Database Users

Android system & App UI/GUI

Hi everyone, I have been a lurker on this forum for sometime but registered recently. I bought a Nexus one to replace my 3GS on the release day, and I must say. I absolutely adore it. I have a few questions for you guys, if anyone could shed some light on this for me it would be great.
So, basically I have been looking around the internet, various forums etc to try and grasp why the nexus one does not have smoother scrolling. By smooth I mean the actual animation attributes. I am aware that the Nexus one is fast at scrolling (and faster then the iPhone 3GS in almost every way) however, the nexus one does not handle scrolling as elegantly.
Let me define what I mean by smooth. I do not mean the hardware is not fast, as it clearly is. I mean that the GUI has not been further enhanced in the way the iphone has, to actually mimic a smooth flowing operation.
From what I have gathered on my search it could be one of a few things:
1) Android is still quite new so they have simply not gotten round to adding this yet as it is not a priority.
2) The hardware (up until this point) did not have good enough power to do so, as a result it was not included in the previous and current android releases.
3) The multitasking causes interruptions to the processor cycles during scrolling so can sometimes give a jagged/laggy scroll (I already hear you thinking: AH but this is due to other apps loading at the bottom, well the iphone scrolls exactly the same and is loading apps too).
4) The scrolling element of the UI does not utilise GPU acceleration and thus is purely relying on CPU, which means it is fast but not smooth.
My reason for asking this is simple, I am wondering what I can expect from future versions of android. I absolutely have no doubt that this platform is the future (at least for me) of mobile devices, but I would very much like to see some of the (perhaps unnecessary) GUI enhancements that the iPhone has.
My other area of interest is the market place and more specifically the creation of applications, I am by trade a UI designer, so I cant help but notice that the apps on the market place are pretty... actually lets not beat around the bush - none of them really share any common UI or style.
I am aware that the iPhone SDK provides a UI library which in turn means iPhone developers have somewhat of an aid in creating their apps, and also helps to keep native consistency with the iphone experience. Is this going to be something that changes with android (or is it even something that has started to change within the 2.1 SDK?).
When you guys read this post I hope you do not see an iPhone fanboy that has come here to bash the Android platform. I am just using my experience of a previous system to try and make sense of where the Android platform may go in the future.
These questions come out of love, not frustration or criticism. I love Android and really hope some of these issues are addressed because I feel it does everything else incredibly well. I could have made a post about all the things I love, but hey, you guys already know this . Anyways, let me know your thoughts.

I honestly hope that android doesn't get a lot of standard UI stuff, boxing in developer creativity. There is more than one way to make a good UI and I don't see the need for every app to look the same.

I was more talking about making something available to developers if they need it, incase they do not have the design skill set to do it or the resources to pay someone else to do it.
This would mean that at the least apps would look as good as the stock UI if not better (when capable developers wish to do more).

i read somewhere that the reason the iphone is so smooth at scrolling is down to its very low screen resolution, at first i was thinking nah but there certainly isnt any high end or mid tier touchscreen phone with a res as low as the iphones 320 x 480 at 163 ppi

I believe the iPhone UI uses OpenGL ES 2.0, while Android still supports something like 1.0, 1.1 or 1.3. I forget.
But, we'll have OpenGL 2.0 support soon, and I think their [Google's] roadmap has it somewhere before Android 3.0
dreamdestiny said:
i read somewhere that the reason the iphone is so smooth at scrolling is down to its very low screen resolution, at first i was thinking nah but there certainly isnt any high end or mid tier touchscreen phone with a res as low as the iphones 320 x 480 at 163 ppi
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. The higher res also contributes to the slowdown (versus earlier Android devices like the G1 with much less RAM). This was especially apparent on the Droid, as it has less RAM and Android 2.0 is probably a tad less slick.

Yes, the iphone is pushing lower resolution. But, previous devices to the Nexus one where too pushing lower resolution.
I feel like I am going mad here, surely people notice the fact that iphone has built in animation styles on all scrolling, zooming - android does not. why?

