Technology Android

[dilla]

There were minimum spec rumors about both Honeycomb and Gingerbread. All I can say is that those rumors were complete bullshit from day one and I have no idea who started them. Perhaps a disgruntled iOS fan trying to be a killjoy.

But straight from the horse's mouth both times - the following tweets from Dan Morrill, one of the main Android developers at Google.

Dan Morril Says No Minimum Requirements for Honeycomb | Android Phone Fans

Googles Dan Morrill: Gingerbread does not require 1GHz - CyanogenMod Forum

Dan Morrill Calls Foul On Whoever Started That Gingerbread Rumor | Android Phone Fans

I'm surprised that people even thought the rumors were credible in any form. As soon as the original article came out that said Gingerbread had minumum spec requirements, Dan Morril tweeted a link to it and wrote "I love it when people just make stuff up and report it as news."

Well, I could only find one quote of yours pertaining to requirements

There are no specific requirements for Gingerbread. It's possible there will be for Honeycomb.

Which is what gave me the idea that there would be requirements soon. But I guess not, then. But that was why I asked because you had said a couple of times, other than the quote above, that is was possible there would be requirements. But if it was said from the beginning that there was no chance of it, then...

I think that while Honeycomb is revolutionary I'm not really feeling the UI. I mean - the web browser, youtube app look awesome but the main UI looks kind of dull. And I don't really like these upcoming devices. Maybe because I'm not a fan of tablets at all.
I mean - they may look pretty fine technology-wise but since I used one I'm convinced that it's not a convenient form factor. Also I doubt that many people would really need it and find a real use for it that they couldn't do in an easier way with other devices.
It's more of a "wow I want it" factor that drives people to buying them.

You know how people read their Kindles on the bus, plane, train, etc.? When waiting at the airport, bus stop, or if you're school, in the student center somewhere on campus, it's a bit easier for those type of reading and browsing. Not to sit there and type up an essay (although, I'm sure you could with a physical keyboard) but to just browse news, sports scores, Facebook, etc. Not that bringing my MBP on campus is a hassle, nor is pulling it out to check something in the student center or something, but a tablet would give me an even quicker startup than my notebook, like my phone, and will be just as quick to put away. I could read a book on it, play a game, or just post on SH from it. And when I'm done, just quickly put it away and move on.

Now, I'm sure tablets will be expensive and whether the situations I mentioned above are worth paying hundreds for a tablet for all varies. But since netbooks were a craze, like Pokemon, better means of mobile computing like the tablet are going to be big. I know a few people that use them for work. Engineers, doctors, etc. Especially some of the apps which can help design stuff or show patients a website or a list of symptoms or a diagram for anatomy, it seems to be the future. I remember smartphones started off the same. They were expensive, data was expensive, and not many people had them. I think the same will happen to tablets over the next few years. Maybe months. Maybe this time, next year, we have something more affordable as more manufacturers get on board with this stuff to drive the competition. Right now, the iPad is the only legit tablet out right now. That's all people have come to know. As the market diversifies, maybe we'll have high and low-end tablets to make it more affordable.

 

[masta247]

You know how people read their Kindles on the bus, plane, train, etc.? When waiting at the airport, bus stop, or if you're school, in the student center somewhere on campus, it's a bit easier for those type of reading and browsing. Not to sit there and type up an essay (although, I'm sure you could with a physical keyboard) but to just browse news, sports scores, Facebook, etc. Not that bringing my MBP on campus is a hassle, nor is pulling it out to check something in the student center or something, but a tablet would give me an even quicker startup than my notebook, like my phone, and will be just as quick to put away. I could read a book on it, play a game, or just post on SH from it. And when I'm done, just quickly put it away and move on.

Now, I'm sure tablets will be expensive and whether the situations I mentioned above are worth paying hundreds for a tablet for all varies. But since netbooks were a craze, like Pokemon, better means of mobile computing like the tablet are going to be big. I know a few people that use them for work. Engineers, doctors, etc. Especially some of the apps which can help design stuff or show patients a website or a list of symptoms or a diagram for anatomy, it seems to be the future. I remember smartphones started off the same. They were expensive, data was expensive, and not many people had them. I think the same will happen to tablets over the next few years. Maybe months. Maybe this time, next year, we have something more affordable as more manufacturers get on board with this stuff to drive the competition. Right now, the iPad is the only legit tablet out right now. That's all people have come to know. As the market diversifies, maybe we'll have high and low-end tablets to make it more affordable.

