Neomtel SMAX UI Platform

[Guest Traccker]

Hello all

Background:

I'm a Pocket PC phone lover and have my HTC Wizard for already 3 years. Time to change.

I've opted using Samsung Omnia2 instead of HTC Touch HD due to it's very powerful hardware. But I was really worried about it's performance. Lots of youtube's videos show TouchWiz2 very laggy, so it's a shame for a such powerful hardware.

The point:

When I saw this video on Youtube I've got very happy.

Omnia2 : Compare speed to main menu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsHEVv1V9eY

You may also take a look at the performance on this one:

NeoMtel Smax in Omnia phone - Speed UP!

Let's agree guys, stock Omnia2, specially with TouchWiz2 is very laggy. I've read a lot and removing TouchWiz2 will help a little, but the interface is quite eye-candy and useful to be throwed away.

Then I thought it would be simple to tweak the device in order to improve O2's performance... but...

I thought this video was just showing a simple tweak or custom ROM...

But I was wrong...

I tried to search this Neomtel Platform (SMAX) to see what was it about, but I've got no idea. Also Neomtel's website looks to directed to manufacturers and not end-users like me. So there were no downloads or trials and whatever...

Please, let me know what do you think about this.

Is there any chance of some chef start working on/searching this?

Thanks in advance

Traccker

[Guest Matt174e]

Wow that's an interesting looking UI, very snappy. Not exactly sure what's going on in the first video though. It's compairing the same UI, but one is somehow faster? Searching for info on this UI seems to be useless, must be a work in progress GUI. Can't wait to get more information/trying it out myself.

I'm using a raw version of PointUI right now. I used to use SPB Mobile Shell, but found it too heavy and sometimes sluggish. I'd love to try out a nice new light GUI.

Thanks for sharing the videos you found, hopefully we can dig up some more info about this UI soon.

[Guest Glilium]

If it's the UI that is speedy, then I guess I'll use the UI right away.

Looks so speedy. It's like lag-less.

Btw, I hope it's some driver or so on that they developed that makes it so speedy. That will increase the overall speed of the phone!

[Guest h4x0r3d]

oh myyyy this is very good where can we get that ?

[Guest Traccker]

Yeah guys! Speed! That's what I'm wanting...

Btw, PointUI is a very nice and fast UI. Users should also try the PointSense addon.

SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 is very nice, however is not so fast as the 3.0 version at least on my granny HTC Wizard.

We must agree Touchwiz 2.0 is quite good, but it's laggy... I it could be fast like in the video, I would probably use it...

Thanks for your observation guys!

Traccker

[Guest surgex]

No way...this is sick!!

It's just as fast as the iphone 3gs!

This would be a dream come true for the lag-ridden Omnia2...seriously.

I mean, it's quicker than 80% of windows mobile devices, but that isn't saying much.

Compared to newer android devices and iphone, and even the newer symbian phones (satio, kurara, omnia HD), the Omnia2 is slow!

Wow that's an interesting looking UI, very snappy. Not exactly sure what's going on in the first video though. It's compairing the same UI, but one is somehow faster?

I thought the same thing as well...but the only conclusion I could come up with is they are both using standard samsung touchjizz with a dark blue \ black theme, and for some reason the phone on the right has some kind of accelerated graphics?  Perhaps this new UI is more than just a UI...maybe it actually makes use of the graphics acceleration?  But they are both touchwizz without a doubt, unless they copied everything about the touchwizz startmenu to the T (hard to believe...).  This would be revolutionary..

Oh my god, they have more vids on their youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMoongchi#p/a/u/2/CN2xys43uzI -- omg.....

This is almost too goo to be true...

Edited January 17, 2010 by surgex

[Guest KILLvino]

anyone else notice the black bar at the bottom(on the second vid)? its like its supposed to be qvga or something.

Edited January 17, 2010 by KILLvino

[Guest Ender Psp]

anyone else notice the black bar at the bottom(on the second vid)? its like its supposed to be qvga or something.

It's not QVGA, it's WVGA.