I too have asked this question and haven't gotten a response. I stumbled upon this recently:http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914
This is something we've investigated a couple of years ago already and that we revisit
regularly. Of course we thought of using the GPU, but there are non-trivial issues on
many Android devices (a G1-class device for instance supports only one OpenGL
context at a time, which would prevent you from using any OpenGL based app like
games or augmented reality apps.) In our past experiments we even found many
cases in which using the GPU was slower than normal rendering.
New devices might allow us to overcome the past limitations that made GPU support
a not-so-good solution.
The "choppiness" and "lagginess" you are mentioning are more often related to heavy
garbage collection than drawing performance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

It just seems the refresh rate is slower. The garbage collection mentioned for example. As the code matures it will get better. Plus I read about an update to the Dalvik VM that should help, "Dalvik Turbo VM" It should bump up speed a good bit. Between that and the JIT performance will increase a lot.

This isn't really an issue anymore with Froyo on Nexus One-class devices. Install Froyo, then install Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher and everything is smooth as silk. App scrolling, home screen scrolling, animations, app startup times, all of these are much smoother on my Nexus One w/ Froyo than an iPhone 3G, and at least on par with a 3GS.
The web browser still can bog down a bit when rapidly scrolling complex HTML pages though (Slashdot, Engadget, etc.), seems to be something with the way Javascript events are handled since the issue more-or-less goes away if you disable Javascript. I think the scrolling algorithm needs a bit of work in browser to make it as smooth feeling as the iPhone 3G/3GS are.

rcgabriel said:
This isn't really an issue anymore with Froyo on Nexus One-class devices. Install Froyo, then install Launcher Pro or ADW Launcher and everything is smooth as silk. App scrolling, home screen scrolling, animations, app startup times, all of these are much smoother on my Nexus One w/ Froyo than an iPhone 3G, and at least on par with a 3GS.
The web browser still can bog down a bit when rapidly scrolling complex HTML pages though (Slashdot, Engadget, etc.), seems to be something with the way Javascript events are handled since the issue more-or-less goes away if you disable Javascript. I think the scrolling algorithm needs a bit of work in browser to make it as smooth feeling as the iPhone 3G/3GS are.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pretty much this. I noticed what OP was talking about until I put Froyo on, now everything is silky smooth.

Froyo makes scrolling ok, so no issues here

MaximReapage said:
Pretty much this. I noticed what OP was talking about until I put Froyo on, now everything is silky smooth.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I disagree, while yes froyo is majoy improvements from 2.1 i still get lag especially on live wallpapers its horrid. this is what i said in reference to that issue:
"I agree also, Romain guy your have been listening to the community implementing such features this should be one of them to really listen to. I can't even enjoy the standard launcher i have to use launcher pro or ADW just to have smooth scrolling even in froyo(pre-release) at times. There should be a simple switch to enable or disable 3d accelerations like how ubuntu does it with Compiz. Your seriously telling me your cannot implement a auto-detection feature to see if the phone can handle it and if it can, then the 3d accel is enabled for that phone?
THIS IS BLASPHEMY!"
I understand what people are saying by downloading ADW etc but if I'm a new user buying android most people don't know about ADW for instance my ex-coworker who have a T-mobile MyTouch 3g slide her phone is horribly slow. I had to manually add launcher pro for her to feel the difference and even she is like wow what a difference. My point is most people first hand will automatically think the phone is slow and not on pair with the iPhone. Smoothness in a nutshell should come straight out stock android without the need for a replacement. just my opinion.

mykenyc said:
I disagree, while yes froyo is majoy improvements from 2.1 i still get lag especially on live wallpapers its horrid. this is what i said in reference to that issue:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're complaining about lag with live wallpapers? Comparing it the iPhone which DOES NOT HAVE live wallpapers? Turn them off, stop complaining, and compare apples to apples. Same goes for pretty calendar, weather, news, facebook widgets etc.

torchedlh said:
You're complaining about lag with live wallpapers? Comparing it the iPhone which DOES NOT HAVE live wallpapers? Turn them off, stop complaining, and compare apples to apples. Same goes for pretty calendar, weather, news, facebook widgets etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I said especially with live wallpapers meaning even worst. Please don't tell me to stop complaining because i am not complaining I'm voicing a opinion that can benefit us all. So if your not here to help on the benefit please leave.
thanks.

mykenyc said:
I said especially with live wallpapers meaning even worst. Please don't tell me to stop complaining because i am not complaining I'm voicing a opinion that can benefit us all. So if your not here to help on the benefit please leave.
thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're also using a pre release version of Android that is very well documented to not be ready for general usage, of course there's going to be issues with it, really goiing to have to wait for the official release to compare scrolling

quantic01 said:
Yes, the iphone is pushing lower resolution. But, previous devices to the Nexus one where too pushing lower resolution.
I feel like I am going mad here, surely people notice the fact that iphone has built in animation styles on all scrolling, zooming - android does not. why?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The iPhone uses animations to help reduce the perception of the amount of time it takes to load things. It's eye candy to cover up a fault. The N1 just about instantly switches everything, there is no waiting, so that the few animations it does have take more time than just loading.
It's why I've turned off animations. The eye candy just wastes seconds and CPU cycles.

