So, what about hardware acceleration?

[BuffaloMadMan]

Another thing you have to understand ios and wp7 arwnt as resource rich as android....android has live wallpapers, widgets, synching going on as with ios and windows all it really needs is to synch because there screens are basically icons which is not graphic intensive or resource excentric

 

[TenshiNo]

LOL, poor kid is lost.......

Not "lost". I smell Apple Fanboy Troll

ICS is built on Honeycomb, which is hardware accelerated in THE WHOLE UI. He's either a brainwashed idiot, or a troll trying (desperately) to make Android users feel inadequate so that he can fell a little bit less so

I watched the press conference live last night, and I have to say all the new animations and everything looked very smooth. Haven't been this excited about a new version of Android since Froyo. A couple of the new features just seem gimmicky (face unlock, anyone?) but there's a lot of really cool stuff in there as well. I've always like the "swipe to dismiss" notifications in CM7, but Google's really taken the idea and run with it. Lots of stuff I'm looking forward to getting running on my phone

I think the only reason it wasn't mentioned was just because it was a bit less "geek" centric than that. Most of us following the development know that Honeycomb had HW acceleration and ICS is built on HC, therefore it seems fairly obvious that ICS should have HW acceleration. That's a lot of acronyms

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

No one has even had a chance to play with ics so I don't understand why you are saying its not fluid....I personally think its hw accelerated but once we get this is peoples hands then we will find out more....for honeycomb everyone that plays with my xoom always comments on how fast it is....my friends and etc I really don't see lag are there bugs yes but not that much lag at least with my xoom

I think the Xoom is a nice device, but it did suffer lag when applying a live wallpaper or in other instances, even though Honeycomb was supposed to be full blown hardware accelerated (might have been 3.0 or 3.1 that did not have the hardware acceleration bug fixes).

I do think it's possible that ICS is smooth because if you guys notice, the new UI uses a lot of lines in the scrolling for its scaling and stuff to animate the motions, which is what Romain was talking about in the video when it comes to hardware acceleration.

I don't think, however, that ICS will have the "blur" type of smoothness iOS and WP7.5 will have because, again, the OS isn't composite based. The "blur" I'm referring is what literally looks like a blur when you swipe from.left to right, which results in images and text becoming "blurry" during the swipes..

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

Not "lost". I smell Apple Fanboy Troll

ICS is built on Honeycomb, which is hardware accelerated in THE WHOLE UI. He's either a brainwashed idiot, or a troll trying (desperately) to make Android users feel inadequate so that he can fell a little bit less so

I watched the press conference live last night, and I have to say all the new animations and everything looked very smooth. Haven't been this excited about a new version of Android since Froyo. A couple of the new features just seem gimmicky (face unlock, anyone?) but there's a lot of really cool stuff in there as well. I've always like the "swipe to dismiss" notifications in CM7, but Google's really taken the idea and run with it. Lots of stuff I'm looking forward to getting running on my phone

I think the only reason it wasn't mentioned was just because it was a bit less "geek" centric than that. Most of us following the development know that Honeycomb had HW acceleration and ICS is built on HC, therefore it seems fairly obvious that ICS should have HW acceleration. That's a lot of acronyms

If you actually read the thread (or maybe you can't read....?) I already stated that I'm no "fanboy" (or whatever immature names people use nowadays to feel better about their insecurities) and that I carry multiple devices (including a Nexus S) with different OSes as an OPEN-MINDED consumer....something a lot of you people aren't (obviously because of everyone being sensitive and crying so much over one topic that doesn't praise EVERYTHING about an OS). I don't even carry an iPhone (or any iOS device) and still even carry my Sprint Palm Pre to mess around with and develop stuff for so get your "fanboy" accusations straight (seriously.....how old are we 4 years old again?)


Also, its no secret that Honeycomn was still pretty laggy...despite the "full blown hardware acceleration" that was even addressed in changelogs of bug updates to fix "hardware acceleration issues"...

 

[Brownsound]

jrdatrackstar, I would just like to applaud you for actually responding to these people without being rude and with fully formed sentences. Even though they are calling you a troll and a fanboy, you are still explaining the logic behind your reasoning. I can't vouch for what you said, but those reactionary posts are just immature and shameful.

 

[astraelraen]

Andy Rubin said something specifically about hardware acceleration at AsiaD this morning.

This is from Engadgets liveblog. It was a question about the face unlock, but I'm sure it is an API that can be used for any purpose.

6:42AM Andy: "We have tools that allow devs to run things on the GPU instead of the 1.2GHz dual-core chip, so it can be standardized across more devices."

6:41AM Walt, speaking about a glitch in the Face Unlock demo: "I hope it improves before I review it!" Laughs all around.