Perhaps you're right. Maybe it's just not for me. Or maybe they haven't evolved enough to satisfy me yet. I really like the fact that a real deal tablet OS (Honeycomb) is about to get released because Samsung Tab sucks balls with a phone-ish Android and while I hate to say it at the moment there's no real competition for the Ipad. With Honeycomb it will change but still it feels like Google wouldn't do it if it wasn't for competing with the Ipad.

Also, I had an Ipad and found that carrying it around wasn't really cool. I didn't use it on the bus because I live in a city that gets pretty crowded during peak hours. When I in fact could use it I felt weird and didn't really enjoy it as much as I thought I would. If I had a long way to my university (say, more than an hour) in a relatively empty bus then that would be a different story probably but still I would have to try it to find out if I could be bothered to launch it.
I didn't use it at the university because I had my laptop there which is much more convenient imo. A tablet is quite convenient for reading and browsing (the only thing it's good at) - like a smartphone with a bigger screen. However typing or doing anything productive with it is impossible.
I mean - I can see some possibilities but they are not enough to convince me in particular. Some things sound nice in theory but in practice I didn't find it useful, I wasn't really enthusiastic about it in the first place and when I had it I thought that it's even less useful than I though because I found out that it's not really great at things it was marketed to be good at and it's not really convenient. But again, maybe it's just me. I prefer even a netbook (at least 12inch screen size though) because they have comfortable keyboards, full OS and the experience is just more complete.
As far as I always thought that there was a need for smartphones, netbooks etc I think that mainstream tablets are pretty much not-really-needed, not really convenient gimmicks.

 

[Casey]

The reason I said it was possible for Honeycomb (although I also said I didn't think it was likely) is because of it being a forked release. It was very possible that they could have required at the very least a minimum screen size just to drive the point home that it's intended as a tablet release, because like I said, ROM devs are gonna mess around with it and start flashing it on phones and that's probably not a very good idea. But they obviously feel they are able to get that point across without hammering in any specificities, which is pretty much what I had figured.

 

[dilla]

Perhaps you're right. Maybe it's just not for me. Or maybe they haven't evolved enough to satisfy me yet. I really like the fact that a real deal tablet OS (Honeycomb) is about to get released because Samsung Tab sucks balls with a phone-ish Android and while I hate to say it at the moment there's no real competition for the Ipad. With Honeycomb it will change but still it feels like Google wouldn't do it if it wasn't for competing with the Ipad.

Also, I had an Ipad and found that carrying it around wasn't really cool. I didn't use it on the bus because I live in a city that gets pretty crowded during peak hours. When I in fact could use it I felt weird and didn't really enjoy it as much as I thought I would. If I had a long way to my university (say, more than an hour) in a relatively empty bus then that would be a different story probably but still I would have to try it to find out if I could be bothered to launch it.
I didn't use it at the university because I had my laptop there which is much more convenient imo. A tablet is quite convenient for reading and browsing (the only thing it's good at) - like a smartphone with a bigger screen. However typing or doing anything productive with it is impossible.
I mean - I can see some possibilities but they are not enough to convince me in particular. Some things sound nice in theory but in practice I didn't find it useful, I wasn't really enthusiastic about it in the first place and when I had it I thought that it's even less useful than I though because I found out that it's not really great at things it was marketed to be good at and it's not really convenient. But again, maybe it's just me. I prefer even a netbook (at least 12inch screen size though) because they have comfortable keyboards, full OS and the experience is just more complete.
As far as I always thought that there was a need for smartphones, netbooks etc I think that mainstream tablets are pretty much not-really-needed, not really convenient gimmicks.

Yeah, I forgot to mention people that travel a good bit. Again, I don't mind pulling out my laptop at the gate, but I've seen people be at more ease watching a movie on their iPad. You can move it around a lot easier, and if you need to get up to do something, it's very easy to resume watching it by simply hitting the power button and it waiting for you right there. Also, on a plane, it's a bit harder to get a 13" laptop on the table and not have the fuckstick in front of you lean their seat all the way back into your stomach. Even then, there isn't much room to really watch a movie. I think a tablet would fit that situation better.

And as good of a music player my phone is, if I'm in a plane or waiting somewhere for some time, I think music on a tablet would be a bit easier to maneuver through. The larger screen would be nice to navigate menus.

Also, see that feature Honeycomb had that let simply allowed the menu bars to branch once you clicked them? Definitely needs a big screen, something a phone wouldn't have, but is really cool and useful and could make tasks like GMail and browsing a bit more preferable on a tablet.

That's not to say everything we can do on our phones now will simply be replaced by a tablet, but we may not use our phones as much, saving battery, data charges, etc. by determining what device to use depending upon how strenuous the task is. Play a proper game? Notebook. Simply browsing the web or watching a movie or listening to music? (For me) A tablet would do that best for me. Need to text or IM someone. Check directions real quick or play a less intensive game? A phone will do.