My biggest concern isn't the launcher since it can easily be remedied by a 3rd party launcher. I think the bigger problem is the scrolling in the web browser.
On Android because scrolling isn't a separate process given to the GPU, scrolling gets progressively slower as the number of dynamic elements(javascript and especially flash) increase.
However, on an iPhone, scrolling is independent of what elements are displayed on the website. Therefore, as the dynamic elements on a webpage increase the scrolling is still just as smooth as a simple website like these forums.
I think using the GPU for scrolling has been needed for a while now but Android really needs it with the addition of flash.

z0phi3l said:
You're also using a pre release version of Android that is very well documented to not be ready for general usage, of course there's going to be issues with it, really goiing to have to wait for the official release to compare scrolling
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
regardless of the fact i think you'd be pretty naive to think the stable ota will magically be lag free. it have everything to do with launcher2 and the fact everything is handled by cpu. We have powerful phones no reason why we shouldn't be able to let GPU handle the UI...instead of defending google we should all be asking them to be able to toggle between gpu acceleration or not same way animation is toggled on and off.

X10 smoothness

Ive always really liked my x10 and coming from a bb storm is was a huge improvement. The one thing thats always driven me nuts about the phones is that all the scrolling, weather it be in menus or the home screen has always been choppy compared to say the iphone. I recently had the chance to use a galaxy s and it too way farr smoother than my x10. Is there anything that can be done to improve this?

root it, delete facerecognition.apk and enable jit
that was the biggest improvement i made

yea my phone is rooted, im pretty sure I have enabled JIT I'm running about 17.5 MFLOPS on Linpack. Ill have to see if facerecognition is still there. Is it constantly running in the background or something?

Are you running the default launcher? If so launcher pro and adw would be a nice choice. As compared to the iphone, no android device will be as smooth until android implement hw acceleration to the UI.

yea I have launcher pro plus, it was a huge improvement ill admit, I was just thrown off at how smooth the galaxy s is. Guess ill just have to live with it

Yea I think he's asking why is the galaxy s is like silky smooth in terms of scrolling and such but not the x10. Both are android phones with 1ghz processor.
I think the reason why is that the galaxy s has a better GPU chip? or a dedicated one? That's what I heard so maybe that's why? Correct me if i'm wrong.

Possibly, but also some widgets can slow it down. For instance i just installed animated contact widget and suddenly my scrolling lags after adding three contacts. I removed it and voila, adw ex is running like crazy again...
Sent from my x32 using the licking write method....man I am thirsty now!

Same here. Using adw ex now, have the scrollable calendar and folder organiser with no effect, but when facebook or contact widgets are added it goes into bullet time... think there's cache issues with the X10. Then again, updated on Xmas eve and lost root.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

you can't solve the smoothness problem on the x10 with software :/ the main problem with this phone is acually the screen.. it's not very responsive and it takes a moment to register your finger. this makes scrolling and everything else laggy compared to other phones with the same hardware
for instance the game fruit ninja is almost unplayable bacause of this.

dforesi said:
Ive always really liked my x10 and coming from a bb storm is was a huge improvement. The one thing thats always driven me nuts about the phones is that all the scrolling, weather it be in menus or the home screen has always been choppy compared to say the iphone. I recently had the chance to use a galaxy s and it too way farr smoother than my x10. Is there anything that can be done to improve this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you are describing the 30 frames per second limit that SE has implemented on the screen.
Go to the website below and look at the 30 FPS and then 60 FPS. Is this the problem you are describing?
http://www.boallen.com/fps-compare.html

Hey There,
I´ve added this command line: windowsmgr.max_events_per_sec=26 to my build.prop and it feels smother whenever you´re going around the homescreen or appdrawer.
You should give it a try....
Ps. You can add that line at the bottom of your build.prop using Root Explorer.
Jim

I got root explorer, i found build.prop in /system/. How do I edit it?
There's no edit option?

