interesting info on Android GUI GPU acceleration

[ITHURTSWHENIP]

They need to re-architect to something along the lines of Linux's 3d desktop or Windows Aero. If each instantiation of OpenGL usage takes up 8MB...then only open up a single instantiation and pump the entire OS and all apps into a single OpenGL context. They should be able to 'flatten' the UI into a single texture too, alleviating memory bandwidth and fillrate needs.

Current mobile GPUs are right around Geforce 3/4 level. That could do Quake 3 at 1600x1200x32bit (close enough to 1920x1080 in fillrate) at >60fps, it shouldn't have trouble rendering a UI at 800x480. Intel's IGP's of around the same performance level can handle the Windows and Linux 3d desktops with no problem at all...

Heck, Tegra 3 is getting up there with GPUs in the Geforce FX and radeon 9500+ line, which means it's approaching relatively recent IGP performance on PCs. (roughly, the E-450's gpu is 4x as fast as the Ipad 2's GPU, meaning a C-60 has roughly 2x the ipad 2's gpu, so it's not hard to see tegra 3 matching AMD and Intel's IGPs from a year or two ago)

The answer to the lag is not in black and white. Its not just GPU acceleration, Android uses a lot of third party apps even in its key applications (sms,keyboard,gallery etc) if they are poorly coded, there can still be some lag in the UI

This is the best article i have read on the topic so far

http://blog.crazybob.org/2011/12/truth-about-android-ios-ui-performance.html

Dianne also followed up her original article with a new one

https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts

Like i said on my first post. ICS is not the holy graal that will solve everything. The people who are not bothered by the lag will continue to use it, the people who expect iOS in a different package will continue to complain. Eventually this will get solved but its going to take more than a simply OS update

 

[NikolaeVarius]

That follow up was a ridiculously good read.

 

[runawayprisoner]

That entire follow-up reads to me like:

"Don't call our methods archaic. We are doing things different from iOS and you just can't expect the same performance. (edit: oh no, wait, I was wrong. iOS does a few things the same way we do but with better performance. But that doesn't mean our method is wrong or archaic, as stated)"

Again, she doesn't go very deep into exactly what the problem is. She is simply restating the same things over and over again. While I appreciate the follow-ups, it's starting to sound like she just doesn't want to admit that Android can be reworked to have better performance but her team simply can't do it for some reason.

 

[zerocool84]

While I appreciate the follow-ups, it's starting to sound like she just doesn't want to admit that Android can be reworked to have better performance but her team simply can't do it for some reason.

And risk apps/other things not working any more? Obviously not worth it since Android is #1 and the slight lag is not a problem.

 

[TheStu]

And risk apps/other things not working any more? Obviously not worth it since Android is #1 and the slight lag is not a problem.

I didn't really want to post because now that I have, i cannot moderate this thread in case things get out of hand. But for the most part, ya'll have been doing ok.

Here is what I see wrong with the bolded above;

1: Good for Android, except that there are no devices running pure Android save the Nexus ones (and a couple other smaller ones too I think). But last I heard the Galaxy S II was one of the best selling (if not the best selling) Android devices out there, and it isn't running vanilla Android. So to say that "Android" is #1 is a little... incorrect. This isn't like the desktop market where you can clearly say "Windows is #1" because HP & Acer are implementing it the same way.

2: I can get an Android device free with a haircut, up until recently I had to shell out at least $99 to get an iPhone. And it was last year's iPhone, so if I wanted the real deal, I would need to cough up $199. I am not so sure that the people that are getting the $5 haircut w/ free Android phone! really give a flip about how smooth the UI is, or would even be able to tell since they are almost certainly coming from older, crappier devices. I had an old dumb phone that would lag like a mofo if you had more than 100 sent/received messages saved. That is what we were dealing with before.


All I am saying, when you can find an device that could charitably referred to as 'Android' at the bottom of a cereal box, then maybe touting how it is '#1' and no one cares how laggy how it is... that is being a little disingenuous. The point that people seem to be trying to make is that the underlying problem is not one that can be easily solved, but it seems that they are taking major steps towards solving the problem, and hopefully they will have it solved in a couple of versions.

 

[JimmiG]

Generally, scrolling, GUI animations etc. are smoother and faster on my Optimus 2X than on my 3.4 GHz Quad Core system with GTX460 1GB graphics. Launching and switching between apps is also faster, though the apps are of course much smaller. But my point is that Android feels smoother than Windows 7 running on full PC hardware...

