With all the hoopla on how Kitkat was intended for low spec phones...

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M

magomago

Lifer
Sep 28, 2002
10,973
14
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I threw on Paranoid Android on a Galaxy Nexus, and CyanFox on a Galaxy S (Captivate) and was surprised to see that they were clearly slower than Cyanogenmod v10. The captivate was especially slower, having lots of noticable lag. The Galaxy nexus, while it stayed smooth, had slightly longer delays when launching or closing apps.

Perhaps I don't have the most optimized ROMs for the phones (and I'm definitely running the original kernels for both phones) but I was expecting a smoother experience, especially for the Galaxy S1 since it almost fits the bill (512MB Ram, 800x480, and single core as opposed to dual core) of what KitKat was developed on.

Perhaps I need to try SlimKat on the Captivate, or not use the nightly for CyanFox [which actually had very few issues, which is why i threw it on], but the two kitkat based ROMS is definitely more intensive than CM based off of JB.
 
WelshBloke

WelshBloke

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
32,901
11,038
136
magomago said:
Well there will never be official KitKat roms for Galaxy Nexus or the Captivate (which technically ended at Gingerbread :) ) so this is about as close as I can get.
Click to expand...

Indeed, but you still shouldn't infer anything about kitkat performance on official low end phones. It may well still be crap, but the fact that third party roms are iffy is no proof.
 
ponyo

ponyo

Lifer
Feb 14, 2002
19,688
2,811
126
For my use, 4.4 KitKat brings zero improvements. Only thing I notice are feature loss and app incompatibility. Stick with 4.3 Jellybean or even 4.0 ICS.
 
Zaap

Zaap

Diamond Member
Jun 12, 2008
7,162
424
126
ponyo said:
For my use, 4.4 KitKat brings zero improvements. Only thing I notice are feature loss and app incompatibility. Stick with 4.3 Jellybean or even 4.0 ICS.
Click to expand...
Ugh, I was afraid this may be the case. Was hoping it'd bring some new dynamic to my Note 3 when it finally drops on Verizon. (Not that it really needs a new dynamic, but just to keep things interesting) From what I'm hearing, it'll probably be a step back and I'll just stay with 4.3 until there's some compelling reason to upgrade.

Kind of like my wife still refusing to upgrade to iOS7 on her iPhone 5. (I'm actually the one that wants her to upgrade that just so I can mess with it).
 
gmaster456

gmaster456

Golden Member
Sep 7, 2011
1,877
0
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Official ROMs are a bit different than some ROMs that someone hacked together on a laptop in their basement for an unsupported phone.

RAM usage on my Nexus 4 has gone down since 4.4. And there's been no degradation in performance. In fact just the opposite. YMMV.
 
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Ravynmagi

Ravynmagi

Diamond Member
Jun 16, 2007
3,102
24
81
Main reason the Galaxy Nexus didn't get Android 4.4 is because TI is no longer supporting it's chipset and so there are no optimized chipset drivers for TI OMAP SoCs for Kit Kat.
 
Bateluer

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
8
0
Ravynmagi said:
Main reason the Galaxy Nexus didn't get Android 4.4 is because TI is no longer supporting it's chipset and so there are no optimized chipset drivers for TI OMAP SoCs for Kit Kat.
Click to expand...

So many people seem to forget this. TI pulled out of the market.


Also, the Samsung Captivate? Galaxy S, Beta Edition. Donn't think that even qualifies as a low end phone by KitKat's standards.
 
M

magomago

Lifer
Sep 28, 2002
10,973
14
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Bateluer said:
So many people seem to forget this. TI pulled out of the market.


Also, the Samsung Captivate? Galaxy S, Beta Edition. Donn't think that even qualifies as a low end phone by KitKat's standards.
Click to expand...

It might, it has the same amount of ram, screen size as the 'low end phone'. The only difference is single vs dual cre, which is valid, but its nice to see that kitkat still runs; next time I may put SlimKat to see how much faster it is. Ultimately, i may go back to a CM v10 based off of Jelly bean because that was buttery smooth on the Captivate.
 
podspi

podspi

Golden Member
Jan 11, 2011
1,982
102
106
I'd give the custom ROMs some time to develop before saying KK isn't all that great.