you are using launcher pro.
go into the launcher pro settings and there you can change the scrolling speed and smoothness.
turn off the elastic effect and speed up drawer and scrolling speeds.
should be much smoother now.

dforesi said:
Ive always really liked my x10 and coming from a bb storm is was a huge improvement. The one thing thats always driven me nuts about the phones is that all the scrolling, weather it be in menus or the home screen has always been choppy compared to say the iphone. I recently had the chance to use a galaxy s and it too way farr smoother than my x10. Is there anything that can be done to improve this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm...weird because I thought the X10 was much smoother than the Galaxy S...which is why I sold the Galaxy and got back my beloved X10. I didn't like the Galaxy when compared to the X10. Im rooted, deleted timescape, face recognition, etc etc...huge improvements.

I think my X10 is pretty smooth. Compared to my friend's Galaxy S I think its even better. Although mine is rooted and cleared and his is not.

Tri3Dent said:
I got root explorer, i found build.prop in /system/. How do I edit it?
There's no edit option?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At the top of Root Explorer is an option select the one that says r/w (read/write) and then long press on build.prop and at the end of the pop-up menu choose open in text editor... that way you can add the command line...
I hope this helps.
Jim
Sent from my X10i

Thanks.. Just did it. In order to make it take effect, just restart the phone?
Or what does this code do anyway?

Tri3Dent said:
Thanks.. Just did it. In order to make it take effect, just restart the phone?
Or what does this code do anyway?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you see or feel an effect? For me there is no difference ...

I am almost 100% sure the problem is the 32fps cap SE placed on this phone. Total and utter garbage! Until we are able to modify the X10's kernel, there will be no improvement to the smoothness you are referring to.
And to the guys who's used both the galaxy S and X10 and think the X10 is smoother, pass me some of that stuff you're smoking will ya?

ProBoner said:
I am almost 100% sure the problem is the 32fps cap SE placed on this phone. Total and utter garbage! Until we are able to modify the X10's kernel, there will be no improvement to the smoothness you are referring to.
And to the guys who's used both the galaxy S and X10 and think the X10 is smoother, pass me some of that stuff you're smoking will ya?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agree, in quadrants 700 vs. 1850. Neomark 27 fps vs. 56 fps.
X10 is so much underperforming at the moment, that I could cry. It's so much similar to the Nexus One. Blame SE.

Tip to make the Note snappier

Go to Settings-> developer options->select Window animation scale and Transition Animation scale and change both to .5 instead of 1. Reboot and the phone is much snappier, at least it is for me.
You can also choose to disable both animations, to make it even faster.

This should make it feel snappier but I don't think it actually makes the phone faster. Sure the time it takes from one window to the next now is faster but this won't increase your benchmark results or anything like that. Regardless it does make it feel quicker; but once again it's an effect.
-Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note.

zkyevolved said:
This should make it feel snappier but I don't think it actually makes the phone faster. Sure the time it takes from one window to the next now is faster but this won't increase your benchmark results or anything like that. Regardless it does make it feel quicker; but once again it's an effect.
-Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, but app windows open quicker and the phone is more responsive

I read this on the SGS3 thread, and did it to my note, not a lot of difference.
John.

I actually did the opposite and changed the window animation scale to 2x. This makes everything feel much more fluent and strangely enough less laggy (for me). More of a polished experience

Is just a Feel..
Put the one you like more

Thanks makes a big difference actually

The default 1x is already nice to me, snap n smooth.

this is a better tip disable all of samsung's bloatware running in the background

Also depends on the rom. I always change to 0.5
The smoothest rom so far for scrolling and in apps browsing seems to be rocket 7.
None of the asop based roms seem to achieve this and this is
surprising.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

I think go away from Samsung roms and into CM9 its smooth as butter. Running Apex launcher with live wallpapers have no effect on performance and everything opens as fast as possible.
Paranoid android is great with per app density settings so you can actually use the phone/tablet hybrid in that way, the stock samsung Rom's are like a big s2 for blind people, I can do with much smaller text and fit much more per screen then the over-sized touchwiz.

ShonkUK said:
this is a better tip disable all of samsung's bloatware running in the background
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What should I disable I m on stock Ics and I dnt understand y every time I clear off Ram it says 22 apps closed.
Thanks.
Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk 2

Horrible Samsung Firmware, any alternatives?

