time its choppy to the point where its seconds per frame, not fps; so I really can't tell.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

hmm is the sense 2.0 launcher GPU accelerated? sometimes it is smooth as butter, other time its choppy to the point where its seconds per frame, not fps; so I really can't tell.

Sense probably does have some GPU acceleration.

GPU Acceleration does not dictate whether or not the launcher stutters at points, that involves more a combination of available memory, current processes, and such. Stuttering does not occur because of the lack of GPU acceleration, rather stuff like garbage collection going on or assets of the launcher being loaded into memory.

I can easily get iOS to stutter on the launcher, but its obvious that there is GPU acceleration.

 

[Bateluer]

Guys . . . we've been over this before. GPU acceleration was included in Gingerbread for all window UI transitions and animations, as well as baked into HoneyComb entirely.

I have heard that TW boasts its own acceleration, but its so sluggish normally, its hard to tell. Blur . . . not a chance in hell. Sense, definitely not.

Opera Mobile does, Opera Mini does not.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Guys . . . we've been over this before. GPU acceleration was included in Gingerbread for all window UI transitions and animations, as well as baked into HoneyComb entirely.

Uh, no. It wasn't.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

Read all the way through to the very end.

Honeycomb doesn't have it either.

Ice Cream Sandwich won't have it either.

Jellybean maybe... with some dumb luck but I have pretty much given up on this.

I have heard that TW boasts its own acceleration, but its so sluggish normally, its hard to tell. Blur . . . not a chance in hell. Sense, definitely not.

TouchWiz does have hardware acceleration.

Opera Mobile does, Opera Mini does not.

Both of them do as far as I know.

 

[Bateluer]

Uh, no. It wasn't.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

Read all the way through to the very end.

Article begins before GB was released and before its feature set was announced, and ends on some people having Youtube issues. Not relevant and inaccurate.

From Anandtech's GB write up:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4059/nexus-s-and-android-23-review-gingerbread-for-the-holidays/3

Gingerbread brings some GPU acceleration to task as well. Although not everything is hardware accelerated, almost all animations are, and there’s a definite difference in feel as a result. Things like the application launcher cube and the corresponding fade-in, fade-out which always felt like they chugged along on the Nexus One are way sped up.

Honeycomb doesn't have it either.

You lose again.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4191/motorola-xoom-review-first-honeycomb-tablet-arrives/12
With Honeycomb, Google enabled full GPU acceleration across the OS. As a result, I had hoped that we’d have a very Windows Phone 7 like experience in Android 3.0. For the most part, it’s similarly smooth, but it’s still not quite perfect.

Ice Cream Sandwich won't have it either.

Jellybean maybe... with some dumb luck but I have pretty much given up on this.

TouchWiz does have hardware acceleration.

Both of them do as far as I know.

Since we know next to nothing about ICS's features, we cannot say what it will or will not have. Since its predecessors, Gingerbread and HoneyComb, both included GPU acceleration, its safe to say we can expect refinements and improvements in that area. Jellybean, who knows? Thats not going to drop until late 2012, at the earliest.

I've heard people say that TW has GPU acceleration, but what they're experiencing is likely just the acceleration that was implemented in Gingerbread, provided you have a Galaxy S phone that has received a GB update or been rooted. TW on Froyo, with the RFS file system makes the old Droid 1 look fast. I can't compare the stock Browser to the TW browser, because I haven't used it since Dolphin HD was released, and I've been using Opera Mobile for a long time now. Opera Mobile runs rings around the TW browser, easily.

Last sentence, were you referring to Opera Mini and Mobile supporting GPU acceleration or MotoBlur and TW? I could be wrong on the Opera browsers, but the only acceleration included in TW/Blur is what already exists in Gingerbread.

 

[ponyo]

From Anandtech Samsung Galaxy S 2 (International) Review:

"Like the original Galaxy S, on SGS2 samsung has made enhancements to the browser that dramatically increase smoothness. At the time we could only explain the performance increase by shrugging and claiming it was GPU accelerated. We know a bit more now about what enhancements are required to make browsing smooth in this fashion, and the answer lies in a backing store. A backing store is essentially a nice way of saying cache, and in this case what’s being cached is the rendered page itself, which is either rendered into a texture or some intermediary that’s a step above final rendering.