WOW. Whatever they did to that Omnia, it's amazing. I suspect it has to do with the video driver too, because that's the TouchWiz UI that they're playing with. Now that's what I would expect from Samsung! And I hope they will deliver soon for all of us.

Btw, the phone shown is Samsung SCH-M715 (aka T* Omnia II), korean. If anyone has the new device's rom, we're in business!

[Guest rul3s]

waiting to do that!!

[Guest Ender Psp]

Just found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K8YE2G1Xbg, looks related. It says Hypertouch for Omnia 2, and it's definitely korean.

[Guest mattb777]

i don't think it's the touchwiz ui on the second "fast" phone, its the SMAX ui made to look like touchwiz. if you compare them when he's scrolling the touchwiz (on the left) has a scroll bar but the phone with SMAX on the right does not. Must be a work in progress and he/she is just demonstrating the different capabilities and implementation.

but yes, it does look fast and smooth, im hoping for a release

[Guest jojo0821]

I know the answer!

That is Flash 10.1, or a Flash speed up tool, so Touchwiz to be speed up!

Touchwiz, TouchPlayer, ...... all Samsung app are Flash.

Edited January 18, 2010 by jojo0821

[Guest -Ray]

Taken from:

OS/Platform : Windows Mobile 6.x

Resolution : 480*800

Chipset : Samsung / Qualcomm

Smax engine + OpenGL ES 2.x

hmmm?

[Guest Ender Psp]

i don't think it's the touchwiz ui on the second "fast" phone, its the SMAX ui made to look like touchwiz. if you compare them when he's scrolling the touchwiz (on the left) has a scroll bar but the phone with SMAX on the right does not. Must be a work in progress and he/she is just demonstrating the different capabilities and implementation.

but yes, it does look fast and smooth, im hoping for a release

I think you might be right. Neomtel looks like they're doing some sort of UI engines: Hive, Ispin, Sis. There's some blog about them, too. My guess is that's an engine and might be OS independent. As you can see, Neomtel appear to do (G)UI for a lot of platforms. So I think it can be a cab :) thus, extractable and usable. :) We just need the rom, for now from that Omnia 2.

[Guest paw1]

Now that i've seen these videos, and cant find those cabs, Errr m so restless.

[Guest surgex]

Now that i've seen these videos, and cant find those cabs, Errr m so restless.

Agreed...this is the kind of stuff that can make or break a device's usability (if that's a word)... :)

[Guest Tylwith]

the company is on the stock market.

there will be no way that this smax UI will be free.

but i will gladly pay for it

[Guest Glilium]

Taken from:

OS/Platform : Windows Mobile 6.x

Resolution : 480*800

Chipset : Samsung / Qualcomm

Smax engine + OpenGL ES 2.x

hmmm?

That means fast performance not only on the TouchWiz UI. But also other UI such as SPB Mobile Shell and so on right? Great to hear that!

So does that mean better game performance too?

[Guest sorg]

That means fast performance not only on the TouchWiz UI. But also other UI such as SPB Mobile Shell and so on right? Great to hear that!

So does that mean better game performance too?

i think, you guys took it wrong.

The video showing "accelerated" main menu of omnia II is semi-fake.

What developers wanted to show is their engine and how it works. So, they mimic main menu, i.e. wrote their own application using their Smax engine which pretends to look like main menu. So they showed how the same amount of icons/graphics can be moved much smoother than engine used by samsung.

What i understood is that they advertising their engine for MANUFACTURERS, not for customers. So, if samsung will be interested in their engine then they will able to buy it and write slick and fast applications.

Don't look for a black cat in the dark room because there are no cats there :)

Edited January 19, 2010 by sorg

[Guest paw1]

^^ much to our disappointment, that makes sense.

[Guest surgex]

So I guess there are no updates to this and they are only doing this for OEMs?

Really dissapointing.

What I really don't understand though is this -- Samsung is the company who made and designed this phone from the ground up...from the first stages of brainstorming to the blueprints to the actual production of it...yet this independent company destroys them and takes their device and makes their UI look like something ready to be flushed down the toilet.

Why doesn't \ didn't Samsung just put the energy \ work in in the first place and make touchwiz actually useful and fast to begin with?

