People are obsessed with smoothness

[thecapsaicinkid]

Why is ui smoothness held in such crazy high regard for mobile devices? Now I love me some butter as much as the next guy but it seems to have become the be-all-and-end-all for mobile with almost every discussion at some point descending into a 'X device is smoother than Y. Nuh-uh Z is fastest' bickering. My Nexus 4 is by far and away the smoothest computing device I own. It's almost impossible to make the ui lag (I wish I could say the same for my N7). One little hiccup in performance and we want to dropkick the device into the nearest bin. I don't hold my laptop to the same high standards, that would be completely unrealistic, ALL regular PCs lag and no one really cares.

Is this an indication that mobile devices are merely toys?

 

[Eug]

? My laptop is generally smooth for the stuff I use. I expect my mobile device to be at least the same, esp. since I use my phone more than my laptop.

There is a bit of lag for app loading, but the actual OS navigation on my laptop is smooth (MacBook Pro 2009, with 4 GB RAM, SSD, and Mountain Lion).

Unfortunately, I find my dual-core Krait RAZR HD not so smooth.

Remember, these phones are many hundreds of dollars, some of them being $700-800. It's not as if we're buying $100 MP3 players.

 

[notposting]

Well, the interaction between user and device makes smoothness (you could call it responsiveness) important. If I hit a key on the keyboard, click open a bunch of tabs in Firefox or open the line of applications I have pinned to the taskbar in Windows, I know the input went through, and I will get a response.

But when I swipe on a phone, or try touching a small link, etc...if there is delay, is it because I didn't hit the target? Did the screen not register? Is the OS having a brainfart. Maybe I should tap the screen again. Oh wait, no, the first one went through, now I get to see if the second one went through as well.

My crappy HTC Trophy is old hardware, slow hardware even...but the responsiveness is perfect.

 

[MrX8503]

It doesn't matter with desktop PCs as much because you're not touching it. There's a disconnect with the interaction when using a mouse.

With touch, you're manipulating it directly. Considering the human hand is one of the greatest tools with a high degree of dexterity, your interaction with the UI should accommodate that.

When it doesn't (not smooth or stutters), it makes the software feel like crap. The other thing is that a lot of people don't notice it until they see a smoother more responsive device.

But when I swipe on a phone, or try touching a small link, etc...if there is delay, is it because I didn't hit the target? Did the screen not register? Is the OS having a brainfart. Maybe I should tap the screen again. Oh wait, no, the first one went through, now I get to see if the second one went through as well.

That's a pretty good description of how responsiveness is important to a good UX.

 

[bonkers325]

smoothness correlates to the tactility of the device. if i press on the screen, i expect it to respond in a set and consistent amount of time. if it always takes a different amount of time everytime i press on the screen, it will not be a consistent experience and will generally annoy me.

 

[shortylickens]

The main reason its important is Apple said so.
Had apple said something else was most important then thats what people would obsess over.

 

[_Rick_]

You can hide a lot of latency behind smoothness (look at the evolution of progress bars, to see how that realization has influenced the development).
The more you're smooth, the better you hide your latency, the faster the hardware appears to be.
Of course, you can't replace responsiveness with smoothness, especially with the lack of natural haptic and tactile feedback on touch screens, you need good responsiveness, to give the impression of a physical link between your input and the system state.

 

[MrX8503]

The main reason its important is Apple said so.
Had apple said something else was most important then thats what people would obsess over.

Kinda like how PC manufacturers obsessed over the iPad, killed off their netbooks, and then started making tablets.

 

[deathBOB]

Why is ui smoothness held in such crazy high regard for mobile devices? Now I love me some butter as much as the next guy but it seems to have become the be-all-and-end-all for mobile with almost every discussion at some point descending into a 'X device is smoother than Y. Nuh-uh Z is fastest' bickering. My Nexus 4 is by far and away the smoothest computing device I own. It's almost impossible to make the ui lag (I wish I could say the same for my N7). One little hiccup in performance and we want to dropkick the device into the nearest bin. I don't hold my laptop to the same high standards, that would be completely unrealistic, ALL regular PCs lag and no one really cares.

Is this an indication that mobile devices are merely toys?

Doesn't that say more about the sorry state of the PC?

I think what you are seeing with phones is the ability of a new platform (smartphones) to solve problems with the user experience that a legacy platform cannot (PCs).

Put it another way: if you could have a PC with no lag (or perceived lag, as pointed out by Rick), why wouldn't you want one?