I think after some time, even the developers will learn what apps are tablet appropriate and what are phone appropriate and adapt accordingly. Of course, you could run them on both, but it's up to the user to determine which device it is. That's one aspect of open-source, right?

 

[S O F I]

I guess the cool thing for club promoters nowadays is to use the iPad for guestlist purposes. It hides the notion that they're all high school dropouts and the clubs are shitholes.

 

[dilla]

 

[Flipmo]

I know we talked about this before, about the bandwidth cap here in Canada.

Small Internet providers welcome reversal of CRTC cap
By PETER DOWNS , STANDARD STAFF
Updated 2 hours ago


Independent Internet service providers in Niagara are applauding a move by the federal government to protect unlimited web plans.

"I think it's a good thing the government finally stepped in," said Bernie Borgmann, president of Niagara.com."I think this is a big win for the consumers."

Industry Minister Tony Clement announced late Wednesday Ottawa is prepared to overturn a contentious decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to cap unlimited-use Internet plans if the regulator doesn't rescind it itself.

Consumers and Internet service providers, or ISPs, across the country have slammed the CRTC decision, which would enable large ISPs such as Bell Canada to force smaller independents that lease bandwidth from them to match their capped Internet usage plans.

Under limited plans, web users have to pay extra fees if they surpass their maximum monthly allotment of data transferred.

Critics argue the CRTC decision will stifle market competition from small providers and boost user fees for consumers.

Borgmann maintained the issue at the heart of the debate is not about bandwidth at all. Instead, he suggested Bell and other large telecommunications companies are trying to protect their turf with the emergence of competitors selling TV shows and movies online, such as Netflix.

"They're seeing their Internet connection is going to be providing content that they provide that will be in direct competition to them," he said.

"How do you lock it down? You lock it down by narrowing the bandwidth."

Dave McCarthy, owner of St. Catharines-based Vaxxine Computer Systems, said he's glad the government is intervening, but he's also anxious to see what the CRTC comes up with as a replacement.

"I'm feeling a lot better than I was the other day," he said.

"The optimism at this time is quite high, and rightly so."

The big ISPs, such as Bell and Telus, had argued they spent billions of dollars upgrading their networks and need to be able to set prices to ensure a fair return on their investments. They said the change they wanted would have affected on a very few of their highest-usage customers.

It's gonna be reversed eventually, the Government is more than likely going to intervene. People in Canada have been protesting it like crazy, sounds like we're gonna win on this one. Tony Clement has always backed the people though, he's been fighting major telecom corporations for quite some time now, he obviously can't do everything on his own, but it's good to see someone on the peoples side.

 

[dilla]

That's good that it got repealed.

No one's doing the CM7 nightlies? Don't hear you guys saying much about it in here.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

im quite happy with CM 6.1.1 - so until a stable CM7 comes out, im not even thinking of trying to upgrade the version...

 

[Pittsey]

Got the app I was looking for - http://www.seekdroid.com

I had ilocalis on my iphone and couldn't find a decent equivalent. I have now. Cost me a dollar.

 

[dilla]

Lookout Mobile probably could have done the same for you for free. As would have Find My Phone, from the same developer as Seek Droid.

 

[masta247]

LG Optimus 2X preview and benchmarks:
LG Optimus 2X first encounter: How fast is Tegra 2? - GSMArena.com

Pretty much what I thought about dual cores in mobile phones:

Having seen all these numbers, you probably expect to hear that the LG Optimus 2X is much faster than the current crop of Android smartphones in each and every task, but we are afraid we will have to disappoint you here.

In real life the Optimus 2X feels buttery smooth but it doesn’t feel much different than the Samsung Galaxy S, for instance. The Samsung flagship is pretty smooth already and there is not much room for improvement in terms of pure UI responsiveness.

and:

However if you are expecting to see some major upgrade over your current Android flagship you might be a bit disappointed. See the Optimus 2X is more of an investment in the future that should remain up to date for at least another year (unless LG fails to deliver on the software update end) than a great value-for-money purchase right now.

I think that a Hummingbird-like efficiency is what cuts it for mobile phones for at least one more year and companies should think about making these processors more energy efficient - for example a Hummingbird at its peak performance will drain your 1500mAh battery within 4-5 hours. To make a phone smaller and slimmer the batteries will also have to be smaller in capacity so a more efficient set is important for the sake of moving on with technology.
Still there are probably no apps that are demanding enough to use 100% of Hummingbird's processing power or find use of 90million polygons/sec graphics capability. No way. I'm glad that now GSM Arena also summed it up about UI responsiveness - that there's no difference despite approx 2 to 3 times more processing power in LG Optimus 2X.