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

jrdatrackstar, I would just like to applaud you for actually responding to these people without being rude and with fully formed sentences. Even though they are calling you a troll and a fanboy, you are still explaining the logic behind your reasoning. I can't vouch for what you said, but those reactionary posts are just immature and shameful.

Thank you...someone who sees that this is simply a discussion about a certain topic (whether agreed upon or disagreed upon). I appreciate your comment, and am happy that you disagree because honestly I almost WANT to be wrong. I love certain things from Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, and other OSes (those are really the ones people have their eyes on the most presumably). I like that Android is powerful and open, but don't like fragmentation and the lag sometimes present. I love Windows Phone for its smoothness and tile style instead of icons, but have always backlashed the OS (though still young) and Microsoft for the lack of certain things and bugs present (Microsoft still hasn't even updated all of their own apps for Mango...like Angry Birds...)

As I have also stated...if Android is indeed hardware accelerated (to where there is no lag present) and if the momentum hasn't picked up from competing OSes then I will return to using my Nexus S as my main device running ICS.

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

Andy Rubin said something specifically about hardware acceleration at AsiaD this morning.

This is from Engadgets liveblog. It was a question about the face unlock, but I'm sure it is an API that can be used for any purpose.

6:42AM Andy: "We have tools that allow devs to run things on the GPU instead of the 1.2GHz dual-core chip, so it can be standardized across more devices."

6:41AM Walt, speaking about a glitch in the Face Unlock demo: "I hope it improves before I review it!" Laughs all around.

I'd love to read that article to become more informed on the matter; is there an online news article, blog, or video posted somewhere?


EDIT: Interesting post...perhaps they have pulled something off. As everyone has said, we won't know until its released. However, I think Andy was referring to devs creating apps and being able to set apps to take advantage of hardware acceleration (3rd party apps) and not about the entire OS being hardware accelerated...

 

[astraelraen]

I'd love to read that article to become more informed on the matter; is there an online news article, blog, or video posted somewhere?

If you look at engadgets site you can read the liveblog summary, but that's all that engadget says about it. Maybe Andy Rubin talked more in depth about it, but if he did they didn't write it down. Maybe you could find the actual AsiaD video on YouTube.

Edit: the All things digital site has a summary as well and they don't mention anything more than engadget did. It seems like Rubin dropped a little tidbit but Mossberg didn't ask anymore about it and went onto another subject.

 

[rkirmeier]

Anyone who bases their phone/OS purchase on the smoothness of flicking through the home screens is truely lost and clearly an Apple fan boy... My SGSII is a smooth as silk but more interesting is how Apple fans always make such a big deal out of screen swyping smoothness on tablets yet no flash suppprt is OK on a device that is used 95% of the time for Internet surfing. I'LL happily take an OS with a little lag in screen swyping for all the customizations and flash support. I think it's the only thing Apple fan boyz can really say is worse on Android so theymake a big deal out of it...

I'm afraid you're the one that's lost...you guys have said it yourself; it's OPTIMIZED FOR DUAL CORE lmao. If you don't have a dual core phone it won't be as smooth. Hardware Acceleration throughout the UI won't be dependent on how many cores there are....as long as the GPU is up to par is all that matters...look it up for yourself ....Google I/O 2011: Accelerated Android Rendering - YouTube

They are banking on dual-core phones to be able to be "iPhone" smooth, so if you don't plan on buying a Galaxy Nexus then I'm going to laugh when the Nexus S isn't as smooth as the Galaxy Nexus like you claim ICS will bring...

As I stated earlier...my Arrive is smoother than any Android phone or tablet available right now because it is TRULY hardware accelerated. I'm lost? Go play with an Arrive next to an Epic Touch (with it's "dual-core glory" at Sprint and tell me my outdated, non dual-core Arrive has lag....yea thought so....

I was rooting for Android like everyone else and waiting for this to be seen. But the fact of the matter is that Android is still horribly fragmented and things like hardware acceleration won't be available on other devices other than the Galaxy Nexus (which even IT doesn't truly have FULL hardware acceleration....only the APPS do). It's smooth, yes, but not hardware accelerated...

 

[anon(475095)]

What I find ironic is that the iPhone and iOS does lag, even with hardware acceleration, it may not lag as much but it does, anyone who denies it hasn't put an iPhone through it's paces.

So all the people who wants to use "LAG" as some kind of weakness in Android is probably suffering from OCD.

The only OS I have not seen "LAG" from is WP7, but I have never used it personally, but all those animations are very pretty but highly annoying, especially if they can't be turned off or sped up, I always use Spare Parts app to speed up all Android animations because it is not important to me

LAG is an excuse....

