HTC One A9 can't do 60fps ?

[Nicolas Ramz]

I recently received my brand new HTC One A9.

After using it for a while, I noticed that most user interface transitions didn't seem to be as smooth as they should be. Here and there, there was always some little slowdown noticable.

Coming from a Nexus 5 (and before that Nexus 4), I was surprised this new HTC wasn't as fluid as it should be. Especially when running very simple apps (even a simple material demo app that shows material components running seemed to be jerky).

After playing with the developer options (where you can display little lines showings the time each frame takes to render), I noticed that at first the device seems to be fast enough, but after a few seconds, the framerate was dropping. The weird thing is that when quickly taping the screen, it seems to improve the framerate.

I then downloaded a very simple openGL app that simply displays a color cube (something that any phone from the past 3 years (and more) should display at constant 60fps) and here are the results:

- HTC One A9: 53 fps (if I rapidly tap on the screen, it will eventually get to 59fps, but when I stop touching the screen it goes down to 53 fps)
- Nexus 5: 59 fps (constant)
- Nexus 7 (2013): 60fps (constant)

So there definitely seems to be a problem with the HTC. I don't know if it's my phone or every A9, and if it's software or hardware related, but I'm not happy with it.

Can anyone post result for their HTC A9 (or any other phone) ?

The application is called openglfpstest and is available on the Play Store (I can't post the link on the forum since I don't have 10 posts yet)

Thanks!

 

[thejesse]

I haven't tested my A9 yet, however, I can report that my Moto X Pure fluctuates between 59 and 60. I will test my A9 and let you know.

 

[Nicolas Ramz]

Thanks!

 

[thejesse]

A9 gets 53 fps if sitting untouched. If I tap the screen one time it goes a few frames. Resting my finger on the screen will raise the rate to 59. Removing my finger from the screen causes the rate to drop back to 53.
Also, any gesture on the screen seems to raise the rate to 59. This can be accomplished by pulling the shade down and back up out simply drawing a circle on the screen.
This makes me think there is some sort of optimization going on. Is that possible?

 

[Nicolas Ramz]

If it's an optimization, it's a bad one since it makes the UX real bad.

One more thing to try would be to play with battery optimization settings: maybe the default one is too much agressive ?

Could you try to disable "extreme power saver mode" ?

I'd be curious to know if other HTC phones have the same problem.

 

[thejesse]

If it's an optimization, it's a bad one since it makes the UX real bad.

One more thing to try would be to play with battery optimization settings: maybe the default one is too much agressive ?

Could you try to disable "extreme power saver mode" ?

I'd be curious to know if other HTC phones have the same problem.

It's never bothered me a bit. I've had no complaints with the a9 performance.

 

[Freddyb123]

To get the best performance out of your A9, go into developer options in your settings and change your animations to (.5) and check the box beside "FORCW 4X MSAA". To do this go to your settings and scroll to the bottom and click (about) and then click (software information) and then click (more) then tap on (build number) 7 times to get (developer options) to show up in your settings ( it will tell you once you have done this. After doing this go back out to settings and near the bottom you will see "DEVELOPER OPTIONS". Inside developer options, scroll to bottom and click "advanced". Once in advanced developer options, change all your animations from (1) to (.5), there should be 3 different animations options set at 1. The 3 animations options should be "animator scale", "transition scale" and "window scale" You want to change all three of them to the lowest number which would be (.5) . This may take a few minutes to kick in, sometimes you may have to restart your phone if nothing changes after a few minutes. This will make your animations transitions much faster and smoother. Then AFTER restarting your phone go back to your "advanced" (developer options) page and check the box beside "FORCE 4X MSAA" this will give your phone a more fluid feel and better gaming graphics as well. This should make a large difference in the speed and smoothness of your phone. I switched to the A9 from the m8, and I loved my m8 and find slot of things the m8 had to be absent on the A9, such as longer Zoe videos with more frames, and 60fps recording nor can you watch videos at 60fps, and also the A9 does not allow you to zoom in and out while recording video like the m8 did. I really with they would have found some way to add the boomsound speakers onto the A9, rather than following everyone else's lead and adding a finger print scanner which is pointless and useless.. who needs a finger print scanner, they offer crap for security and a finger print scanner is only useful for Android pay, which puts you at more of a risk of someone getting your banking information, since it runs off NFC, all Simone has to do is be within a few feet and they can access your bank info. I'm glad HTC kept a minimalist design and didn't add a QHD display, Which is pointless on a 5" phone, and honestly I have compared the m9 to other phones with QHD displays and I think the m9's 1080p display looks as good or better then the rest.

 

[Nicolas Ramz]

The problem is not the animation timing: reducing these values will only make animations too fast: it won't make the phone smoother. The problem is that the screen doesn't seem to be refreshed at ~60fps, but rather at 53fps. This makes little difference in animations that miss some frames.

I guess this has something to do with the 808. Some smartphones went the throttle road with very agressive throttle. For example the Nexus 5x will reduce the Cpu's frequency after only two minutes of high use, resulting in at least 30% of fps in most demanding games.

Other maybe decided to have a smaller refresh rate.

The Nexus 5 had no such problem for example.

 

[Freddyb123]

The A9 doesn't have an option to record 60fps, due to the snapdragon Version featured on it, But it can play 60fps on YouTube. I have watched numerous 1080p 60fps videos on YouTube and it's worked fine. I Click for quality and change the quality to 1080p 60fps.