A backing store is what makes iOS’ browser so smooth, and you can see it render into the texture (or if you overscroll beyond the render, where it hasn’t yet) with those little grey rectangles. Render into a big texture, and then it’s a relatively free GPU operation to transform and clip that texture when a user scrolls around the page, though zooming will require a re-draw. Until Android 3.x, however, the stock Android browser hasn’t had a backing store, which is why translating around feels choppy. As a result, it has been the burden of OEMs to make their browsers feel snappy by incorporating their own backing stores. HTC works with Qualcomm to bring an appropriate level of smoothness to their devices, I already mentioned Android 3.x has one (which will no doubt carry over to Ice Cream Sandwich), and Samsung again has one this go-around in SGS2 just like they did with the original SGS."

On the original Samsung Galaxy S running 2.1 Eclair, the TW browser scrolling and pinch to zooming was incredibly fast, similar to iPad1. When 2.2 Froyo hit, the TW browser scrolling and pinch to zoom became extremely choppy and slow, almost to the point of being unusable if the page had couple of large pictures. Google screwed up the code by trying to optimize for Qualcomm Snapdragon. 2.2.1 update fixed the TW browser back to normal again. 2.3 Gingerbread didn't break anything since Nexus S is based on the Hummingbird and Google optimized for it rather than the Snapdragon like in 2.2. So, if you have Samsung phone and it's running TW: Browser in 2.1 is fine. Browser in 2.2 is royally screwed and slow. Browser in 2.2.1 is fine or I think. Browser in 2.3 is fine. So in summary, avoid 2.2 Froyo on Samsung phones if you like using your TW browser.

 

[MrX8503]

From all of the reviews I've read on TW and the Galaxy S phones I've used, its always been the fastest Android device you can get.

This is the first time I'm hearing TW is slow.

 

[Bateluer]

From all of the reviews I've read on TW and the Galaxy S phones I've used, its always been the fastest Android device you can get.

This is the first time I'm hearing TW is slow.

TouchWiz has always been laggy and sluggish, due in part to Samsung using the RFS file sstem. The Galaxy S phones become snappy when that file system is converted to ext4. This is only referring to the UI though, in apps&games, the Hummingbird/SGX540 left the Snapdragon/Adrenos in the dust.

 

[Oyeve]

TouchWiz has always been laggy and sluggish, due in part to Samsung using the RFS file sstem. The Galaxy S phones become snappy when that file system is converted to ext4. This is only referring to the UI though, in apps&games, the Hummingbird/SGX540 left the Snapdragon/Adrenos in the dust.

True. I literally want to smash the shit out of my vibrant because it is a slugfest. The file system is a pos and if I didnt have nearly 48gb of data I would root it or probably smash the shit out of it. In fact, when I am eligable for an upgrade I am going to drop it is gasoline and torch it while I laugh a maniac.

 

[Krynj]

TouchWiz has always been laggy and sluggish, due in part to Samsung using the RFS file sstem. The Galaxy S phones become snappy when that file system is converted to ext4. This is only referring to the UI though, in apps&games, the Hummingbird/SGX540 left the Snapdragon/Adrenos in the dust.

TW4 on my Sprint Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch runs like iOS. Extremely fluid. No jitters. No lag. It feels awesome. I've been an Android user since the G1, and it makes me really happy to see Android finally performing so fluidly.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Article begins before GB was released and before its feature set was announced, and ends on some people having Youtube issues. Not relevant and inaccurate.

Read again, dear sir. Last post dates... Today.

It's a bug report page for Android, by the way. In case you haven't noticed the http://code.google.com/p/android URL.

From Anandtech's GB write up:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4059/nexus-s-and-android-23-review-gingerbread-for-the-holidays/3

Gingerbread brings some GPU acceleration to task as well. Although not everything is hardware accelerated, almost all animations are, and there’s a definite difference in feel as a result. Things like the application launcher cube and the corresponding fade-in, fade-out which always felt like they chugged along on the Nexus One are way sped up.

Just animations. Not windows or other elements. Please read again.

You lose again.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4191/motorola-xoom-review-first-honeycomb-tablet-arrives/12
With Honeycomb, Google enabled full GPU acceleration across the OS. As a result, I had hoped that we’d have a very Windows Phone 7 like experience in Android 3.0. For the most part, it’s similarly smooth, but it’s still not quite perfect.

Why do we have to care about losing or winning here? Is this a competition?

In any case, I guess Google's engineers were wrong.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/android-30-hardware-acceleration.html

If you have custom drawing code you might need to do a bit more, which is in part why hardware acceleration is not enabled by default.

Unless "across OS" means only what Google has included in Honeycomb, I don't think Anand's statement was entirely correct.

Since we know next to nothing about ICS's features, we cannot say what it will or will not have. Since its predecessors, Gingerbread and HoneyComb, both included GPU acceleration, its safe to say we can expect refinements and improvements in that area. Jellybean, who knows? Thats not going to drop until late 2012, at the earliest.

