Anyone else finding thier SF a little 'jerky' in it's operation?

[Guest DaveMac]

I'm running LauncherPro on my SF, and mine is mega smooth :)

[Guest xzyk]

took a while to bake it just right, but now its so smooth that i'm reluctant to upgrade to the r4 rom.

Since I had a2sd working on the r3 I'm not sure what r4 is going to win me. :)

[Guest kwangomango]

£99 phone VS £650 phone.

Uh. Yeah.

That's why i asked is it specific to the SF or Android. Would something like an HTC Desire be just as bad.

Is it obvious that people who say the SF is smooth have never compared it to an iPhone4. Having never had an Android phone before i am just trying to get my head around what are limitations of the SF and what is common to all Android phones. I love my SF but would expect a much smoother experience if i upgraded to a higher end Android model.

[Guest xzyk]

That's why i asked is it specific to the SF or Android. Would something like an HTC Desire be just as bad.

Is it obvious that people who say the SF is smooth have never compared it to an iPhone4. Having never had an Android phone before i am just trying to get my head around what are limitations of the SF and what is common to all Android phones. I love my SF but would expect a much smoother experience if i upgraded to a higher end Android model.

I understand where you're coming from with this and appreciate what you're trying to assess, however, try to think of it like this. Just because something costs more is not necessarily always better; example:

150 pounds full version of Windows 7.

0 pounds full version of any Linux distro.

Which one's better ?????

I've had the 3Gs version of the Iphone and have friends with Iphone4. I have given them the SF to compare and all were impressed. Now this may be because I was lucky with having found a 'sweet spot' rom/apps/memory combination and agree that the IPhone would have this 'out-of-the-box' as it were, but still for 99pounds this little baby is the best I have ever seen, and I have (at the last count) 49 mobiles - I know I need to get a life ! :)

[Guest ken218]

I'm running LauncherPro on my SF, and mine is mega smooth :)

+1, launcher pro helps with the menu scrolling issue.

[Guest deweylewie]

Mine was laggy while moving across homescreens and scrolling the app drawer. Changed from Orange Homescreen to Launcher Pro and it's much smoother now.

[Guest Scott Deagan]

I have gone through two Android handsets. First, a Dell Streak. The jerkiness was unbearable. My second Android handset was a Samsung Galaxy S. I purchased the Galaxy S because because on paper it looked as good as the iPhone 4 in terms of CPU/GPU (the Galaxy S has a PowerVR 540 GPU while the iPhone 4 has a PowerVR 535 GPU, and Samsung designed and manufactured Apple's A4 CPU and uses a Cortex A8 CPU in the Galaxy S). I did everything to my SGS to try and make it smooth, but nothing fully rectified the jerkiness (lag fix, LauncherPro etc). I also didn't like the "Fisher Price" color scheme (weird blues and yellows) of the Galaxy S - especially in the native SMS application.

I have also tried out the Samsung Galaxy Tab - same problem. It is much smoother in "most" (but not all!) of the standard system menus, but the browser is still jerky - especially when you load a page containing embedded Flash!

I think the reason is exactly what someone else posted above - it's the price you pay for using an interpreter. Now I'm only guess here (having come from a C++ background and dabbling with Java) but I also believe that the "garbage collection" scheme also plays a part big in the jerkiness. At the height of my Samsung Galaxy S optimization efforts, I almost had it running silky smooth. I could fast scroll a lengthy web page (even a desktop web page packed with images) and it would scroll smoothly for the most part, but would "stutter" intermittently before continuing to smoothly scroll. Again, I have absolutely nothing to back my suspicion up, it just "felt" like the stuttering was caused by the garbage collector hogging resources (even for a split second - it's still noticeable) to do its thing. It's one of the reasons I avoided learning Java in any great details - because the idea of being at the mercy of some mystical garbage collector just didn't gel with me (although now I wish I had of learnt Java - I'd certainly be more employable and on a much higher wage).

Slightly off topic here - but even the Android emulator provided as part of the Android development tools is super jerky!

For me, personally, jerkiness completely destroys my user-experience. I should point out that this isn't the same for everyone - some of my friends don't mind the jerkiness and gladly overlook it for the extra functions and features Android gives them. I just hope someone at Google (someone in the "user experience" department - if they have one) acknowledge and address this "fault" (okay, perhaps it's more of an "annoyance" - call it whatever you like, the fact remains that it exists and it tarnishes the Android platform and has/will result in lost sales). Fingers crossed, Gingerbread will address this. Also - there's a dual-core (Tegra 2 CPU) LG handset being released in the next few months, perhaps this will make the Android UI smooooooth (like "jaaaaaaaaz"). I tried to buy an Advent Vega which also has a Tegra 2 CPU, but they sold out within hours and I missed the boat.