 

[MrX8503]

I can get an Android device free with a haircut, up until recently I had to shell out at least $99 to get an iPhone. And it was last year's iPhone, so if I wanted the real deal, I would need to cough up $199. I am not so sure that the people that are getting the $5 haircut w/ free Android phone! really give a flip about how smooth the UI is, or would even be able to tell since they are almost certainly coming from older, crappier devices. I had an old dumb phone that would lag like a mofo if you had more than 100 sent/received messages saved. That is what we were dealing with before.

I believe it to be true that a good majority of Android users dont know what lag is or even notice it because they upgrade from a crappy flip phone. I would also say that most don't mind or its not important to them.

However, it may be important to them once they experience a smooth UI firsthand. Its funny, I took my gf through best buy and an Apple store to show her UI designs and what to look for. Bless her heart for letting me geek out on her, but she mentioned that she wouldn't have noticed the performance difference unless she saw a before/after.

She then said that the iPad and Galaxy Tab were much "nicer" than the others.

All I am saying, when you can find an device that could charitably referred to as 'Android' at the bottom of a cereal box, then maybe touting how it is '#1' and no one cares how laggy how it is... that is being a little disingenuous. The point that people seem to be trying to make is that the underlying problem is not one that can be easily solved, but it seems that they are taking major steps towards solving the problem, and hopefully they will have it solved in a couple of versions.

I think this long lingering issue is now a bigger priority for Google as we see retina tablets being released soon. A 2500x1600 tablet is gonna put the serious hurt on the GPU for tablets.

 

[shortylickens]

And risk apps/other things not working any more? Obviously not worth it since Android is #1 and the slight lag is not a problem.

You're giving ammo to Cheezy.

 

[runawayprisoner]

And risk apps/other things not working any more? Obviously not worth it since Android is #1 and the slight lag is not a problem.

I think the risk is worth it. Dedicated developers would still go in and wrap their apps around the new methods in a timely manner. It's only very old apps that aren't in development anymore that would be affected.

Also, the same thing happened to moving from 2.1 to 2.2 to 2.3 and then 3.0 to 4.0. There really is no reason to not try to change things around seeing as apps still have to be recompiled to take advantage of hardware acceleration on 4.0.

iOS also doesn't get away with that. Apps for iPhone OS 2.0 had to be recompiled to work properly in 3.0, and from 3.0 to 4.0, a number of apps had to be rewritten to take advantage of 4.0's new multitasking services. And then 5.0 broke more.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Dedicated developers would still go in and wrap their apps around the new methods in a timely manner.

So given that Android is a secondary development platform, if they break it today we can expect most apps to get fixed maybe two years from now.

Google can't afford two years (or even a year of) Market trouble.

Heck, developers ALREADY have to update their apps for 720p. You add in needing to update for hardware rendering and many might just quit Android instead of putting in the work.

 

[soccerballtux]

They need to build up the GUI layer of Android as its own separate running process and use some sort of message passing API to send it commands. If the existing GUI stuff doesn't work this way, they should add in a backwards compatibility mode that translates old apps to the new API. (ie, put in a compatibility shim that still presents the same outward interface as the old GUI code, but translate it to the new GUI code, Microsoft does it in windows)

Alternatively, since phone apps are full screen anyway, just make new apps use the new way, and have a fallback to software for old apps.

hm that's a good idea and would be relatively doable and non-ugly.

 

[soccerballtux]

I think this long lingering issue is now a bigger priority for Google as we see retina tablets being released soon. A 2500x1600 tablet is gonna put the serious hurt on the GPU for tablets.

dang thats going to suck.

 

[soccerballtux]

So given that Android is a secondary development platform, if they break it today we can expect most apps to get fixed maybe two years from now.

Google can't afford two years (or even a year of) Market trouble.

Heck, developers ALREADY have to update their apps for 720p. You add in needing to update for hardware rendering and many might just quit Android instead of putting in the work.

..

 

[soccerballtux]

That entire follow-up reads to me like:

"Don't call our methods archaic. We are doing things different from iOS and you just can't expect the same performance. (edit: oh no, wait, I was wrong. iOS does a few things the same way we do but with better performance. But that doesn't mean our method is wrong or archaic, as stated)"

Again, she doesn't go very deep into exactly what the problem is. She is simply restating the same things over and over again. While I appreciate the follow-ups, it's starting to sound like she just doesn't want to admit that Android can be reworked to have better performance but her team simply can't do it for some reason.

she's a cat lady look at her g+ wall. Inferiority complex written all over it. My architecture can't possible be wrong.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I didn't really want to post because now that I have, i cannot moderate this thread in case things get out of hand. But for the most part, ya'll have been doing ok.

