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Gav2k

macrumors G3
Jul 24, 2009
9,216
1,608
Yes both lag in certain circumstances. Hence why google are throwing money at project butter.
 

Apollo 13

macrumors 6502a
May 29, 2010
679
16
Everything lags if you have enough apps opened.

have you used an iphone 5 and loaded up 50+ apps and try to make it lag? I did that with a jailbroken iphone 5 with tons of tweaks and live wallpaper running. I can open safari and browse the web with no lag. I can even open up Engadget app and scroll with no lag. I did see lag when I opened the multitask window that uses the Auxo icons and scrolled and that was the only lag I experienced, but that can be blamed on the developer because once you scroll through all the icons it's smooth as butter; which tells me it needs optimization. I did that on a iphone 4 which is old and got major lag, but iphone 5 just the auxo multitask icons lag. Take my android device and open up the Comcast app and start scrolling all I see is lag with not even a app running in the background. While on my iphone or ipad it's butter smooth even with 50+ apps opened. People shouldn't talk about lag on a ios device unless you ran one that has 1GB of Ram.
 
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LIVEFRMNYC

macrumors G3
Oct 27, 2009
8,878
10,987
have you used an iphone 5 and loaded up 50+ apps and try to make it lag? I did that with a jailbroken iphone 5 with tons of tweaks and live wallpaper running. I can open safari and browse the web with no lag. I can even open up Engadget app and scroll with no lag. I did see lag when I opened the multitask window that uses the Auxo icons and scrolled and that was the only lag I experienced, but that can be blamed on the developer because once you scroll through all the icons it's smooth as butter; which tells me it needs optimization. I did that on a iphone 4 which is old and got major lag, but iphone 5 just the auxo multitask icons lag. Take my android device and open up the Comcast app and start scrolling all I see is lag with not even a app running in the background. While on my iphone or ipad it's butter smooth even with 50+ apps opened. People shouldn't talk about lag on a ios device unless you ran one that has 1GB of Ram.


50+ apps open at the same time?

News flash .... They weren't still opened. ;)
 

zbarvian

macrumors 68010
Jul 23, 2011
2,004
2
50+ apps open at the same time?

News flash .... They weren't still opened. ;)

Android doesn't keep an infinite number of applications running either. All systems start killing off applications when they hog too many resources.
 

zbarvian

macrumors 68010
Jul 23, 2011
2,004
2
That's really app dependent on Android.

Is that a good thing? Senior Android developers at I/O just said that the newer applications optimized for 4.0 and higher are causing lag:

"The lagging effects that some users may experience has more to do with each of the individual applications than the system itself, and those applications are sometimes optimized to work only with newer hardware."
 

LIVEFRMNYC

macrumors G3
Oct 27, 2009
8,878
10,987
Is that a good thing?

Well if you wanna live in a completely worry free app world then, no. You'll be better off with the iPhone and the App store.


Senior Android developers at I/O just said that the newer applications optimized for 4.0 and higher are causing lag:

"The lagging effects that some users may experience has more to do with each of the individual applications than the system itself, and those applications are sometimes optimized to work only with newer hardware."

Consider most posts I see on lag is more about the OS, default launcher, or default apps. So maybe most of the cases are from bloat and not really any apps downloaded. 4.2.2 was known to have lag even on the N4.
 

Michael Goff

Suspended
Jul 5, 2012
13,329
7,422
True, but browsing Safari on iOS on my iPhone 5 is tons smoother than using Chrome on my Nexus 4 or GS3. Granted their are other browsers are smoother than Chrome, such as Opera. But none of them are near as fluid as iOS. It isn't terrible on Android, it's just smoother on iOS.

I agree, the windowed mode is pretty sick. :p

That's Chrome, it's really bad on mobile (since it takes huge amounts of resources and mobiles don't have them).
 

tengtengvn

macrumors member
Apr 14, 2013
82
4
That's Chrome, it's really bad on mobile (since it takes huge amounts of resources and mobiles don't have them).

+1
I've been using Dolphin HD for a long time. I've tried others but keep going back to Dolphin HD. It's a solid mobile browser.
 

Chodite

macrumors 6502a
Sep 23, 2007
586
0
Baltimore, MD
Too lazy to go through 6 pages of this, but Galaxy S4 user here - NO LAG. Smooth as butter. And I'm coming from an iPhone 5.

(I'll gladly make a video)
 

mib1800

Suspended
Original poster
Sep 16, 2012
2,859
1,250
Both function in the same way in that they display apps lasted opened, with one difference. On iOS, the apps are suspended so do not use any CPU at all nor drain the battery (with the exception of certain apps that need to remain "live" like music apps, VOIP apps when being used), while on Android all opened apps continue running in the background.

Not all opened apps in Android consume CPU cycles in the background. In reality most apps (other than service apps) when they go into the background they are suspended like in iOS. The only difference is that these suspended apps can still receive intents/events and when they do, they will wake up and run.