Hello,
So I bought this device a week ago and the lag really bothers me. I noticed this device runs 70+ processes in the background and uses half of its memory on boot!
I remember when I installed cyanogenmod on my original Samsung Galaxy Tab, the thing was flying, even web browsing was several times smoother. Also it gives CPU clock options, and it gave me an option to adjust minimum CPU clock, this way a lot of lag just went away.
Thanks!

No custom ROMs yet. We just got a recovery so custom roms can now be used. Also what little lag I saw went away with the latest update. It is a good idea to get all the updates then wipe and start fresh.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2513532
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2508143

none of those do much of anything to speed up my device overall. just faster homescreen swiping. i've always used alternative launchers mainly for the customizations, whatever speed they grant is negligible since i spend so little time in the launchers themselves. the majority of the apps disabled in that list i've had frozen since root came out. i even refreshed for the hell of it and no difference.
i love the device, but samsung has done some crappy work on the software.

madsquabbles said:
none of those do much of anything to speed up my device overall. just faster homescreen swiping. i've always used alternative launchers mainly for the customizations, whatever speed they grant is negligible since i spend so little time in the launchers themselves. the majority of the apps disabled in that list i've had frozen since root came out. i even refreshed for the hell of it and no difference.
i love the device, but samsung has done some crappy work on the software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only issue I see with custom roms is the loss of spen functionality which is really a shame. Without the spen this is just another 10in tab. Samsung has added some great functionality with snote, the air dock, multi Windows.. Etc.
Hopefully we get a de bloated rom soon. But as others have said, the lag has somewhat improved with the latest patch. But I feel where you're coming from, the first thing I noticed when I turned it on was lag. In fact, I should post the gtalk conversation I had with my tech buddy the dash I got it.
Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk

a TW based custom ROM won't lose any of the S Pen stuff.

Design
More horrible is the Design of the Firmware. I mean look at that statusbar with that buttons for WLAN , GPS and so on. It looks like some ugly quaters.

Z2 graphics performance

Hey all, I was in John Lewis playing with the new Z2. I noticed that the live wallpapers were really slow and the transition between pages seemed a low frame rate. No way near as fluid as on the Galaxy Notes. I was a bit surprised, surely as the latest and greatest device it can eat any live wallpaper for breakfast?
I was planning on buying the Z2 LTE but I was a little put off by what I saw. I closed down all the running apps on the device but it was still not smooth. I put on the stock water drop live wallpaper and it ran even more stuttery than on my Nexus 7 (1st gen)!! Surely that can't be right.
I expect my Dualboot Games live wallpapers to run buttery smooth on my next tablet!
Was that just a freak occurrence or is that just how it is? Hopefully one of you guys can put my mind at rest or I will pass on this one.

Forget this stupid stock launcher. Totally irrelevant.
I don't understand how people judge a device by preinstalled crap.
Install another launcher (Nova, whatever), and there you go.
Live wallpapers are battery eating, superfluous s**t anyway.

hasenbein1966 said:
Forget this stupid stock launcher. Totally irrelevant.
I don't understand how people judge a device by preinstalled crap.
Install another launcher (Nova, whatever), and there you go.
Live wallpapers are battery eating, superfluous s**t anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is there to understand? I had to judge it on that cos it was a display model in the shop. I cant go customising it lol. Thats why Im on here asking the question from people that own one.
Was it the stock Sony launcher at fault? Is the stock launcher really that bad or is the device just like that regardless? For a premium device I would expect the stock launcher to perform at a decent level at least.
As for live wallpapers being superfluous s**t, that's irrelevant. Its been a feature of the OS for a long time now and I was surprised that the device struggled so badly with it. Like I say with seemingly less performance than my Nexus 7.
I was ready to buy one but from what I saw in the shop it made me nervous to drop £500 on it. So Z2 Tablet owners how is the device performing with 3rd party launchers? Im really expecting it to be silky smooth even with a live wallpaper running (obviously I understand some LWP's are badly made and slow no matter what device).
Any comments appreciated!