 

[Red Storm]

To me it's not so much about smoothness as it is responsiveness. On my Note 2 I can remove just about all the animations so that things happen almost instantly. It may not look as flashy as a phone that uses fancy animations, but I don't waste time waiting for those animations to happen before getting to what I want. The faster I can do quick menial tasks the better.

 

[poofyhairguy]

The main reason its important is Apple said so.
Had apple said something else was most important then thats what people would obsess over.

I don't think its really just what Apple said.

I think its because the first modern smartphone was an iPhone, while most people's first computer had XP/Win98.

So day one with modern smartphones smoothness was a feature, while it took until Vista until Windows desktops even had the GUI to be smooth.

If everyone's first computer was an Intel Mac, or the first touch smartphone was the OG Droid then the expectations in each market would be vastly different.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

It doesn't matter with desktop PCs as much because you're not touching it. There's a disconnect with the interaction when using a mouse.

false.
my pc at work lags like a mother in general, but when the virus scan is set to run around lunch time, it is virtually unusable.
ever move the mouse and have the cursor not move? ever type on a kb and have nothing appear for 5 seconds? it's frustrating.

responsiveness is important in any form of computing.

 

[BrightCandle]

If you use a modern high end PC its smooth, on almost everything. By smooth we mean its response is done in the low 10's of milliseconds, maybe 100ms maximum. A lot of the entry level hardware is quite sluggish, especially hard drives, but you can get an incredibly smooth responsive system today in the higher end hardware because there is plenty of power available to run at very high speeds with very powerful CPU and GPU combinations at high resolutions.

A mobile phone on the other hand is incredibly limited in performance. CPU performance in total is no where near even a single core of a modern CPU and the GPU is equally very limited. This causes a lot of obvious latency and performance problems. In no particular order:

- Scrolling web pages is pretty slow, when they are partially rendered scrolling up and down sometimes becomes impossible, the device just stops responding.
- Opening a website while one is loading in the background often has the users press ignored for several seconds.
- There is a noticeable latency to the home screen as you swipe it left and right that means it doesn't feel attached to the movement you are doing.
- Many games have noticeable input latency which makes the characters harder to control or make it harder to aim.
- Due to the way mobile data is done performance is often extremely poor going out to the internet but the phone seems to literally work hard just downloading the latest twitter streams or updating news sites in the background which impacts whatever foreground app it is you are using.

The basics of email, web and video are all impacted heavily by performance problems on modern devices, its not just a lack of smoothness its whole seconds of unresponsiveness and jittery playback. They barely work at all. If that happened on PCs on a daily basis these forums would be flooded with people asking how to fix it.

I could go on and on and on about all the performance problems I see on my mobile and on my tablet, because they are obviously there pretty much everywhere. Mobile's are still incredibly low performance devices and they show they struggle ever day. Many people don't care, performance is good enough to get the job done, but I also think these glitches and moments of poor performance and general lack of smoothness are something that frustrates people. It certain frustrates me. Doesn't mean the device is useless, but it means I am a slave to it not it being a slave to me. The device should be waiting for my input and it should feel instantaneous in response, I should not be waiting for my device to catch up with what it is I am doing. I don't like waiting for computers, its dull and productivity sapping.

So I think smoothness is a big deal, I am fed up of watching my phone and tablet choke on something that should be simple, but is unfortunately so resource constrained that its barely keeping up at all.

 

[Red Storm]

- Scrolling web pages is pretty slow, when they are partially rendered scrolling up and down sometimes becomes impossible, the device just stops responding.
- Opening a website while one is loading in the background often has the users press ignored for several seconds.
- There is a noticeable latency to the home screen as you swipe it left and right that means it doesn't feel attached to the movement you are doing.
- Many games have noticeable input latency which makes the characters harder to control or make it harder to aim.
- Due to the way mobile data is done performance is often extremely poor going out to the internet but the phone seems to literally work hard just downloading the latest twitter streams or updating news sites in the background which impacts whatever foreground app it is you are using.

What phone do you have? I experience none of that on my Note 2.

 

[QueBert]

The main reason its important is Apple said so.
Had apple said something else was most important then thats what people would obsess over.

People like smoothness, this is why people go nuts trying to get a constant 60fps in every game. All Apple did here was make a device that gives a butter smoothness any normal person likes. When I go from my iPhone to something like a Note 2 I notice how it's not as smooth. It's like playing a game at a constant 30fps, then playing another game that fluxuate between 15-30. With a lot of it closer to 15.

In the end I guess it might not matter, but my eyes definitely notice it.

 

[BrightCandle]

What phone do you have? I experience none of that on my Note 2.

It really doesn't matter. I have managed to show this problem on the latest and greatest iPhone and Android. Right now I am using a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which in the grand scheme of things is a fast android phone. But I can make any device stutter and splutter without difficulty, because I am used to a silky smooth high performance experience on a decent desktop.