It's really not that bad of a UI, the problem is that it just lags so bad that it's basically unusable.

If some small company no one has ever heard of called Neomtel can create a spitting image of the touchwiz UI and make it fast, surely the #2 phone manufacturer in the world can do it...unless they somehow soldered in another chip that is speeding everything up...lol...but surely we can assume that this is 100% software...

Neomtel probably has what like 25 to 50 employees (I have no idea I am just making a guess, I could be wrong) and Samsung has what...hundreds of thousands?

Did they not do it on purpose then? I just cannot understand the reasoning behind it..

Yes the O2 is an older device and there are bigger and better things, but there are always bigger and better things just around the corner..

But if the hardware is capable of being quick then why not implement the proper software to make it do so, especially when you are the ones designing and selling this phone?

Edited April 17, 2010 by surgex

[Guest sorg]

and make touchwiz actually useful and fast to begin with?

touchwiz lags? absolutely not. TuchWiz is outlook of settings applications, skined sms and other apps with black backgrounds.

Probably you mess it with widgetplus which really lags.

[Guest modacian]

touchwiz lags? absolutely not. TuchWiz is outlook of settings applications, skined sms and other apps with black backgrounds.

Probably you mess it with widgetplus which really lags.

Let's be realistic, emotions and fanboy flames/wars aside, Samsung is the best company in producing chipsets, CPU, GPU, memory etc... they even sell it to everyone else like apple and others... However, I didn't see a single phone from Samsung that the software is flawless and lag free like the videos in this post or other phones in the market, talking about the Omnia 2, all software parts that is eye candy has lag somewhere on different levels, some are too laggy (widgetplus...) and some are less laggy... but they still have lag and nowhere near as smooth as the ones in the video...

What did it do us good having the graphics chipset comparisons with the iphone and others with I don't know how many triangles per second?... nothing but hope that someone somewhere will come and enhance the software!!! following this forum only will make you understand what I am talking about...

I've had my fare share of Samsung phones, original touchwiz, Omnia1, Omnia2, Jet and all have different lags on different levels... none of them compare to the smoothness and fluidity that exist in the market today... and personally, I am gonna pass on the Galaxy S and the Wave for that matters! even though I am drooling over their spec sheet, but usability and eye-candy is what matters the most, at least to me! ;) Maybe desire? ;)

[Guest darkworldzz]

aww.. at least they are improving.. look at JD1's widgets plus.. its 'improved' but cant compare to iphones smoothness.. but then theres the t*omnia start menu..which is really fluid.. bit by bit, they are showing their worth..

[Guest dwallersv]

FWIW... My own experimentation/experience dealing with performance issues has led me to one primary conclusion where IU performance is concerned: Memory. Specifically, RAM.

When there's A LOT free, everything runs quite fast and responsively. Whenther TouchWiz, SPB MS3.5, etc. Nothing in these UIs, and many others, requres 3D accelerated graphics to perform flawlessly. They are nearly 100% 2D.

When I laden my O2 wth a lot of stuff running in the background, eating up RAM, everything starts to slow down. I see this (surprise surprise) when the free RAM stays below about 40-45M. Not major problems, but lags here and there. Due to the WM memory model, even though there is in fact 45Mb of free RAM, apps are having to give up memory they've acquired when another's timeslice swaps in, and a memory request hits the same dirver region, for example.

This deallocation/reallocation process causes a brief freeze of execution while the OS deals with it, appearing as a "lag".

Shut down everything you've added on, pretty much, keep the free mem above 50MB (so, when Opera is running for example, you still have say 55MB free) and it will run very smooth and fast.

As for why some of these UI apps run so smoothly, well, they are probably engineered with awareness of the crappy WM6 memory model, doing what they can to avouid its defects. Given Samsung's track record, I doubt this was a design goal at all. Further evidence of this is the hokey band-aid they created in the TaskMon service, which enforces a rather hard free memory floor of 50MB, and ungraciously just closes apps silently when it falls below that threshold (modified docs or anything else notwithstanding -- grrrrrrrrr!)

See this thread for a in-depth discussion of this issue...