 

[dilla]

When you factor in what the article said, that the second core was merely "assisting" the first one and would not be fully utilized until beyond GB, do you still feel the same?

I can understand having one RIGHT NOW is not really a necessity, but when Ice Cream (whatever "I" is gonna be for Android) comes out, and supports dual-cores, does anything change?

 

[THEV1LL4N]

again, it'll be some time before Ice Cream makes its way onto various phones. you have to remember that only the flagship phones get the latest iteration first. and eventually, they make their way over to other phones officially via OTA or by ports/custom roms.

 

[Pittsey]

Ran into an old friend last night who works for Google UK. For Christmas the staff got given a Nexus S each. Nice touch.

 

[masta247]

When you factor in what the article said, that the second core was merely "assisting" the first one and would not be fully utilized until beyond GB, do you still feel the same?

I can understand having one RIGHT NOW is not really a necessity, but when Ice Cream (whatever "I" is gonna be for Android) comes out, and supports dual-cores, does anything change?

Even with single core the CPU in LG Optimus 2X is much more efficient than a Hummingbird and still you can't see the difference at the moment just because Hummingbird is fast enough to handle everything you can do on a mobile phone while rarely reaching 100% of its power (there's probably no app that could peak it by itself, at least not one that is well optimized).
At this point even a quad-core 3ghz wouldn't make any noticeable difference simply because modern high end CPUs are fast enough to do everything smoothly without even reaching their peaks. Raising the CPU speed won't raise "responsiveness" anymore, even with modern 1ghz CPUs there's a huge reserve meaning that they could handle a much more demanding system with much more demanding user interface and run it smoothly.
The only situation in which you could see an advantage at the moment is while you'd be running multiple demanding tasks at the same time (for example downloading a lot of huge files, watching a HD video while having a video call on Skype active) which is pretty rare for most people. It would noticeably lag on a Hummingbird while doing so though.
Sometimes there are also slowdowns caused by the fact that some other app just required 100% of processor power but these are caused by lack of optimization - dual core would deal with them a tad better if one core was dedicated to apps and another one for the UI layer.

And about that "Ice cream/future" question I think that in the future these CPU beasts will be useful mostly for demanding games but still it's more about GPU. However CPU and GPU development in mobile phones seems to go in pair mostly because they reside on the same platform.

Now I suppose that Optimus 2X's processor is only a beginning of a multi-core ultra-fast processor race. Right at the moment it's absolutely not needed and even processors that are 2-3 times slower are good enough for everything that you throw at them.
In the future when there will really be games that could potentially make use of it we will probably have 2ghz quad-cores and such if the race continues.
They will probably be as useless as dual cores right now.
However right at the moment phones like Optimus 2X are pioneers and they certainly stimulate developers to create demanding games - the new Tegra gaming platform also.
The point is that users don't need what that phone offers right now as they will have no opportunity to use it. If there were already games that could use it then it'd be a different story.

The point remains that buying a phone with a multi-core CPU would only be justified by games, at least until they come up with something that could really need a faster CPU because there's no such thing right now and no such thing in plans for the nearest future.

 

[dilla]

Even with single core the CPU in LG Optimus 2X is much more efficient than a Hummingbird and still you can't see the difference at the moment just because Hummingbird is fast enough to handle everything you can do on a mobile phone while rarely reaching 100% of its power (there's probably no app that could peak it by itself, at least not one that is well optimized).
At this point even a quad-core 3ghz wouldn't make any noticeable difference simply because modern high end CPUs are fast enough to do everything smoothly without even reaching their peaks. Raising the CPU speed won't raise "responsiveness" anymore, even with modern 1ghz CPUs there's a huge reserve meaning that they could handle a much more demanding system with much more demanding user interface and run it smoothly.
The only situation in which you could see an advantage at the moment is while you'd be running multiple demanding tasks at the same time (for example downloading a lot of huge files, watching a HD video while having a video call on Skype active) which is pretty rare for most people. It would noticeably lag on a Hummingbird while doing so though.
Sometimes there are also slowdowns caused by the fact that some other app just required 100% of processor power but these are caused by lack of optimization - dual core would deal with them a tad better if one core was dedicated to apps and another one for the UI layer.

And about that "Ice cream/future" question I think that in the future these CPU beasts will be useful mostly for demanding games but still it's more about GPU. However CPU and GPU development in mobile phones seems to go in pair mostly because they reside on the same platform.