tumpin said:
What is there to understand? I had to judge it on that cos it was a display model in the shop. I cant go customising it lol. Thats why Im on here asking the question from people that own one.
Was it the stock Sony launcher at fault? Is the stock launcher really that bad or is the device just like that regardless? For a premium device I would expect the stock launcher to perform at a decent level at least.
As for live wallpapers being superfluous s**t, that's irrelevant. Its been a feature of the OS for a long time now and I was surprised that the device struggled so badly with it. Like I say with seemingly less performance than my Nexus 7.
I was ready to buy one but from what I saw in the shop it made me nervous to drop £500 on it. So Z2 Tablet owners how is the device performing with 3rd party launchers? Im really expecting it to be silky smooth even with a live wallpaper running (obviously I understand some LWP's are badly made and slow no matter what device).
Any comments appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you complaining about the launcher or the wallpaper? If it's the launcher, I barely see any lag at all. For the wallpaper it will depend on the wallpaper, the tablet is very powerful with a decent graphics chip, but if whichever wallpaper you are using is badly coded it won't make a difference.

When the tablet in the shop was fresh out of the box, it's no wonder that it was lagging. For instance, the media scanner will run and other first-time apps and background services will be started. An Android device is always only at it's real snappiness a few hours after first start.

hasenbein1966 said:
When the tablet in the shop was fresh out of the box, it's no wonder that it was lagging. For instance, the media scanner will run and other first-time apps and background services will be started. An Android device is always only at it's real snappiness a few hours after first start.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It wasn't new out the box, it was on the display. They had rows of demo units on display. I closed down all the apps too. There was a lot open from people playing around with it.

jai23 said:
Are you complaining about the launcher or the wallpaper? If it's the launcher, I barely see any lag at all. For the wallpaper it will depend on the wallpaper, the tablet is very powerful with a decent graphics chip, but if whichever wallpaper you are using is badly coded it won't make a difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It was more the wallpaper. I tried the default Android water ripple one and it was really slow, slower than on my Nexus7. Also the standard Sony wallpaper. Swiping through the screens it just wasn't as fluid as the Galaxy Note also on display. Must say it shocked me a bit.
Do you own one? Im after gauging what its like for people that actually own one. Because I know what I saw on display but I only had a short time with the device. I am asking what its like for you guys that own one. Is it smooth and fluid with 3rd party launchers? Do live wallpapers slow it down a lot? I know there are badly made LWPs but Im talking about good wallpapers, does it handle them ok?
I had been waiting for the Z2 to come out but after playing with it Im having second thoughts. I want my next tablet to be hassle free. I dont even want to be flashing roms, Im fed up with that, I want it to be slick straight out the box.
Im considering one of the Tab Pro's or even a Win 8 Pro tablet. I played with a Sony Tap 11, I know its a different device altogether but that thing impressed me! Its so light considering its a full i5 PC.

Slick straight out of the box? Seriously, take an iPad or a Windows machine.

tumpin said:
It was more the wallpaper. I tried the default Android water ripple one and it was really slow, slower than on my Nexus7. Also the standard Sony wallpaper. Swiping through the screens it just wasn't as fluid as the Galaxy Note also on display. Must say it shocked me a bit.
Do you own one? Im after gauging what its like for people that actually own one. Because I know what I saw on display but I only had a short time with the device. I am asking what its like for you guys that own one. Is it smooth and fluid with 3rd party launchers? Do live wallpapers slow it down a lot? I know there are badly made LWPs but Im talking about good wallpapers, does it handle them ok?
I had been waiting for the Z2 to come out but after playing with it Im having second thoughts. I want my next tablet to be hassle free. I dont even want to be flashing roms, Im fed up with that, I want it to be slick straight out the box.
Im considering one of the Tab Pro's or even a Win 8 Pro tablet. I played with a Sony Tap 11, I know its a different device altogether but that thing impressed me! Its so light considering its a full i5 PC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I own one, I've had no problems with lag of any sort.

Thanks Jai23, I will take that on board.
Hasenbein that's funny but sadly true!
I am going to have a think about it and try get another demo of the Z2. What I would really like is the latest Asus Transformer that comes with Tegra 4 graphics. That's the kind of graphics grunt I know I would like but they don't do an LTE version for some reason.

