How Smooth is your Droid?

[kenkamm]

Mine is butter. iPhone doesn't have to push near as many pixels as the Droid does.

A lot of what people perceive as choppiness is due to the screen transition on the launcher. The wallpaper scrolls as well as the icons, and both scroll at different speeds.

Don't believe me? USe Home++ and turn off wallpaper scroll. Suddenly, its looks very, very smooth.

Well, the choppy performance exists everywhere in the OS. Not just the home screen. The browser is possibly the worst part.

I've read claims like the one you just made that your phone has no choppiness at all. Until someone like yourself backs it up with video evidence, I am not buying it. I have a Droid, my wife has one, I know 4 people at work that have them, and I've tried every example of one I come across at the stores, and they all have choppy performance. ALL of them.

I don't think the number of pixels to push should matter. This darn phone has more horsepower than the computer I had 10 years ago and doesn't have to push as many pixels. I think it's UI optimization, and it's just not high enough on google's priority list. People like yourself aren't bothered by it. Fair enough. I am.

 

[adrynalyne]

*Shrug*

No skin off my back if you don't buy it. I'm not gonna put the time to release a video to show you otherwise. Only person I gotta prove things to is myself.

 

[kenkamm]

Well maybe you could help out the community by helping us figure out why your droid is perfect, and everyone else's is choppy.

 

[adrynalyne]

*Chuckle*

You apparently missed the last few pages where we were talking about overclocking and custom ROMs.

Thats the only answer until the software is more optimized and/or the GUI is GPU driven.

 

[DigiK]

I've found that in general, maintaining a higher level of free memory than the Android's preferred 30-40MB really helps smooth things out. With about 70MB free, Droid really flies at 1Ghz on BB. The 256Mb system ROM is Droid's biggest Achilles heal. Should've been 512; you can probably point at Verizon's value engineering for that one...

Now if only I could find a way of setting a way prevent Android from pre-loading some apps into memory without having to reinstall Startup Auditor. Yesterday I noticed Android had pre-loaded PDANet of all things, an application I RARELY use and will uninstall anyway since I have wi-fi tether.
Autokill functions are just sloppy since they take system resources. Too bad autostarts doesn't have a feature like this.

Someone chime in if they know of a way to do this via ADB.

 

[kenkamm]

*Chuckle*

You apparently missed the last few pages where we were talking about overclocking and custom ROMs.

Thats the only answer until the software is more optimized and/or the GUI is GPU driven.

I didn't miss it. Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned that I run at 950 MHz and still have choppy performance. Granted, it's much improved from the stock setup, and I am very happy about that. But it's a long way off the iPhone. I think we agree that google needs to address this in the code.

 

[DigiK]

Kenkamm, How much memory are you typically keeping free? I've really found that tends to be the bottleneck even when you're running @800+Mhz

 

[kenkamm]

I'd try the Sholes ROM before knocking it.

I run my own custom setup.

Deodexed Android
Optimized APKs
1ghz OC with t3hSteve's kernel that has backported fixes in it
Smoked Glass 2.0 metamorph theme
5 screen 2.0.1 launcher
MT Browser, and 3D Gallery

...and a whole slew of stuff I removed from my ROM as well.

It works very well. I reccomend folks try the path of DIY. It makes for a learning experience, and IMO, a faster ROM thats exactly how you want it.

adrynalyne, may I ask you a few questions about your setup?

1) Can you explain what "deodexed android" means?
2) Can you explain how the APKs are optimized and what the result is?
3) What are the "Backport fixes?" (I am using tehSteve's 950 kernel)

Right now, since I am trying to keep it light, the only thing I have done is installed the 950 MHz kernel and the MT gallery and browser. I don't think I'm interested in the smoked glass theme or the 5 screen launcher. Since you said yours runs really smooth, I'd be interested in trying out something similar, once I understand the things I asked about above. Would you be able to provide me with a nandroid for the options I am interested in?

While I await your response, I'm off to do some googling.

 

[adrynalyne]

I have no choppy performance AT ALL using 800mhz or 1ghz. However, I've also worked hard to maximize memory, minimize crap I don't want running, and have optimized my APKs.

 

[adrynalyne]

I'd try the Sholes ROM before knocking it.

I run my own custom setup.

Deodexed Android
Optimized APKs
1ghz OC with t3hSteve's kernel that has backported fixes in it
Smoked Glass 2.0 metamorph theme
5 screen 2.0.1 launcher
MT Browser, and 3D Gallery

...and a whole slew of stuff I removed from my ROM as well.

It works very well. I reccomend folks try the path of DIY. It makes for a learning experience, and IMO, a faster ROM thats exactly how you want it.

adrynalyne, may I ask you a few questions about your setup?

1) Can you explain what "deodexed android" means?
2) Can you explain how the APKs are optimized and what the result is?
3) What are the "Backport fixes?" (I am using tehSteve's 950 kernel)

Right now, since I am trying to keep it light, the only thing I have done is installed the 950 MHz kernel and the MT gallery and browser. I don't think I'm interested in the smoked glass theme or the 5 screen launcher. Since you said yours runs really smooth, I'd be interested in trying out something similar, once I understand the things I asked about above. Would you be able to provide me with a nandroid for the options I am interested in?

While I await your response, I'm off to do some googling.

Deodexed means the odex files have been removed that are needed for the system APKs. As I understand, the data contained in them gets moved into the APK itself. Don't quote me on that. I only did it because its required for some tweaks. I don't know that it helps performance.

Optimizing APKs is by using zipalign. This results in larger sizes, but quicker performance.

The backported fixes are listed here:
AllDroid - View topic - Some random kernel patches for 2.6.29

 

[kenkamm]

Kenkamm, How much memory are you typically keeping free? I've really found that tends to be the bottleneck even when you're running @800+Mhz

Hmm. To be honest I got rid of my task killer a while back because I just didn't see an improvement from using it. What's the best way to check the free mem without using one of those apps?

 

[adrynalyne]

You can get a system info utility.

By the way, I have a nandroid of my current setup if you want to try it. As with anything, YMMV.

 

[kenkamm]

I would like to try that, yes, thank you. Is there a chance I could get a version without the launcher and theme? Either way, thanks for your help.

 

[adrynalyne]

Yeah, it uses the stock theme. The only difference in the launcher from 2.0.1 is that it is using five screens.

*********** - online file sharing and storage - download adryn-BDRS-20100214-0010.7z

 

[DigiK]

To be honest I got rid of my task killer a while back because I just didn't see an improvement from using it. What's the best way to check the free mem without using one of those apps?

You can check available memory by going to Settings>Apps>Running Services, but you should consider giving a task killer a shot again. 'Task Manager' is a great app that also can display a numerical battery readout in the notification bar. Sure it has some memory overhead associated with running it, but the problem with Android is that it just loves to preload apps it thinks you're going to use instead of keeping the memory free for when applications actually need more RAM . The OS just doesn't houseclean fast enough. I've experienced intolerable slow downs where the system becomes unresponsive if not using a task manager to kill superfluous services prior to using memory intensive apps like Mixzing, Maps/Nav, or browser. Anyone who says you don't need a task killer with Android hasn't actually pushed the boundaries in real-world usage to qualify that statement.