User-experience - make it fluid. Give the people what they want!

End of rant...

[Guest Frankish]

For me the only jerkyness that annoys me is when typing in the web browser...it's like i'm t.....y...p......i.n.........g....like that! This is on a 2.2 rom though so obviously experimental. :P

[Guest rayraven]

With FLB 2.2 ROM, i have no issues with scrolling or otherwise on the blade.

yes, the stock launcher is a bit jerky, but i always use launcher pro and it's as smooth as it can possibly be on the blade with 2.2

Also, the one thing i hated was that the gallery took ages to come up with all the pictures i had.

With 2.2, its instantaneous and very smooth.

As long as i dont have live wallpapers, the blade's perfectly smooth to use.

[Guest Scott Deagan]

I did a little research and was stunned by what I discovered. The reason why the Android UI is so jerky and choppy and lacks fluidity found in other mobile platforms is because Android doesn't use GPU hardware acceleration to drive the UI. See here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

Every major platform uses the GPU to drive the UI (iOS, MeeGo, WP7, Symbian 3, WebOS).

I for one am stunned...

[Guest cobhc]

I did a little research and was stunned by what I discovered. The reason why the Android UI is so jerky and choppy and lacks fluidity found in other mobile platforms is because Android doesn't use GPU hardware acceleration to drive the UI. See here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

Every major platform uses the GPU to drive the UI (iOS, MeeGo, WP7, Symbian 3, WebOS).

I for one am stunned...

It's also down to the refresh rate used. Gingerbread is supposed to fix this, Engadget reported that a preview hands on with the Nexus S running Gingerbread was near as smooth as iOS.

Edit:-

Quote from here http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/07/google-nexus-s-preview/

"Firstly, the phone is fast. We mean blazingly fast. Not only that, but the animations, touch response and general framerate on everything seems to be cranked closer to the vicinity of the iPhone 4. Not too surprising since the two share the same 1GHz Cortex A8-based Hummingbird processor core. What that means is that the experience of zipping around on the handset feels fluid and natural, with little of that Android-lag we've seen on earlier devices. If Froyo was a spit shine, this is a complete hot wax treatment."

Edited December 8, 2010 by cobhc

[Guest cartierv]

You know I really like my Orange SF, even without SIM, and am enjoying Android, but people comparing it to iOS are going to be disappointed.

Apple go to great lengths to design their products from the ground up with both hardware and software in mind and to make a wonderful user experience that is very slick.

Android, is basically Linux as I understand, and that community is not one that invests that kind of energy in that or frankly would really know how to. It's a sea of opinions where everyone's right and everyone just puts everything in, so you have layer upon layer of sluggish code that's designed for it's modular stackable nature across zillions of platforms not performance.

That Android isn't yet even using hardware acceleration kind of says it all, and Apple in OS X, at least as I understand it, and I may have slightly fallen into their marketing hype at the time and stand to be corrected, but it seemed to be doing something quite innovative with their drawing and how that was all being pushed to the card with Quartz Xtreme and I imagine it's that kind of thing going on in iOS.

The SF as is, with stock ROM is a bit jerky, and stuttery and occasionally can get unresponsive, the CPU percentage also looks a little high in it's resting state to me. But I hope this will improve with 2.2, particularly 2.3 but I can't see how Android will ever be quite iOS level when it's just not being designed like that. If developers want to put the effort into performance then it could improve.

Because I don't use Iphones much, I'm not an expert on iOS as some of you here may be, but as I said in another thread Android currently feels roughly equivalent to Jaguar or even pre-Jaguar OS X.

It's also down to the refresh rate used. Gingerbread is supposed to fix this, Engadget reported that a preview hands on with the Nexus S running Gingerbread was near as smooth as iOS.

Edit:-

Quote from here http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/07/google-nexus-s-preview/

"Firstly, the phone is fast. We mean blazingly fast. Not only that, but the animations, touch response and general framerate on everything seems to be cranked closer to the vicinity of the iPhone 4. Not too surprising since the two share the same 1GHz Cortex A8-based Hummingbird processor core. What that means is that the experience of zipping around on the handset feels fluid and natural, with little of that Android-lag we've seen on earlier devices. If Froyo was a spit shine, this is a complete hot wax treatment."