Here is what I see wrong with the bolded above;

1: Good for Android, except that there are no devices running pure Android save the Nexus ones (and a couple other smaller ones too I think). But last I heard the Galaxy S II was one of the best selling (if not the best selling) Android devices out there, and it isn't running vanilla Android. So to say that "Android" is #1 is a little... incorrect. This isn't like the desktop market where you can clearly say "Windows is #1" because HP & Acer are implementing it the same way.

2: I can get an Android device free with a haircut, up until recently I had to shell out at least $99 to get an iPhone. And it was last year's iPhone, so if I wanted the real deal, I would need to cough up $199. I am not so sure that the people that are getting the $5 haircut w/ free Android phone! really give a flip about how smooth the UI is, or would even be able to tell since they are almost certainly coming from older, crappier devices. I had an old dumb phone that would lag like a mofo if you had more than 100 sent/received messages saved. That is what we were dealing with before.


All I am saying, when you can find an device that could charitably referred to as 'Android' at the bottom of a cereal box, then maybe touting how it is '#1' and no one cares how laggy how it is... that is being a little disingenuous. The point that people seem to be trying to make is that the underlying problem is not one that can be easily solved, but it seems that they are taking major steps towards solving the problem, and hopefully they will have it solved in a couple of versions.

#1 misses the entire point of Android, no one except Apple fans want it to be completely uniform. Microsoft tried the consistency route and WP7 is a total failure, even Bada has double it's marketshare . Besides even if the UI differs some amount all of those phones are still running Android so saying it is the top platform is still perfectly accurate.

#2 The best selling Android devices all cost as much or more than the iPhone.

 

[MrX8503]

I think what Stu is saying is that there are a lot of options for the consumer to buy cheap Android devices and those who do so don't care about smooth UI.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I think what Stu is saying is that there are a lot of options for the consumer to buy cheap Android devices and those who do so don't care about smooth UI.

To be honest I think a very small number of smartphones users care about a smooth UI regardless of platform. I have never heard an iPhone user say they like their phone because it's smooth, they always say it's because of the apps, ipod, camera, size, Apple brand etc. Likewise most Android users are interested in outright speed and a big/good screen and camera more than anything else.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I know plenty of people who are on the iOS platform who say Android lags and is slow. Everytime I get into a lag situation where the phone locks up or reboots or whatever they laugh at Android.

In my defense yeah I'm running custom ROMs, but at the same time I try to shoot for stable ROMs, but even CM7.1 final based ROMs aren't 100% stable.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I know plenty of people who are on the iOS platform who say Android lags and is slow. Everytime I get into a lag situation where the phone locks up or reboots or whatever they laugh at Android.

In my defense yeah I'm running custom ROMs, but at the same time I try to shoot for stable ROMs, but even CM7.1 final based ROMs aren't 100% stable.

I don't doubt it happens but I think those users are in the minority.

Oddly enough I actually had an iPhone 4s user comment on how fast and smooth the browser on my Galaxy S2 was.

Most custom roms really aren't as stable as we like to think they are. I always considered them to be in the past but after keeping my GS2 stock for a bit I have yet to notice a single crash or any amount of lag.

 

[MrX8503]

To be honest I think a very small number of smartphones users care about a smooth UI regardless of platform. I have never heard an iPhone user say they like their phone because it's smooth, they always say it's because of the apps, ipod, camera, size, Apple brand etc. Likewise most Android users are interested in outright speed and a big/good screen and camera more than anything else.

I think everyone is in agreement that the majority of people don't care about smooth UI. But I would also say that a majority of people don't know what a smooth UI is. Although rare, a smooth UI has wowed one of my Android friends before.

What Stu is saying in #2 is most likely true. I was just clarifying what he meant.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I think everyone is in agreement that the majority of people don't care about smooth UI. But I would also say that a majority of people don't know what a smooth UI is. Although rare, a smooth UI has wowed one of my Android friends before.

What Stu is saying in #2 is most likely true. I was just clarifying what he meant.

