Hey Google, are you even trying anymore?

As I’ve been using my HTC Arrive (now loaded with Mango goodness) I’ve been wondering if Google is even trying at the mobile market.

When Android first came out on the G1 (which I owned for about a year), and then on the HTC Sapphire (and later, the MyTouch 3G), it was rock solid, no stability problems, no problems with apps crashing all the time. This is because it was optimized for a specific set of hardware (the 192MB of RAM and 528MHz processor at the time).

As time rolled on, more phones came out. Then the Droid came out and ushered in Android 2.0, and was also the most powerful Android phone to release. Problem being at first, Android 2.0 was slow. Switching home screens or calling up the Apps drawer would cause noticeable lag. There was a fix issued, and eventually the Droid got up to Android 2.2, where it now sits. Also keep in mind that the iPhone 3GS was released a few months prior, and still gets the most current software updates from Apple. (It also runs the same exact processor and memory config.)

Now, if you were to take these two flagship phones from the 2009 era, and run them side-by-side, you’ll notice that the iPhone 3GS just spanks the Droid in every way. Animations and transitions on the iPhone are smooth and fast, whereas on the Droid there is noticeable lag. While this may not equate to actual performance, it makes the phone feel slower.

You’ll even notice that the iPhone 3GS’ various animations feel faster than they do on something more current, like the Evo or the Atrix.

There might be multiple reasons for this, but I’m willing to put my money behind one thing: Optimization and hardware acceleration. Two things that iOS has, as well as Microsoft with Windows Phone 7.

iOS and WP7 are optimized for certain sets of hardware. With WP7, it’s the old, 1st gen Snapdragon running at 1GHz with 512MB of RAM. But you wouldn’t know that WP7 phones are running with outdated internals because the system is immensely optimized, and still feels fast to the end user. Same with the iPhone 3GS and it’s paltry 600MHz processor and 256MB of RAM.

Hardware acceleration also makes a giant difference. Think about your computer for a minute. What if you tried to run your games on the CPU rather than that powerful GPU sitting in one of your PCIe slots? What if Windows Aero pounded the CPU rather than the GPU? It’d be pretty slow, right? That’s exactly what Android does. (Though games can tap the GPU) It offloads all the UI elements to the CPU, which, as Apple has demonstrated, isn’t meant for it. This is why (I believe) that Android has a problem with lag.

And sadly, Google doesn’t seem to want to add HW UI just because some phones don’t support it.

And I ask, how hard is it to add a simple check? If the GPU can support HW UI, use it; and if not, don’t use it. Because it really pains me to see phones like the Atrix and Infuse lag so hard because the UI is trying to run on the CPU rather than the GPU.

It also doesn’t help that Android is being made to run on every device under the sun. So without a doubt, I believe Android is going to end up like Windows Mobile did. Massively unstable, slow, and buggy because it’s being made to run on a million different configurations, and Google has no control over it.

This was posted 10 months ago. It has 11 notes.
  1. exxodium posted this