[Guest Raspa]

that community [Linux ] is not one that invests that kind of energy in that or frankly would really know how to. It's a sea of opinions where everyone's right and everyone just puts everything in, so you have layer upon layer of sluggish code that's designed for it's modular stackable nature across zillions of platforms not performance.

I'm not sure if you are being serious here, or if you are trolling...

That Android isn't yet even using hardware acceleration kind of says it all, and Apple in OS X,

And now you are trying to compare OSX (a fantastic OS) with either Android or iOS?

[Guest taine0]

Always make sure you have a task killer and CPU watchdog, specially the task killer. As most apps don't shut themselves they run in the background using up all your memory = SLOOOWWW DOWN. gallery often uses all CPU with out even loading it too, so always kill that. I'm using the new finnish fillyjonk rom and it's increidbly smooth compared to stock and R4.

[Guest rayraven]

You know I really like my Orange SF, even without SIM, and am enjoying Android, but people comparing it to iOS are going to be disappointed.

Apple go to great lengths to design their products from the ground up with both hardware and software in mind and to make a wonderful user experience that is very slick.

Android, is basically Linux as I understand, and that community is not one that invests that kind of energy in that or frankly would really know how to. It's a sea of opinions where everyone's right and everyone just puts everything in, so you have layer upon layer of sluggish code that's designed for it's modular stackable nature across zillions of platforms not performance.

That Android isn't yet even using hardware acceleration kind of says it all, and Apple in OS X, at least as I understand it, and I may have slightly fallen into their marketing hype at the time and stand to be corrected, but it seemed to be doing something quite innovative with their drawing and how that was all being pushed to the card with Quartz Xtreme and I imagine it's that kind of thing going on in iOS.

The SF as is, with stock ROM is a bit jerky, and stuttery and occasionally can get unresponsive, the CPU percentage also looks a little high in it's resting state to me. But I hope this will improve with 2.2, particularly 2.3 but I can't see how Android will ever be quite iOS level when it's just not being designed like that. If developers want to put the effort into performance then it could improve.

Because I don't use Iphones much, I'm not an expert on iOS as some of you here may be, but as I said in another thread Android currently feels roughly equivalent to Jaguar or even pre-Jaguar OS X.

Carry your hatred of linux somewhere else.

If you think something is wrong with it, fix it,the code's there for everyone.

If not, live with your opinion or go buy an apple product and wait for apple to actually acknowledge faults in the first place.

Trolling like this doesnt help anyone.

Oh and by the way, a lot of stuff in OS X is from open source communities.

One example? The famed Safari? Started off from KHTML and is now Webkit.

OS X itself uses a unix variant core.

Edited December 8, 2010 by rayraven

[Guest Seagull81]

I bought my good lady an SF and to me, it does seem to be quite jerky in comparison to my Desire. I just put it down to a lower processor speed? She's using LauncherPro which may help, but the jerkiness would drive me up the wall it it were my phone. ;)

[Guest Kame_boy]

Calm down now, i don't think he expressed any hatred towards linux, god forbid ;)

But there is a valid point being made in this thread. I own 2 San Fransiscos, and have tried just about every rom, eclair and froyo, available. I have owned a HTC Legend with almost the same hardware/platform, and played around a lot on a friends Samsung Galaxy S and a HTC Desire.

All i can say is, those of you not noticing the jerkiness have either not tried an iphone/wp7, or have some kind of fanboyish-blindspot going on. There is just no such thing as a "super-smooth" rom for the SF. . Not froyo and much less eclair. Objectively speaking.

Compared to WP7 and just about any iphone or ipod touch (i own the latter, 1G), the SF falls behind by a lot in this regard. Jerkiness is what is making lots of non-technical unbiased regular people hold back from buying Android-phone and chosing an iphone instead. Because, the menus just aren't that hard to understand. It's partly the jerky experience that make them feel they are being sold some kind of cheap chinese replica. Of course this is not as important for everybody, but it should be for google.

The digitizer is bad for the SF but generally bad all across the android spectrum:

Of course it's not only refreshrate that makes a digitizer great, but all great digitizers have high refreshrates (Se Samsung galaxy S for instance, which also suffers from some stuttering).

Refreshrate and jerkyness is also due to the garbage collector as someone said, and has got some work done in gingerbread, read more here:

http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.3-highlights.html

Also, i have a small reason to suspect parts like ram on the SF, are of a lesser quality compared to others of the same platform, which would could explain this:

So even though Android in general has some issues with jerkyness, the SF has it specially bad.

That being said, this is only an aesthetic issue and the functionality/price ratio is fantastic. Android is surely the way to go, and with gingerbread on the horizon, all this stuttering could soon be just a tiny old forgotten embarrasment of the past..