I've heard people say that TW has GPU acceleration, but what they're experiencing is likely just the acceleration that was implemented in Gingerbread, provided you have a Galaxy S phone that has received a GB update or been rooted. TW on Froyo, with the RFS file system makes the old Droid 1 look fast. I can't compare the stock Browser to the TW browser, because I haven't used it since Dolphin HD was released, and I've been using Opera Mobile for a long time now. Opera Mobile runs rings around the TW browser, easily.

Last sentence, were you referring to Opera Mini and Mobile supporting GPU acceleration or MotoBlur and TW? I could be wrong on the Opera browsers, but the only acceleration included in TW/Blur is what already exists in Gingerbread.

TouchWiz ran on 2.1 and 2.2 as well, and it had hardware acceleration back then.

2.3 doesn't have hardware acceleration for third-party apps, and 3.0 doesn't enable it by default, so TouchWiz is still hardware accelerated on its own in those OS versions.

For most applications, you might well assume that GPU acceleration or "2D hardware acceleration", as Google puts it, is non-existent prior to them being coded specifically for 3.0.

I'd suggest that you do more reading on the matter to get a better understanding of the situation. It's not all flowers and sugar, otherwise Honeycomb tablets would have performed much better than they did.

And my apologies if I may come off as rude, but with regard to this matter, I'm quite annoyed by Google's attitude toward its user base. If you read the issue thread I posted, you would know that they practically just left it there, gave an aloof answer like "you know, we can't do it because we just can't", then suddenly close the issue one day, but for what it's worth, it's still not fixed, and God knows if Google truly enabled hardware acceleration for UI elements or not since all we have to go by are their words. And it's not enabled by default, either, so a very large amount of third-party apps don't have it enabled.

If third-party developers don't read the article I just posted, chances are they wouldn't update their apps to support the feature either way.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Just animations. Not windows or other elements.

There are three levels of GPU acceleration:

1. 2D based acceleration
2. Some 3D based GPU acceleration
3. Composite based OS

Starting with Gingerbread, Google enabled the first kind. Now the OS uses the GPU's 2D abilities to do things like transitions and probably some font anti-aliasing. This is about what Windows XP had.

Some of the programs (notably Opera Mobile and Samsung's Touchwiz browser) enable the second kind. What they basically do is act like video games on the phone- they render their interface with the GPU as a game would. This is not blessed by the OS other than it gets out of the way, and you don't see this sort of thing usually on desktop OSes because it requires full screen rendering (not a big deal on mobile devices) and it eats more memory than proper composite. The only desktop OS I have ever seen with something like this is the mid-00's Linux desktop with Xglx.

The third kind is an outright composite based OS where the OS takes over and renders everything offscreen on the GPU. This is what iOS does today, and I think it is also what WM7 does. Windows Vista brought about this for Windows desktops, OSX had this from day one. This is why those OSes seem so "smooth," as this is considered the modern way to do things. I know Honeycomb is not composite based by messing with it, or its task-switcher would utilize live previews of running apps instead of screenshots ala OSX's Mission Control.

No where have I seen anything that implies that Google is moving to a composite-based OS. And I don't blame them- it is a terrible transition that is unavoidable going to a composite OS when it didn't start that way. Apple only has a composite-based OS on their phones because millions of early OSX users (like me) suffered through countless composite bugs all the way through OSX's first four versions. Apple took that knowledge and applied it to the phones, which is only possible because they support such a limited phone hardware platform and because Apple has the world's only decent software compositor (again thanks to Guinea pigs like me).

Google lacks this advantage. In fact, Google is in Microsoft's shoes in the early 2000's- its platform is fragmented with trillions of different hardware combinations and most of the available GPUs can't handle full composite. You can't just force a composite-based OS in this situation because then you end up with Windows Vista. Despite all the heresay, the real problem with Vista is that it forced down a composite interface before the applications and the hardware were ready. Applications not made for composite had bugs aplenty, and only the highest-end hardware when it was released could actually handle the composite interface. MS had no choice with Vista- it had to draw a line in the sand and it payed off as now all Windows computers and most programs can handle composite. But the cost was a version of the OS was basically a disaster- Google can't afford that.

That is probably why MS demands such a strict and higher-end baseline for WM7- they learned their lesson. They are using what they learned from Vista to make WM7's compositor, and like Apple they brought it about day one to avoid a nasty transition again. Google also probably learned from Vista that if Android is EVER going to be composite based it won't be till years from now when 90% of hardware sold can handle it.