 

[The Chronic]

I'd love to read that article to become more informed on the matter; is there an online news article, blog, or video posted somewhere?


EDIT: Interesting post...perhaps they have pulled something off. As everyone has said, we won't know until its released. However, I think Andy was referring to devs creating apps and being able to set apps to take advantage of hardware acceleration (3rd party apps) and not about the entire OS being hardware accelerated...

After owning the international version of the SGS2 since May, I can confirm that Samsung included gpu hardware acceleration throughout the whole OS. It's about as smooth and lag free as you can get. It's the third party apps that are really hit and miss with Android. I think much of that has to do with the significant amount of fragmentation that exists with Android that hopefully will be closed by ICS. That being said, my wife's iphone 4s is extremely smooth. I have no real issues with the iOS platform except that its closed and I'm a crackflasher Benchmark wise, the 4S kicks the crap out of my SGS2 (also running stock).

However I agree with Adrynalyne. It's really hard to judge a device until it gets released into the wild. Until people get hands on with the device we really won't know.

 

[The Chronic]

What I find ironic is that the iPhone and iOS does lag, even with hardware acceleration, it may not lag as much but it does, anyone who denies it hasn't put an iPhone through it's paces.

So all the people who wants to use "LAG" as some kind of weakness in Android is probably suffering from OCD.

The only OS I have not seen "LAG" from is WP7, but I have never used it personally, but all those animations are very pretty but highly annoying, especially if they can't be turned off or sped up, I always use Spare Parts app to speed up all Android animations because it is not important to me

LAG is an excuse....

Out of curiosity where did you see iOS lag? I beat the crap out of my wife's i4S and couldn't get it to lag (just like my sgs2).

Even better than Spare Parts IMO is just going into settings and disabling animations.

 

[Laughing Man]

I've gotten my iPad2 to lag a little. But it's near full (64GB) so that's probably why.

 

[anon(475095)]

After owning the international version of the SGS2 since May, I can confirm that Samsung included gpu hardware acceleration throughout the whole OS. It's about as smooth and lag free as you can get. It's the third party apps that are really hit and miss with Android. I think much of that has to do with the significant amount of fragmentation that exists with Android that hopefully will be closed by ICS. That being said, my wife's iphone 4s is extremely smooth. I have no real issues with the iOS platform except that its closed and I'm a crackflasher Benchmark wise, the 4S kicks the crap out of my SGS2 (also running stock).

However I agree with Adrynalyne. It's really hard to judge a device until it gets released into the wild. Until people get hands on with the device we really won't know.

Are you sure, there is a video that shows the stock SGS2 booting faster than the iPhone 4S, in that video, during a browser test where 4 different pages were loaded, the SGS2 and the 4S finished at the same time in two tests, the SGS2 won 1 (with flash enabled) and the 4S one the other. So the 4S with it's latest hardware and dual core processor could only manage one win out of 4 against a phone that loads flash and the browser runs off of one core.

Benchmarks, no thanks, I'll take the real life performance tests and the 4S has so far failed to impress....

http://youtu.be/CUkbUfQTKXM

 

[anon(475095)]

Out of curiosity where did you see iOS lag? I beat the crap out of my wife's i4S and couldn't get it to lag (just like my sgs2).

Even better than Spare Parts IMO is just going into settings and disabling animations.

I don't want the animations off totally, just faster, wasn't the 4S, it was a 4 that I saw lag on just while playing with it, I did not set out with the intention to make it lag, but after playing with it, I saw it lag/stutter while opening Skype and also while in the Camera roll, at other times the animation when moving from portrait to landscape was also stuttering. This was while I was using the device temporarily for about three days.

Now obviously if I was interested in purchasing that phone, that would not be an issue to me as that's not what I look for in a device, but the whole of iOS is just not my cup of tea.

Also while I have never used a WP7 device, through reasoning, if people are so intent on hating android because it lags, then why doesn't WP7 sell more, it's smooth, the animations are prettier than iOS from what I have seen, so if smoothness is high on their agenda, buy WP7

 

[robross0606#AC]

hardware acceleration will be present in the apps by default, but NOT the entire OS. they already covered this, saying that things like swiping and stuff will not be hardware accelerated. in short, Android will never be as smooth as iOS or Windows Phone because it is not a composite based OS like those are. android is an "on-the-fly" OS, hence is why it allows customizations, widgets, different launchers, etc. they're banking on the consumers not knowing any better by throwing out "dual-core" and flashy words that still don't equate to single core devices' smoothness (i.e. Windows Phone devices)...

the animations and smoothness and the entire OS of iOS and WP7.5 are already baked in ("taped" or "recorded" if you will) which is why it results in it being so smooth because it's literally like you are watching a pre-recorded set of things (i.e. closed source and doesn't allow much customization). this is the main reason I left Android because it will NEVER be hardware accelerated fully until it is re-written to be composite based.