The Adreno 330 in the Tablet Z2 has at least (!) as much "graphics grunt" as the Tegra 4! If you notice lag, it's not because of the "graphics grunt"!
---------- Post added at 07:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:59 AM ----------
Gizmodo Review - they say the same: Simply forget stock launcher crap, install another, be happy with a really great tablet!
http://gizmodo.com/sony-xperia-z2-tablet-review-hardware-triumph-softwar-1565712780

Ok guys, based on your replies I will go give the Z2 another demo. Especially now I've learnt that the Tap 11 isn't 4G.
My next tablet absolutely must have 4G. Its surprising there isn't much choice when it comes to 4G on tablets. All top end phones have it but not tablets.

tumpin said:
Hey all, I was in John Lewis playing with the new Z2. I noticed that the live wallpapers were really slow and the transition between pages seemed a low frame rate. No way near as fluid as on the Galaxy Notes. I was a bit surprised, surely as the latest and greatest device it can eat any live wallpaper for breakfast?
I was planning on buying the Z2 LTE but I was a little put off by what I saw. I closed down all the running apps on the device but it was still not smooth. I put on the stock water drop live wallpaper and it ran even more stuttery than on my Nexus 7 (1st gen)!! Surely that can't be right.
I expect my Dualboot Games live wallpapers to run buttery smooth on my next tablet!
Was that just a freak occurrence or is that just how it is? Hopefully one of you guys can put my mind at rest or I will pass on this one.
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I have been using my Z2 with some high res games and have not had any problems, a fantastic tablet.

I have gone ahead and ordered one, delivery Friday.
Its been a long time since I bought Sony. I used to buy nothing but Sony but their build quality and service went down hill and let me down so I boycotted them. Their latest stuff caught my eye though. We are in this together now guys..

tumpin said:
What is there to understand? I had to judge it on that cos it was a display model in the shop. I cant go customising it lol. Thats why Im on here asking the question from people that own one.
Was it the stock Sony launcher at fault? Is the stock launcher really that bad or is the device just like that regardless? For a premium device I would expect the stock launcher to perform at a decent level at least.
As for live wallpapers being superfluous s**t, that's irrelevant. Its been a feature of the OS for a long time now and I was surprised that the device struggled so badly with it. Like I say with seemingly less performance than my Nexus 7.
I was ready to buy one but from what I saw in the shop it made me nervous to drop £500 on it. So Z2 Tablet owners how is the device performing with 3rd party launchers? Im really expecting it to be silky smooth even with a live wallpaper running (obviously I understand some LWP's are badly made and slow no matter what device).
Any comments appreciated!
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I dont see why you wouldnt try customising it. on the demo model in john lewis, I found an open wifi network, logged on with my google account, installed antutu and minion rush and tested them both to see how well it ran (very nice). Then I removed my account from it again. problem is the tab pro 10.1 also ran very nicely!
Also, there are going to be a number of software updates from sony that will fix issues like poor live wallpaper response. Although I too think they are resource hogging garbage!
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@tumpin
Late reply considering that you've bought it but the reason that the store one was laggy was because it had been on for a LONG time. Given it a reboot should have fixed it.
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Hamza Murad said:
@tumpin
Late reply considering that you've bought it but the reason that the store one was laggy was because it had been on for a LONG time. Given it a reboot should have fixed it.
Sent from my Xperia P using Tapatalk
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Yep very well might have been that. I did try closing all in the switcher but maybe a reboot was needed. The poorly optimised Sony live wallpaper doesnt help either. Makes the device look slow! Im happy with it now!

hasenbein1966 said:
Forget this stupid stock launcher. Totally irrelevant.
I don't understand how people judge a device by preinstalled crap.
Install another launcher (Nova, whatever), and there you go.
Live wallpapers are battery eating, superfluous s**t anyway.
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Agreed

tumpin said:
Yep very well might have been that. I did try closing all in the switcher but maybe a reboot was needed. The poorly optimised Sony live wallpaper doesnt help either. Makes the device look slow! Im happy with it now!
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Received mine yesterday, and it is pretty damn nice. I had the TF700 for a while, and it seems so slow compared to the Z2, that old thing.
But you do have to install your own launcher, dont use that Sony crap, not so bad compared to usual stock, but other launchers are so much more customizable, why would you want to keep it stock!
Just waiting for a root option without losing the ability to backup DRM keys...

elbello said:
Received mine yesterday, and it is pretty damn nice. I had the TF700 for a while, and it seems so slow compared to the Z2, that old thing.
But you do have to install your own launcher, dont use that Sony crap, not so bad compared to usual stock, but other launchers are so much more customizable, why would you want to keep it stock!
Just waiting for a root option without losing the ability to backup DRM keys...
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I to am looking at getting this tablet. Anyone using action launcher on it? I own all the paid launchers except for that one.
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