Now I suppose that Optimus 2X's processor is only a beginning of a multi-core ultra-fast processor race. Right at the moment it's absolutely not needed and even processors that are 2-3 times slower are good enough for everything that you throw at them.
In the future when there will really be games that could potentially make use of it we will probably have 2ghz quad-cores and such if the race continues.
They will probably be as useless as dual cores right now.
However right at the moment phones like Optimus 2X are pioneers and they certainly stimulate developers to create demanding games - the new Tegra gaming platform also.
The point is that users don't need what that phone offers right now as they will have no opportunity to use it. If there were already games that could use it then it'd be a different story.

The point remains that buying a phone with a multi-core CPU would only be justified by games, at least until they come up with something that could really need a faster CPU because there's no such thing right now and no such thing in plans for the nearest future.

So Tegra 2 would be more useful than a DC because it's a boost in GPU power and not CPU? Possibly even more RAM would be better than DC because the CPUs today are good enough?

I can see that. It's hard to imagine an app that would truly be taxing for a regular user, especially me, because I don't treat my phone like a high-end PC.

 

[masta247]

So Tegra 2 would be more useful than a DC because it's a boost in GPU power and not CPU? Possibly even more RAM would be better than DC because the CPUs today are good enough?

I can see that. It's hard to imagine an app that would truly be taxing for a regular user, especially me, because I don't treat my phone like a high-end PC.

Exactly. Android is smooth enough even on past-generation 800mhz CPUs (fe. slower Snapdragon). Hummingbird nailed it though with its performance and I think anything of similar performance is enough for everything to come any time soon if it comes to CPU (and perhaps GPU also) performance.
For example upgrading it by moving to a smaller manufacturing methods alone (32nm) would make it even more efficient and would also grant a gain in overall performance while significantly reducing the amount of energy consumed.
That's what I'd love to see in the upcoming generation of mobile phones.
But people are so used to fast and big changes in smartphones lately that they want moahr. And they want to pay for that. Most people wouldn't replace their Galaxy S/Droid X or even HTC Desire for a new phone that changes close to nothing on paper.

Maybe in the future they will come up with a reasonable use for dual core but right now and in the nearest future I don't really see it happening. Buying LG Optimus 2X is pointless unless you want it to boast about your new dual core beast and how it kills all benchmarks.
Perhaps buying a DC phone in a year from now or so might not be as pointless though but it's also hard to predict at the moment and mostly depends on upcoming games and Google's ideas on how to use multi-core processors in the future - because Android handles threads in a totally different way than Windows for example.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

I havent even bothered overclocking my G2 to 1GHz. I know Casey did this, but for me, personally, the 800MHz is fast enough and i really want to maximise battery life on this. I thought the battery life would be better so there's no chance im even going to overclock it... i have underclocked it according to certain profiles though, i.e. when the screen is off or when the battery is less than 20% remaining.

Eventually, the clock speed wars may come to an end like they are with PCs and instead adopt a suitability of use plan << if that makes sense.

Masta, how is the Orion processor? The new Samsung Galaxy S2 will be using one. Is it a new type of Hummingbird like the Scorpion was a new type of Qualcomm Snapdragon for the G2?

edit: i think its just another name (dependant on region). I see that the SGS Gummingbird CPU was an ARM Cortex A8, and so the 'Orion' in the SGS2 will be ARM Cortex A9. 5x more efficient?

 

[masta247]

Masta, how is the Orion processor? The new Samsung Galaxy S2 will be using one. Is it a new type of Hummingbird like the Scorpion was a new type of Qualcomm Snapdragon for the G2?

edit: i think its just another name (dependant on region). I see that the SGS Gummingbird CPU was an ARM Cortex A8, and so the 'Orion' in the SGS2 will be ARM Cortex A9. 5x more efficient?

It's just a gossip but Samsung's Orion would be similar to PSP 2's platform that all hardcore geeks are fapping to at the moment ;-)
Not much is known yet though but in theory it should be 25% faster (per core) than A8 (Hummingbird) at the same clock speed. Dual core is never twice as fast as single core but even if it was in this case that would grant max 2,5 times the speed of A8 Cortex. However Hummingbird was very fast. 2,5 times faster (at 1ghz) than Hummingbird would be faster than LG Optimus 2X by CPU power alone.

Now the cool thing. This is going to have 4 quite efficient GPU cores. Easily enough for Full HD recording and playback at 30fps. At the same time.

In short if Samsung Galaxy S2 gets released in its rumored form it's going to be the most complete and awesome portable electronic device ever made.