[Guest rayraven]

^I wasnt saying the SF is the greatest phone around, nor is anyone on the forum.

All we're saying is that it's the best bang for buck you can get.

Looks at the Quadrant results you provided, whats on top? an X10mini with the same proccy?

So, how can that be? Coz its on a puny QVGA rez and the blade has to pump like 4 times the rez on the same proccy.

It is slow. But, with 2.2 and a good launcher [adw/lp take your pick] it's a pleasure to use.

No obvious slowdowns anywhere, and works pretty much as well as the next highend android device.

Android is a very young platform, barely 2 years old. Give it sometime to smooth out.

The JIT made a lot of things a lot better on 2.2

The Gallery for example, used to be awful. It's instantaneous even with 300+ photos on 2.2

[Guest Seagull81]

Just spotted this on Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5709148/how-to-speed...-android-device

[Guest Kame_boy]

^I wasnt saying the SF is the greatest phone around, nor is anyone on the forum.

All we're saying is that it's the best bang for buck you can get.

Looks at the Quadrant results you provided, whats on top? an X10mini with the same proccy?

So, how can that be? Coz its on a puny QVGA rez and the blade has to pump like 4 times the rez on the same proccy.

It is slow. But, with 2.2 and a good launcher [adw/lp take your pick] it's a pleasure to use.

No obvious slowdowns anywhere, and works pretty much as well as the next highend android device.

Android is a very young platform, barely 2 years old. Give it sometime to smooth out.

The JIT made a lot of things a lot better on 2.2

The Gallery for example, used to be awful. It's instantaneous even with 300+ photos on 2.2

Of course, and i agree with you. There are some obvious reasons (like resolution) that makes the SF stutter more than it's counterparts, but im just saying it's in no way "super smooth" like some offended people have said in this thread.

2.2 helped a lot indeed. While for me the 2.1 original rom was a total dealbreaker in terms of stuttering, the 2.2 rom is way better. And as i said, gingerbread seems to be taking this to another level.

Considering it's price ZTE is not at fault at all. Neither is Android, since it's such a new OS. It's just sad to see otherwise capable hardware not performing at it's full potential. But it's still great.... so, whatever.

[Guest cartierv]

Didn't think I was the troll.

There's many wonderful things the FOSS community has done and done brilliantly that have really benefitted so many. I'm not criticizing those things at all. It's just that client-side performance has never been one of them as far as I can see.

Android on the SF is attractive and usable and I think it's moving in really exciting places. I'm pleased to be using it as my first proper smart phone. (My only reservation about it is not performance per se, but there is little obvious opt-out of Google)

And I'm really looking forward to try 2.2 and 2.3 soon that some of you here have worked hard to deliver.

It's just if we are having a serious conversation about this topic, then let it be serious. Apple have aimed towards the experience of the iPhone. It's not an accident that iOS looks and performs as it does. It's been designed specifically to do exactly that and to look as smooth as it does.

I have not seen any evidence that Android has aimed in the same place. It seems to have aimed somewhere slightly different. But it is early days too, and I'm hoping successive versions will deliver better and better smoothness and performance.

[Guest cartierv]

So I guess I should say as well, as Ive just found out in last 10 minutes: for general home screen stuff Launcher pro makes an helluva difference as I think others have said. very cool

Wonder why Orange didn't make this the main home interface, it's about 4 times faster.

Edited December 9, 2010 by cartierv

[Guest goatee]

No, no, no - don't use a task killer. I'll leave you to Google it to find out why, but watchdog is very useful, as is autostarts.

Always make sure you have a task killer and CPU watchdog, specially the task killer. As most apps don't shut themselves they run in the background using up all your memory = SLOOOWWW DOWN. gallery often uses all CPU with out even loading it too, so always kill that. I'm using the new finnish fillyjonk rom and it's increidbly smooth compared to stock and R4.

[Guest meinnit]

No, no, no - don't use a task killer. I'll leave you to Google it to find out why, but watchdog is very useful, as is autostarts.

Task killer to kill all apps on startup is OK but using it every other minute is not recommended.

[Guest ballist1x]

texting and typing annoys me sometimes as it cant keep up with my typing.

so i like press the button and nothing updates on screen nor does the keypad respond visually to being pressed.

othertimes inputting to web forums the keypresses work but the text doesnt visually update on the forum box so i cant easily tell what ive written without waiting 5 secs for the text to catch up.

highly frustrating tbh.

going to dialer and using the dialer to make calls, end calls, and trying to review the screen mid call are also jerky:/