5 ms·

The smoothness is a huge improvement, but touch-latency and scrolling physics are still huge problem areas, even in Jelly Bean on Nexus 7 hardware. In testing,

by mpakes 14y ago

The smoothness is a huge improvement, but touch-latency and scrolling physics are still huge problem areas, even in Jelly Bean on Nexus 7 hardware. In testing, I've enjoyed the Nexus 7 form-factor, but the iPad's responsiveness and scroll behavior are such a relief when I switch back. It was immediately noticeable, even when beta-testing an app on my old iPad 1 today.

heretohelp 14y ago
These sorts of problems are why, after owning two Android phones I switched to an iPhone 4. I don't even care for apple that much (Linux user). "Relief" is a good word for what I felt.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
And what it shows is investment. There should be rock solid high performance graphics drivers for every Android phone. There aren't. The chip manufacturers aren't helping because they won't let 'regular' people get access to real documentation, Google isn't helping because it won't put 4 or 5 engineers on it full time. ODMs don't do it because if Google doesn't do it why should they, they take the crappy vendor supplied driver and run with it. So far there is no penalty to a chip vendor for having crappy video drivers. This is an area where nVidia invested in strongly to win the PC hardware space but has not done squat in for the Android space, at least it isn't visible outside nVidia. The Nexus 7 is the first Android tablet to even kinda sorta look like the way the iPad moves. This is something that totally confounds me about Google's internal process.
- tmurray 14y ago
  Speaking as an ex-GPU driver guy, you're off by an order of magnitude about the number of engineers it takes to make a solid graphics driver. For a good GPU driver that makes smart choices about display, power management, OGLES, etc, you're looking at 30-40 people, not 4 to 5. Multiply that by every chipset for Android available (NVIDIA Tegra, ARM Mali, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Imagination PowerVR, Samsung Exynos assuming they build their own GPU eventually), and it's prohibitive to do that all within one company. It's also harder for Android than iOS because of the architectural diversity within the Android GPU market. Optimizing for a TBDR like PowerVR is different than optimizing for a standard renderer with a Z-buffer. iOS can make a bunch of assumptions that Android can't due to dependence on a single vendor.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    This is a company that just put $3.5 billion dollars of free cash flow into the bank for one quarter [1]. Lets say we pay each of these 40 people per architecture $250,000/year and we do it for 10 architectures. That is $100M in Salary. Lets say they each burn another $250,000 a year in benefits, extra 401K perqs, their own cafeteria with a chef that does special orders. Maybe that doubles the cost to $200M/year So let's buy them all a house as a sign on bonus if they get this done in 5 years or less, in the Valley that is 1 to 2M$ each for 400 people, call it 800M$. So 5 years of epic salary, a house free and clear, and 5 years of effort comes to about 1.8 billion dollars. One half of one fourth of the years annual free cash flow, so a bit more than 12% of the annual free cash flow. In my opinion that is the difference between investing in something strategic and 'hoping it will be great.' [1] http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q2_google_earnings.html http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q2_google_earnings.... EDIT: Never do math when your typing quickly.
    - FrankBooth 14y ago
      > so a bit more than 12% of the annual free cash flow You made it seem like such a reasonable thing to do.
    - tmurray 14y ago
      Microsoft doesn't have its own team to write its own GPU drivers. They have conformance tests for third parties and meaningful penalties for drivers that don't conform (no automatic installing, etc). That's the model you should be thinking about, not iOS.
      - DeepDuh 14y ago
        Microsoft is (or at least used to be) pretty smart in how to partner. Reminds me of that Steve Jobs quote along the line of "I wish we were as good at partnering as Microsoft". I'm curious whether their new strategy (basically copying Apple and go vertical) will work out. If it does, we're definitely in a new computing era where commodity devices with highly compatible software is a thing of the past.
    - 14y ago
- zurn 14y ago
  iOS devices use the same PowerVR GPU family as many (most?) Android devices. Is there evidence suggesting they did their own driver? I guess one could tell by comparing what kind of GLES bugs exist in iOS vs Android. edit: seems Apple's docs refer to Imagination's web site for GPU programming details, which would suggest they're using imgtec's driver. (http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/3DDrawing/Conceptual/OpenGLES_ProgrammingGuide/OpenGLESPlatforms/OpenGLESPlatforms.html http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/3DDraw...)
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    And when Apple does there own drivers for laptops they're often worse than the vendors own, as can be shown by rebooting into Windows.
- rys 14y ago
  That's not true. The graphics hardware vendors do help (we have a well-staffed team of dedicated Android driver engineers, much more than your 4 or 5) and we work directly with Google's myriad Android graphics engineers. The drivers are as stable and fast as we can all make them, given Android's architecture and the timescales involved with Android releases and customer hardware releases.
tmurray 14y ago
I wonder how much of this is hardware versus software. Keep in mind that end-to-end latency has a number of possible sources: - touch digitizer - CPU to do something with the input - GPU to start rendering the result - display to show the change In particular, I worry about the first and the last. Apple can get away with using extremely high cost parts in the iPad due to vertical integration (look at the physical size of A5X, for example), whereas Android vendors generally can't. Considering that CPU and GPU are generally selling points whereas touch digitizer performance and display response time are not, it would be tempting for a margin-sensitive OEM to cut corners on those two things. There is plenty of precedent for this: look at the grey-to-grey response time of the original Xoom.
- bsphil 14y ago
  I always assumed that it was the level of abstraction required for Android to be able to function on a wide variety of hardware. iOS on the other hand is running on a relatively tiny number of devices with hardware chosen for use by themselves. Even with a difference in milliseconds you'd still be able to discern between "smooth" and "not smooth".

