Why Android’s UI Is Laggy Compared to iOS and Windows Phone
Original Source: daringfireball.net
Interesting technical look at the design of Android’s graphics and event processing by Andrew Munn, trying to explain why it feels so laggy compared to iOS and Windows Phone:
Android UI will never be completely smooth because of the design constraints I discussed at the beginning:
- UI rendering occurs on the main thread of an app
- UI rendering has normal priority
[…] This is the same reason why Windows Mobile 6.5, Blackberry OS, and Symbian have terrible touch screen performance. Like Android, they were not designed to prioritize UI rendering. Since the iPhone’s release, RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia have abandoned their mobile OS’s and started from scratch. Android is the only mobile OS left that existed pre-iPhone.
I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms before, but I think he’s right. Symbian and the old BlackBerry OS aren’t gone yet, but they’ve been deprecated by Nokia and RIM in favor of OSes designed post-iPhone.
Also funny to see in the comments a few Android fans denying that Android is laggy. “I don’t mind Android’s relative UI lagginess because of X, Y, and Z other things that Android does better than any other mobile OS” is a reasonable stance. “It is a myth that Android has issues with lagginess and UI responsiveness” is not.
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khoury posted this
My name is Matt and I am a Product Manager specializing in Mobile at Thomson Reuters. I like my Family. I like Apple. I like Photography. I like Mobile Toys. I like Food. I like Golf. I'm big into all technology with major interests in mobile which fascinates the begeebees out of me. I like a lot of stuff so I thought I'd share along with the occasional light-bulb of insight too. All views expressed are mine alone.