And you are right that in some cases, on Android, closing out of the app doesn't actually stop it from running. Not all of them do this, but I've noticed that Skype and Facebook don't actually shut down even when you swipe them away. Why this is the case, I don't know... but I find it to be counterintuitive. I do like the swiping gesture to remove the apps in Android (which I also have on iOS thanks to Auxo). Hope this gets implemented in the next iOS.

There is no need to close out any apps in iOS for the sake of performance. The only performance hit you get is when your device runs out of RAM and needs to close out on apps to free up RAM for other apps. You may notice slight lag temporarily until this is completed but that's about it. On older devices with limited RAM though, this may happen too frequently or result in crashes due to RAM not freeing up fast enough due to their slow CPUs so it may be useful to do so, but not necessary on newer devices with A5 chips or better. I've never had to shut down an app on my iPhone 5 nor my iPad mini ever. The process of freeing RAM happens so seamlessly you don't even notice.

You don't actually need to worry about "closing" of app in Android either. Apps are divided into 2 broad categories - normal and service app. Normal app will get suspended when it goes to the background (like iOS) and when RAM is needed they are unloaded. Service apps are kept alive in RAM monitored by the OS. If any service app that continues to hog the cpu for a certain amount time the "force close/wait" dialog will popup. And you cannot kill service app (it will be restarted).

The problem arises when you have you have many rouge (or poorly programmed) service apps that keep waking up in short regular intervals to do processing and thus consuming battery. But most mainstream apps that are service apps like skype. whatsapp, g+, tw etc dont really consume much battery.
 
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kasakka

macrumors 68020
Oct 25, 2008
2,389
1,083
To me, the retarded Iphone scrolling speed is a bigger negative user experience compared to occasional stutters (or frame drop) in Android.

Ifans keep saying Iphone has better user experience. Does Iphone really have a better user experience when a lot of the UI design is flawed? E.g.

- Placement of nav/back/command buttons at the top left making reach difficult when using one-handed. Also waste of screen area to cater to these buttons leaving little viewing area.
- Beat-around-bush steps to access and change Settings.
- Difficult to navigate to previous apps in the stack. Need to callout the multi-task menu instead of just pressing "back" button on Android.
- idiosyncracies of the UI. click small arrow on the item for edit command or swipe on item for delete command or use command buttons/slide-up menu for other commands. Compare this to Android's simple and logical by just long press on item to popup command menu.
- No support for shortcuts or easy toggles.
- Notification panel that blocks the screen.

Another take:
  • Having the buttons on top is sensible as that's where usually any branding etc is as well. The placement doesn't become an issue until phone sizes get bigger than the iPhone 5.
  • The inconsistent back functionality in Android is ********. When I press back, I want the last step to be whatever is the top level of the current app. It should not change apps or go to the home screen, that's why there's a separate home button or gesture. Applications aren't a stack.
  • Agreed about settings, but I still think it's better to have settings in one place vs scattered inside each app with a different UI etc.
  • Long pressing for a menu is no more logical. It's just a different action you have to learn. Personally I really like how quick the "swipe and click delete" functionality is to use while also being pretty foolproof so you don't accidentally remove stuff.
  • Agree about quick toggles though that is available as a jailbreak feature.
  • With the screen sizes the iPhones have, having a small notifications display isn't that useful.

Oh and iOS 6 does lag sometimes, on both my iPhone 4 and iPad 3. Even stock Android lags occasionally on the devices I've used. I think it will still take a while before we don't see this on mobile devices and it is further aggravated by the more immediate response we expect when using devices with our fingers.
 

TommyA6

macrumors 65816
May 15, 2013
1,056
516
Another take:
  • Having the buttons on top is sensible as that's where usually any branding etc is as well. The placement doesn't become an issue until phone sizes get bigger than the iPhone 5.
  • The inconsistent back functionality in Android is ********. When I press back, I want the last step to be whatever is the top level of the current app. It should not change apps or go to the home screen, that's why there's a separate home button or gesture. Applications aren't a stack.
  • Agreed about settings, but I still think it's better to have settings in one place vs scattered inside each app with a different UI etc.
  • Long pressing for a menu is no more logical. It's just a different action you have to learn. Personally I really like how quick the "swipe and click delete" functionality is to use while also being pretty foolproof so you don't accidentally remove stuff.
  • Agree about quick toggles though that is available as a jailbreak feature.
  • With the screen sizes the iPhones have, having a small notifications display isn't that useful.

Oh and iOS 6 does lag sometimes, on both my iPhone 4 and iPad 3. Even stock Android lags occasionally on the devices I've used. I think it will still take a while before we don't see this on mobile devices and it is further aggravated by the more immediate response we expect when using devices with our fingers.