Wowing the other platforms users goes both ways, see my previous post. I know I could easily impress plenty of iPhone users with my Galaxy S2's media playback ability, the stock player will easily handle any HD video you throw at it.

 

[TheStu]

#1 misses the entire point of Android, no one except Apple fans want it to be completely uniform. Microsoft tried the consistency route and WP7 is a total failure, even Bada has double it's marketshare . Besides even if the UI differs some amount all of those phones are still running Android so saying it is the top platform is still perfectly accurate.

#2 The best selling Android devices all cost as much or more than the iPhone.

1: All I said was that it was a little incorrect. And you can't conclusively say that the fact that Microsoft insisted on UI consistency is the reason that it isn't selling well. I would blame the fact that it was a couple years late to the party and the fact that it is intrinsically linked in people's minds to Windows Mobile, which everyone hated. But that isn't the point. I was simply saying that it isn't so easy to just say 'Android is #1'.

2: So what? Samsung makes like 80 different Android devices, of course one of them will outsell the rest, and it will be the one that gets the most attention. For the sake of this conversation are we classifying all Galaxy S II devices as 1 single device? (I don't know if that is the best selling one, but last I heard it was a Samsung phone that was the best seller). What about all the Galaxy S devices? Motorola comes out with a new kick-ass, killer, awesome, super-duper phone about every 3 weeks it seems, though they seem to be the worst offenders.

What I am saying is that so what if the single best selling device out of the let's say 100 available Android devices (I think the number is higher than that) costs at least $199 at point of sale. What about the other 99? Best selling simply means that it sold one more unit than second best. It doesn't mean that it sold more units than everyone else combined. So, you have the best selling phone, which is expensive, great, but then you still have dozens of other ones being handed out for less than the cost of a tank of gas. Heck dude, the RAZR was the best selling dumb phone of all time (IIRC), doesn't mean that you didn't still see a lot, a lot, A LOT of not-RAZRs.

 

[KingGheedora]

TheStu, i take it you don't like Android? I'm not understanding the point you are trying to make with the whole best selling / second best selling rant. That has nothing to do with what the other posters were saying, that the UI lag issue isn't really that big a deal, or else people wouldn't be spending tons of money on the high end android devices. Seriously, the stuff about cereal boxes and "1st best only has to sell one more than 2nd best" has nothing to do with this. Going with your argument, yes, if the other 99 devices are cheap, how is that relevant at all?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones#2011
People vote with their dollars, and according to the list of top 10 best selling phones of 2011, about 127million high end Android devices were sold, vs 87 million iphone 4's + iphone 3GS's. So the "other 99 free in a cereal box" android phones may or may not exist but they don't change the picture at all.

It looks like you were trying to make it out like android device activations are only high because of massive quantities on the low end, but the wikipedia figures disprove that.

 

[runawayprisoner]

So given that Android is a secondary development platform, if they break it today we can expect most apps to get fixed maybe two years from now.

Google can't afford two years (or even a year of) Market trouble.

Heck, developers ALREADY have to update their apps for 720p. You add in needing to update for hardware rendering and many might just quit Android instead of putting in the work.

While I agree that it generally takes a bit longer for certain apps on Android to be updated to support new OSes, my personal experience is that it doesn't take more than a month, or 4 weeks. On iOS, even avid developers can take 4 months to deliver a bug fix, so both platforms should be on equal grounds in terms of updates. It's just that many developers don't develop their apps for Android at all that's the problem. But that's for another discussion, I think.

And already with Honeycomb, developers have to write apps from scratch or update major parts to support the half-arse hardware acceleration that the Android team put in, so that scenario already happened. In fact, judging from the information from the posted articles, I think it looks like all apps have to be updated to support ICS hardware acceleration (however much acceleration it does).

Really, there is just no reason to hold back on an improvement. Unless Android's architecture has already reached a point where they have to redo everything all over again from scratch. In which case, it'd be like admitting that tey have been doing it wrong all along.

It doesn't look like that to me at all. What it is is either laziness, or simply a lack of resources (mainly manpower and time) to rework the rendering framework. Likely a corporate decision to cut back on R&D funding on Android internally to maximize profits from Google's part.

That's reasonable, but if that's so, then at least they should just say so. There is no shame in a company trying to make money. They're trying so hard to cover it up that it looks suspicious...

Edit: typos on phone! Reminds me to keep my responses shorter next time I'm on a phone...

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

maybe it just DOES take that much manpower to make a good mobile OS....