by mpakes 14y ago

heretohelp 14y ago

These sorts of problems are why, after owning two Android phones I switched to an iPhone 4. I don't even care for apple that much (Linux user). "Relief" is a good word for what I felt.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

And what it shows is investment. There should be rock solid high performance graphics drivers for every Android phone. There aren't. The chip manufacturers aren't helping because they won't let 'regular' people get access to real documentation, Google isn't helping because it won't put 4 or 5 engineers on it full time. ODMs don't do it because if Google doesn't do it why should they, they take the crappy vendor supplied driver and run with it. So far there is no penalty to a chip vendor for having crappy video drivers. This is an area where nVidia invested in strongly to win the PC hardware space but has not done squat in for the Android space, at least it isn't visible outside nVidia. The Nexus 7 is the first Android tablet to even kinda sorta look like the way the iPad moves. This is something that totally confounds me about Google's internal process.

tmurray 14y ago
Speaking as an ex-GPU driver guy, you're off by an order of magnitude about the number of engineers it takes to make a solid graphics driver. For a good GPU driver that makes smart choices about display, power management, OGLES, etc, you're looking at 30-40 people, not 4 to 5. Multiply that by every chipset for Android available (NVIDIA Tegra, ARM Mali, Qualcomm Snapdragon, Imagination PowerVR, Samsung Exynos assuming they build their own GPU eventually), and it's prohibitive to do that all within one company. It's also harder for Android than iOS because of the architectural diversity within the Android GPU market. Optimizing for a TBDR like PowerVR is different than optimizing for a standard renderer with a Z-buffer. iOS can make a bunch of assumptions that Android can't due to dependence on a single vendor.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  This is a company that just put $3.5 billion dollars of free cash flow into the bank for one quarter [1]. Lets say we pay each of these 40 people per architecture $250,000/year and we do it for 10 architectures. That is $100M in Salary. Lets say they each burn another $250,000 a year in benefits, extra 401K perqs, their own cafeteria with a chef that does special orders. Maybe that doubles the cost to $200M/year So let's buy them all a house as a sign on bonus if they get this done in 5 years or less, in the Valley that is 1 to 2M$ each for 400 people, call it 800M$. So 5 years of epic salary, a house free and clear, and 5 years of effort comes to about 1.8 billion dollars. One half of one fourth of the years annual free cash flow, so a bit more than 12% of the annual free cash flow. In my opinion that is the difference between investing in something strategic and 'hoping it will be great.' [1] http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q2_google_earnings.html http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q2_google_earnings.... EDIT: Never do math when your typing quickly.
  - FrankBooth 14y ago
    > so a bit more than 12% of the annual free cash flow You made it seem like such a reasonable thing to do.
  - tmurray 14y ago
    Microsoft doesn't have its own team to write its own GPU drivers. They have conformance tests for third parties and meaningful penalties for drivers that don't conform (no automatic installing, etc). That's the model you should be thinking about, not iOS.
    - DeepDuh 14y ago
      Microsoft is (or at least used to be) pretty smart in how to partner. Reminds me of that Steve Jobs quote along the line of "I wish we were as good at partnering as Microsoft". I'm curious whether their new strategy (basically copying Apple and go vertical) will work out. If it does, we're definitely in a new computing era where commodity devices with highly compatible software is a thing of the past.
  - 14y ago
zurn 14y ago
iOS devices use the same PowerVR GPU family as many (most?) Android devices. Is there evidence suggesting they did their own driver? I guess one could tell by comparing what kind of GLES bugs exist in iOS vs Android. edit: seems Apple's docs refer to Imagination's web site for GPU programming details, which would suggest they're using imgtec's driver. (http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/3DDrawing/Conceptual/OpenGLES_ProgrammingGuide/OpenGLESPlatforms/OpenGLESPlatforms.html http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/3DDraw...)
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  And when Apple does there own drivers for laptops they're often worse than the vendors own, as can be shown by rebooting into Windows.
rys 14y ago
That's not true. The graphics hardware vendors do help (we have a well-staffed team of dedicated Android driver engineers, much more than your 4 or 5) and we work directly with Google's myriad Android graphics engineers. The drivers are as stable and fast as we can all make them, given Android's architecture and the timescales involved with Android releases and customer hardware releases.

tmurray 14y ago

I wonder how much of this is hardware versus software. Keep in mind that end-to-end latency has a number of possible sources: - touch digitizer - CPU to do something with the input - GPU to start rendering the result - display to show the change In particular, I worry about the first and the last. Apple can get away with using extremely high cost parts in the iPad due to vertical integration (look at the physical size of A5X, for example), whereas Android vendors generally can't. Considering that CPU and GPU are generally selling points whereas touch digitizer performance and display response time are not, it would be tempting for a margin-sensitive OEM to cut corners on those two things. There is plenty of precedent for this: look at the grey-to-grey response time of the original Xoom.

bsphil 14y ago
I always assumed that it was the level of abstraction required for Android to be able to function on a wide variety of hardware. iOS on the other hand is running on a relatively tiny number of devices with hardware chosen for use by themselves. Even with a difference in milliseconds you'd still be able to discern between "smooth" and "not smooth".