 

[Eug]

smoothness correlates to the tactility of the device. if i press on the screen, i expect it to respond in a set and consistent amount of time. if it always takes a different amount of time everytime i press on the screen, it will not be a consistent experience and will generally annoy me.

Exactly.

I'm touch-scrolling up and down with my Magic Mouse on my iMac. Responsiveness is near-instantaneous. Anything less would be extremely irritating.

If I had to wait just 0.5 s for scrolling on my phone, it'd really p!ss me off.

 

[zerogear]

Thing is, without all the transition animations, the system would be more responsive but less smooth (in users eyes), which is why I turn off transition animation on my Android phone, too bad I can't do that on iOS.

Human brains are dumb.

 

[BrightCandle]

The phones do a bundle of things to try and hide the fact they are really slow but it doesn't change the fact that they are. One of the things they did in the recent release of chrome was they added this fade in effect on hold clicking of bookmarks. But it now it takes noticeably longer to come up with the menu to launch the page in the background than it did before. The problem I had with it before is that the highlight was regularly well behind the pushing of the finger and you could clearly see the latency. But now the fade in means it takes a little while before you start to see if so the latency appears hidden and you feel like its more responsive. But the CPU performance taken to produce the fade in means the menu takes longer, about 50% longer as far as I can tell. So performance is actually quite a bit worse.

I am not fooled by these tricks, I am used to clicking and getting an immediate response back. So yes smoothness is a big deal, but while they pursue trickery rather than genuine performance improvements it will always remain a slow experience.

 

[Eug]

Apple has a fake boot up progress bar for one of the OS X versions. Great way to fool us... and it works.

That's a different situation from touch feedback though.

 

[Skurge]

Doesn't that say more about the sorry state of the PC?

I think what you are seeing with phones is the ability of a new platform (smartphones) to solve problems with the user experience that a legacy platform cannot (PCs).

Put it another way: if you could have a PC with no lag (or perceived lag, as pointed out by Rick), why wouldn't you want one?

I'm not sure what PC you are using, but a PC is far more responsive and faster than any phone or tablet running android or iOS.

Mobile OS's have animations and transitions to keep you from noticing how long it takes for a phone to open anything.

Scrolling down a webpage on a pc means it jumps to the next point instantly with no lag at all. Not so on a phone.

Alt-Tab on your in anything that isn't a game. Switch between your browser, winamp, file explorer, image viewer, HD video, outlook, excel or photoshop and it is instant, no animations, no lag, it is just instant. The PC doesn't even need to be high end. A Pentium dual core with 4GB of ram and a modern hard drive, not even an SSD. Try that on your tablet or phone and apps will have to reload or it will take some time to switch apps.

With fast fingers I can alt-tab between different applications (example 5) before you can task switch once.

 

[MrX8503]

false.
my pc at work lags like a mother in general, but when the virus scan is set to run around lunch time, it is virtually unusable.
ever move the mouse and have the cursor not move? ever type on a kb and have nothing appear for 5 seconds? it's frustrating.

responsiveness is important in any form of computing.

Well it doesn't matter as much. I don't care that much about perfect scrolling on a desktop.

Btw, you need a faster computer.

 

[Red Storm]

Let's clear one thing out of the way, even high end, SSD equipped PCs are not instantaneous when it comes to launching applications, switching between them, or browsing the web. I've got an i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD system and I still see animations and transitions when using the computer. Having said that, obviously they're faster overall than mobile devices, they would be incredibly pathetic if they weren't.

 

[Bateluer]

The main reason its important is Apple said so.
Had apple said something else was most important then thats what people would obsess over.

This. What Apple says is important, suddenly becomes important to the point where nothing else matters. Until everyone starts realizing that Apple's competitors have offered what Apple claims already and exceed it in most cases, then Apple picks another thing and the cycle starts all over again.

That attitude is changing though, as Apple continues to stumble and stagnate.

 

[Skurge]

Let's clear one thing out of the way, even high end, SSD equipped PCs are not instantaneous when it comes to launching applications, switching between them, or browsing the web. I've got an i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD system and I still see animations and transitions when using the computer. Having said that, obviously they're faster overall than mobile devices, they would be incredibly pathetic if they weren't.

I think the biggest difference is you can leave stuff running for days and you won't have any slowdowns especially with windows 7. Yes, my chrome takes a half second to open, but my 15 tabs I left I had open would all load faster than a single tab on my Nexus 4.

Btw, with a fast enough connection browsing the web might as well be instant.