Lag is expected with iPhone 4, considering it's (now) outdated and weak internals. Although iPad 3 is just over a year old it uses the same CPU from the iPad 2, and it's GPU (although 2x as powerful as the A5) has to push 4x the number of pixels.
The fairest thing to do is to compare the newest generation of devices (iPhone 5 (A6) and iPad 4 (A6X)). I have an iPhone 5 and it never lags. The only way you can make it stutter is to restart it and then the moment it turns on swipe to the spotlight screen. That's the only time I experienced lag with the iPhone 5. After doing this you can swipe to spotlight a hundred times and do whatever you want and as fast as you want and the phone won't lag. It is the smoothest phone there is.
 

Dr McKay

macrumors 68040
Aug 11, 2010
3,539
276
Kirkland
I see what you mean about scrolling in iOS. I visited my grandparents yesterday. At Christmas I bought them an iPad 4 to replace their dying laptop, my grandad asked me where he could get a HDMI adaptor for the ipad. I went on apples site to look at accessories, scrolling took forever. I swear its like it only let me scroll a few inches with each flick. I don't remember it being that slow.

I guess I've been spoiled by android scrolling, where I have 100 comments per page in these forums enabled, I can scroll to about comment number 30 in a single flick.
 

TommyA6

macrumors 65816
May 15, 2013
1,056
516
I see what you mean about scrolling in iOS. I visited my grandparents yesterday. At Christmas I bought them an iPad 4 to replace their dying laptop, my grandad asked me where he could get a HDMI adaptor for the ipad. I went on apples site to look at accessories, scrolling took forever. I swear its like it only let me scroll a few inches with each flick. I don't remember it being that slow.

I guess I've been spoiled by android scrolling, where I have 100 comments per page in these forums enabled, I can scroll to about comment number 30 in a single flick.

The thing is that iOS way of scrolling is not laggy. It is intentionally made that way (it offers the most control). In the music app for example scrolling is faster (it doesn't mean it is better). I prefer the iOS way and you are free to prefer Android, but to say iOS scrolling is laggy is simply not true.
 

Tinmania

macrumors 68040
Aug 8, 2011
3,528
1,016
Aridzona
Really? I've used iOS since it came out and have never seen this before. Not even on a first gen iPad.

Then you never had apps downloading and installing in the background. If anything, that makes iOS stutter and lag far more than doing the same on Android.

I can even tell when an app being downloaded has gone from downloading to installing--as that is when things are the most jerky.

It is very real.



Michael

----------

If you close all other apps in the background, does it still lag?
I never bother closing apps and my Note 2 does not lag. I still own it. No "justification memories" going on here.



Michael
 

sk1wbw

Suspended
May 28, 2011
3,483
1,010
Williamsburg, Virginia
Then you never had apps downloading and installing in the background. If anything, that makes iOS stutter and lag far more than doing the same on Android.

I can even tell when an app being downloaded has gone from downloading to installing--as that is when things are the most jerky.

It is very real.



Michael

----------


I never bother closing apps and my Note 2 does not lag. I still own it. No "justification memories" going on here.



Michael

Dude, I've used Apple hardware since a still warm out of the box Apple //. Don't ****ing tell me what I've never done and ****. Trust me when I ****ing say stuff. It means I know what the **** I'm talking about.
 

adnbek

macrumors 68000
Oct 22, 2011
1,584
551
Montreal, Quebec
I see what you mean about scrolling in iOS. I visited my grandparents yesterday. At Christmas I bought them an iPad 4 to replace their dying laptop, my grandad asked me where he could get a HDMI adaptor for the ipad. I went on apples site to look at accessories, scrolling took forever. I swear its like it only let me scroll a few inches with each flick. I don't remember it being that slow.

I guess I've been spoiled by android scrolling, where I have 100 comments per page in these forums enabled, I can scroll to about comment number 30 in a single flick.

It's done intentionally. I don't want a flick to take me all the way to the bottom of a page. A flick is just that, a way to scroll a bit further down. I feel it's more precise that way, instead a flick throwing me all the way to the bottom of the page.

And speaking of flicking. On Android tablets, Chrome's flick scrolling is completely broken. Sometimes the page won't even move at all. I've tried this on my Nexus 7 and my older Asus Memo tablet and it's the same behavior.
Is Google ever going to release an update to fix this? It's just painful.
 

mib1800

Suspended
Original poster
Sep 16, 2012
2,859
1,250
It's done intentionally. I don't want a flick to take me all the way to the bottom of a page. A flick is just that, a way to scroll a bit further down. I feel it's more precise that way, instead a flick throwing me all the way to the bottom of the page.

Then the intention is wrong. On Android depending on the length or intensity of the flick the scrolling speed varies according. one flick can take you a long or short distance. On iphone the max speed/distance is always the same no matter how fast or long you flick.

The implementation of iphone general UI and browser scrolling is subpar compared to android. Since we use scrolling all the time I feel the lag in iphone is worse. I use the s3 and note2 most of the time and I can immediately feel the irritating ip5 scrolling lag when I use it.
 
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