Everyone is getting down on this guy for his claiming the OS is not hardware accelerated. Instead, why not jump on this guy for clearly not having a CLUE about "composite" interfaces or how hardware acceleration actually works? Is my Windows OS "composite" and "recorded"? No. Is it hardware accelerated? HELL YES. Hardware acceleration is about utilizing specific instructions sets optimized for the GPU instead of forcing the CPU to do the work. It has nothing to do with pre-rendering as you would have us believe. What you're talking about is how to optimize an interface fluid when it is NOT fully hardware accelerated.

He's right that iOS does some compositing. For example, it will take a screenshot quickly before you leave an app and use that image for the zoom-out feature. Forensics experts have shown that they can retrieve these "temporary" screens, at least in older iOS versions. But this has nothing to do with hardware acceleration because that zoom out is STILL hardware assisted. All they're doing is preventing the GPU from having to animate a zoom on a moving picture. Incidentally, WebOS (RIP) is one of the few OS I've seen that does this well. It will do full rendering and animation on composites which are themselves also animated. Like zooming out on a YouTube clip that's still playing.

Nevermind whether ICS is hardware accelerated or not. Get a friggin clue about what hardware acceleration actually DOES first.

 

[firelightx]

Switched from Android because HWA doesn't affect the launcher? ...Huh. I always thought that even on Android, people spend 90% of their time in apps. I mean, it's not like you're playing games on your home screen. You go into the app to do that. The app that is now HWA'd. Is it really such a problem that when I scroll to the left to look at my gmail widget, it takes a second?

Not for me. I'd choose customization over a smoother split-second animation any day. Not to mention, the freedom of the market to bring almost anything to the table. I still enjoy gloating about Android having speaktoit assistant for over a year when iPhone is just now touting it as a new feature.

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

Everyone is getting down on this guy for his claiming the OS is not hardware accelerated. Instead, why not jump on this guy for clearly not having a CLUE about "composite" interfaces or how hardware acceleration actually works? Is my Windows OS "composite" and "recorded"? No. Is it hardware accelerated? HELL YES. Hardware acceleration is about utilizing specific instructions sets optimized for the GPU instead of forcing the CPU to do the work. It has nothing to do with pre-rendering as you would have us believe. What you're talking about is how to optimize an interface fluid when it is NOT fully hardware accelerated.

He's right that iOS does some compositing. For example, it will take a screenshot quickly before you leave an app and use that image for the zoom-out feature. Forensics experts have shown that they can retrieve these "temporary" screens, at least in older iOS versions. But this has nothing to do with hardware acceleration because that zoom out is STILL hardware assisted. All they're doing is preventing the GPU from having to animate a zoom on a moving picture. Incidentally, WebOS (RIP) is one of the few OS I've seen that does this well. It will do full rendering and animation on composites which are themselves also animated. Like zooming out on a YouTube clip that's still playing.

Nevermind whether ICS is hardware accelerated or not. Get a friggin clue about what hardware acceleration actually DOES first.

Fair point, but I did mention that the points I have been making are based on what I have learned after after becoming more inquisitive and researching. I have seen numerous articles stating that the OS pauses and sometimes lags because of it being written in Java, along with Dalvik and garbage collection being the issues (although other OSes do garbage collection).

What everyone has also said about the lag and stutter being over exaggerated are also fair points. While I do use a Windows Phone device and the "smoothness" is definitely better than my Nexus S and the iPhone 4, it does wear off after a while. I think the thing we (the people who use lag as a deal knocker on Android) all do is perhaps get bored with an OS overtime and then look for ways it can be improved (also the case for me with Windows Phone...hence why I keep checking back on this site). I thought iOS was awesome until I actually had an iPhone4 for a week as my on-call work phone and thought the whole OS was boring over time (although it did a lot of still quite well, like handling embedded video without flash and other media). I also hate Apple with a passion (RIP Steve Jobs).....

 

[GrillMouster]

While I didn't hear anyone actually say the words "hardware acceleration" on-stage during the recent Samsung/Google event, I did hear or read someone say something recently about this device having a more sophisticated approach than "brute force" to achieve a better experience. I inferred from that statement that some sort of hardware acceleration would be in place for the Galaxy Nexus, at least.

Update: I just did a quick Google search and found the discussion about brute force was by someone from Texas Instrument. He was speaking about the 4460 processor and its GPU in the Google Nexus.