I know that for the Droid Bionic, KK runs very well (and has a ton of memory free compared to 4.3). And that's even without TI's drivers.
 
Red Storm

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
14,233
234
106
WelshBloke said:
Indeed, but you still shouldn't infer anything about kitkat performance on official low end phones. It may well still be crap, but the fact that third party roms are iffy is no proof.
Click to expand...

Quoting for emphasis. 3rd party ROMs != Official.
 
S

s44

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2006
9,427
16
81
To be fair, "low spec" now means 512mb RAM, not 384mb system + 128mb video RAM that the original Galaxy S had.

Also, a lot of it is hooks for devs to implement lowspec versions of their apps and app functions. Not sure how much of that has gone through yet.
 
sweenish

sweenish

Diamond Member
May 21, 2013
3,656
60
91
PA is still in beta. And it's always been a demanding ROM with all of its extra features. I use Shiny 4.4, and it's pretty great. Just a hair more lag than 4.3, but we never saw official 4.4, so I'm able to temper my expectations.
 
P

porter_m

Junior Member
Jan 27, 2014
8
0
0
I think it was just a lie to be honest, because of the (minor) threat of Windows Phone which runs well on lower-end hardware.
 
foghorn67

foghorn67

Lifer
Jan 3, 2006
11,883
63
91
I'm pretty sure it helped my Nexus 7 2012. It only has 1GB of RAM, and it flies now.
This and the TRIM support from the release before, I may never get a 2013 edition.
 
poofyhairguy

poofyhairguy

Lifer
Nov 20, 2005
14,612
318
126
porter_m said:
I think it was just a lie to be honest, because of the (minor) threat of Windows Phone which runs well on lower-end hardware.
Click to expand...

They don't care about Windows Phone. They pushed Kit Kat to work on 512MB RAM so OEMs stop selling new low-end devices with Gingerbread because prevalence of that old OS is holding back the entire Android app ecosystem. Pre-ICS apps required so many hacks compared to post-ICS, all of Android will be better off when support for Gingerbread can be dropped.


I agree with everyone else the problem might be drivers. I learned that lesson the hard way with my S2- just because someone RUNS Kit Kat doesn't mean you are getting full GPU performance. The GPe ROMs for my S4 are like on a different planet of stability and performance compared to every AOSP rom I have tried on my other devices previously. Official support matters unfortunately.
 
S

Suspicious-Teach8788

Lifer
Feb 19, 2001
20,155
23
81
Red Storm said:
Quoting for emphasis. 3rd party ROMs != Official.
Click to expand...
I get that people like to shout these things, but it's an YMMV situation. If you're running Kit Kat on your i9100 GS2 or i9300 GS3, yeah, Exynos is a bitch to develop for. Project Butter was never really working fully on those phones. Run a GNex and it's going to be far smoother than a GS2 on 4.1+.

With that said, certain phones like the Galaxy S1 are very easy to develop for. Everything is just ported from the Nexus S. It may not be "official" but all these AOSP based ROM's are just adding checkboxes here and there. The performance is practically identical to what you'd get on a stock ROM.

What I'm saying is that it's possible to judge Android performance based on a custom ROM, but it depends on what phone you have. Nexus phones are practically stable from Day 1, as the binaries are fully released and you don't have to hack together proprietary crap. If someone complains that the Kit Kat thing is a lie based on a GS2, then I'd say the benchmark is unfair, but if someone compares Kit Kat performance based on a Nexus S, then I'd say there's a fair point. The Galaxy S1 that OP posted is pretty fair game I'd say.
 
C

ChronoReverse

Platinum Member
Mar 4, 2004
2,562
31
91
The Nexus S stopped at 4.1 in fact. I'm running a 4.2 Cyanogenmod ROM but even that is noticeably frayed at the edges. I can't imagine how rough the 4.4 ROMs would be.
 
B

Bman123

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2008
3,221
1
81
So you use a nightly and judge the performance based off of a old phone that isn't even supported by the chip set mfg anymore? Sure that makes plenty of sense and trying 4.4 on a single core CPU probably seemed like a good idea too I bet. This is foolish
 
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