Unless "across OS" means only what Google has included in Honeycomb, I don't think Anand's statement was entirely correct.

Both were correct. "Across OS" doesn't mean composite based, and Anand has never said anything about that. Across OS just means the OS now uses 2D based acceleration when it can.

And my apologies if I may come off as rude, but with regard to this matter, I'm quite annoyed by Google's attitude toward its user base. If you read the issue thread I posted, you would know that they practically just left it there, gave an aloof answer like "you know, we can't do it because we just can't", then suddenly close the issue one day

I don't see how this is a problem with Google's attitude towards its user base. If anything Google is saving its user base from Android's Vista.

Google's attitude is- Why do we need a composite interface for Android? Doing most GUI calculations on the CPU is compatible with every Android phone out there, and next year when quad core phones hit there will be enough extra CPU power that brute force will fix Android's smoothness issue. All a move to composite would do is make millions of current Android devices (that have weak GPUs) obsolete, it would royally screw up the app market until developers could redo their programs for composite, and at least one version of Android would be trash as they went though the composite growing pains that EVERY composite OS has dealt with. Google lacks MS's and Apple's advantage of having worked out those bugs on their primary OSes, so why even bother?

Luckily there are many options in the smartphone world, so you can pick one with a composite OS if smoothness matters that much to you. The market has spoken- non composite OSes such as Android and Windows XP still are major players in the market. The majority of consumers seem not to care about smoothness as long as the job gets done at a cheap price, or we would all be using OSX desktops and iPhones.

EDIT: My own opinion is that Google's developers are half-right. I think they are correct if they feel they can't afford a bad version of Android for transition when it is growing so much, but I also feel that thanks to higher PPI screens (mostly thanks to Apple) that it will be that much longer before CPUs can catch up enough to eliminate smoothness issues. Vista's backlash proves the first point, but current Honeycomb tablets (who lag like single core phones) prove the second. Google is basically gambling that people don't care enough about smoothness, which seems to be a safe bet. A long-term answer comes by getting guys like Nvidia and Intel (who are the only groups in Androidland with the raw talent needed to fix the problem IMHO) invested in Android having a composite based interface.

Sorry for the wall of text, but we each have our thing and this is mine. Well that and HTPCs.

 

[runawayprisoner]

I think there is some confusion here... most likely because of Apple throwing fancy words like compositing, and GPU acceleration, and so on...

But the truth here is... Apple's OS is still not fully compositing the interface. Core Animation is the only place where Apple enabled GPU acceleration, or... "compositing" as they put it.

The rest of the drawing APIs of iOS is still mostly done in software, and in most instances, it is still very much CPU-bound as opposed to GPU-bound.

The same applies to OSX where enabling full UI composition would actually result in random glitches and slow-down all across, and it still happens even in OSX Lion.

Also, Vista and Windows 7 doesn't render everything offscreen. What they do is use the CPU to render UI elements into system RAM, then copy them from system RAM to video RAM, and then use the GPU to push animations out. As a result, animations are fast, but interface drawing performance is slow on those OSes. In contrast, Windows XP does draw some interface elements directly to video RAM, and as thus, it still has faster interface performance than both Vista and 7 on older hardware. In faster hardware, the performance of faster chips offset the difference so it would seem like there is no difference at all.

OSX and iOS does a little bit of both, rendering to system RAM then push back into video, or render directly into video when possible. Most of the time on OSX, it's the prior. But it's the latter most of the time on iOS for some reason.

But then, what is full GPU acceleration if that's the truth of these OSes? Well, full GPU acceleration is achieved when both the CPU and GPU work alongside efficiently to eliminate as much interface lag as possible. Google's developers' current attitude is to rely completely on the garbage collector and let it do its job. Most of the major changes are done there instead of CPU/GPU communication efficiency, so it would seem like Gingerbread and Honeycomb do a much better job of accelerating the interface, whereas they are just temporary patches by trying to make the garbage collector more efficient.

And when developers want to take advantage of the acceleration provided to animation in Android, it's not seamless like iOS where it's all taken care of automagically, but they have to jump through hoops (enabling it in the configuration file, fix codes, etc...) and recompile their perfectly workable apps.

That's the problem with Android right now. Granted, Apple didn't have a smooth transition into what is now still a partial composited interface, but for what it's worth, Google should start now. Instead, Google's developers' attitude is... it's not necessary and the interface can fix itself once quad-core chips hit the market.

That's not a good attitude to have.

Edit: and in contrast, the Google Chrome team had already migrated to GPU compositing. As a result, Google Chrome is now very fast in Windows, and about on par or sometimes better compared to a GPU composited Safari on OSX Lion.

That's where I think the Google Android team should learn from their colleagues. It's no wonder the Chrome team doesn't want to call the browser in Android a Chrome browser. It's just embarrassing...

 

[Bateluer]

Read again, dear sir. Last post dates... Today.

It's a bug report page for Android, by the way. In case you haven't noticed the http://code.google.com/p/android URL.



Just animations. Not windows or other elements. Please read again.

Yep, thats what I've been saying. Repeatedly. Every time GPU acceleration is brought up and someone says that Gb doesn't support it at all, when it clearly does. Not extensively, and not fully, but it does.

If TW supports GPU acceleration in 2.1/2.2, then the question remains, why is so god awful sluggish at everything? Could blame the RFS file system, but then the two would cancel each other out. I have a car with 100mpg, but its tank only holds 1 pint of gasoline. Pointless.

Stock Gingerbread builds, Nexus One & S, CM builds, etc, leave the Sense/TW/Blur devices in the dust even on inferior hardware. Its almost laughable.

I'd suggest that you do more reading on the matter to get a better understanding of the situation. It's not all flowers and sugar, otherwise Honeycomb tablets would have performed much better than they did.

Oh, HoneyComb tablets had a number of reasons why they sold slowly. Cost, lack of apps, no 'must have, killer app', underpowered hardware relative to competition, WiFi/Contract less models slow to stores, etc.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Stock Gingerbread builds, Nexus One & S, CM builds, etc, leave the Sense/TW/Blur devices in the dust even on inferior hardware. Its almost laughable.

So true. I was reading this thread thinking "why is this a big deal" but then I remembered OEM skinned and carrier bloated phones.

UI responsiveness on my 2.3.4 HD2 is totally a minor issue, there is some choppiness but never enough to actually annoy me.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

launcher pro doesn't use GPU acceleration.

It's just an optimized launcher that Google should've looked into since Day 1. LP was made to run even well on 550mhz devices like the Droid 1. Instead, Moto bundled its craptastic launcher with the Droid's Froyo update. I remember watching videos of people demoing Froyo when it just came out on the droid and they were all lagfests. LOL.

Bottom line is Gingerbread is somewhat accelerated, but it's just the animations. Not much of it is. Sliding screen to screen isn't gpu accelerated is it? The amount of acceleration they put into GB is practically worthless.

What I've been saying for over a year now is that Android just uses brute force to deal with its lag issues. There's not too much optimization being done by Google, except for their Nexus line. The rest of the phones coupled with the bloatware carriers put on and the custom UIs feel like lag fests. Look at the Atrix for example. Thank goodness we have custom ROMs and stuff. But anyway, I think it's a pity that a lot of the lag issues aren't being resolved and that newer and newer features are being implemented, but Android itself is still inefficient. The reason people care so much about dual or quad core and 2ghz processors is simply because these phones aren't fast enough out of the box. An SGS2 with CM7 is ridiculously fast. It feels iPad 2 fast easily. But of course you won't feel that with the stock ROM, so we keep praying that tomorrow's processors will do the trick.

If you think about it, a Nexus One with a properly accelerated UI should feel blazing fast. Heck, WP7 phones are based on Adreno 200s and 1ghz CPUs, which is what the N1 was made of. But unfortunately, no. People here will say the N1 is completely underpowered, etc. The processor is faster than that of an iPhone 4, with a lower resolution. Where it should suffer is 3D rendering and games, but overall the experience of working on regular stuff like email, surfing, should be MORE than fine. You shouldn't need a dual core processor phone just to do basic SMS/email/browsing.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Yep, thats what I've been saying. Repeatedly. Every time GPU acceleration is brought up and someone says that Gb doesn't support it at all, when it clearly does. Not extensively, and not fully, but it does.

If TW supports GPU acceleration in 2.1/2.2, then the question remains, why is so god awful sluggish at everything? Could blame the RFS file system, but then the two would cancel each other out. I have a car with 100mpg, but its tank only holds 1 pint of gasoline. Pointless.

I doubt that all of TochWiz 3 was gpu accelerated but the browser most certainly was on 2.1 and 2.2.1+. On my Captivate with a 2.2.1 rom the stock browser is every bit as fast and smooth as Opera mobile. 2.2 is the oddball as it broke gpu acceleration on hummingbird so phones running it won't perform as well as ones on 2.2.1.

TouchWiz 4 on the other hand does appear to be fully hardware accelerated which makes it the only manufacturer skin that actually improves on the stock android experience.