Technology Android

[masta247]

Mini doesn't render 720P (or do 720p Youtube videos) because its screen resolution is lower than that. It's 1024 pixels wide, 720p requires at least 1280 pixels.

Mini's CPU can't keep up with the N7 because it's much slower and much older. Nexus 7 doubles the core amount and each of them is a little faster too.

Yeah, try them both. To me personally it'd be either a 7 incher for their comfort of use (or 8 inch but in 16:9 so it's still comfortable to hold in one hand) or a proper 10 inch tablet if I wanted to use it only at home.

I still can't get over the fact that I'm buying antiquated hardware. Similar internals to the N4? That's like six months old now. Or more.

Why?

It's Krait, still the most efficient mobile CPU architecture. Nexus 4 was kinda ahead of its time packing this processor and it was the first phone having it. It's down-throttled in it too because LG screwed up.
Qualcomm only updated it to Krait 300 and Krait 400 which are found in newer and much more expensive Snapdragon 600 and 800 chips - they're only about 30% faster and power high end flagships. The GPU is the same.
Those 4 Krait cores are really fast though.

Still better than buying 4 year old chips in an Ipad Mini too ;-)

 

[dilla]

I think saying Krait was ahead of its time is a poor excuse to justify putting it in a bigger device six months later. It's still old hardware and even for a cheap tablet, it's a bit silly. If you're introing a new firmware, new screen, this and that.... it should be something that is more recent.

Like I said, it is just so much more obvious that the four year old chip in the Mini is still trouncing a six month old Snapdragon chip. Whatever the technicalities are behind how many cores are doing how much more work, someone using an iPad Mini will have smoother graphics and will be able to use apps like the Facebook app more smoothly. To me, that's what counts.

Doing stuff like unraring and zipping files comes secondary to being able to have an enjoyable experience while using the product.


The only problem is now that the Cydia community is a bit weird for me and getting cracked apps is always a hassle. Sideloading Android apps has always been easy for me and I usually do it from my browser (downloading them). I doubt I'll be playing many games that would see the Mini shine either.

I really gotta see these things in person. There's no way to sit here and just theoretically judge these things.

I haven't heard much buzz about the wireless charging of the N7. How does it work? If I read one of you guys' posts correctly, I don't need to buy anything else to get wireless to work.

 

[masta247]

I think saying Krait was ahead of its time is a poor excuse to justify putting it in a bigger device six months later. It's still old hardware and even for a cheap tablet, it's a bit silly. If you're introing a new firmware, new screen, this and that.... it should be something that is more recent.

It's not old hardware. It's one of the fastest chipsets right now. Like I said, from Qualcomm only Snapdragon 600 and 800 are newer and they're just updated Krait cores. The cheapest devices running them are above the 500$ range and the difference is maybe 30% in CPU performance, while GPUs are the same. It's a win-win because they manage to keep the price low while offering great performance. If you want the fastest there's Xperia Z Ultra with Snapdragon 800, but it costs 700$ and still it's behind the new Nexus 7 in most other areas. The performance difference between the XZ and new Nexus 7 is still way smaller than the difference between the first N7 and the new N7.

Like I said, it is just so much more obvious that the four year old chip in the Mini is still trouncing a six month old Snapdragon chip. Whatever the technicalities are behind how many cores are doing how much more work, someone using an iPad Mini will have smoother graphics and will be able to use apps like the Facebook app more smoothly. To me, that's what counts.

Trouncing? That Snapdragon runs circles around the Mini processor. It will run circles around the Apple A7 too. There's really no comparison. The thing with UI smoothness is not a matter of hardware but the way OS works. It's the single biggest issue people have with Android. A single core phone running Windows Phone will have smoother experience as well because iOS and WP stop everything to make the UI render smoothly so it appears snappy. The moment you touch the screen 100% of resources are relocated to make scrolling smooth, because that's how newbies tell whether a device is "fast" or not.
The point is that since Jelly Bean Android is smooth enough to offer comfortable and lag free experience while quick CPUs mostly reduce the time needed to do what you need to do. You'll launch apps faster and in app menus and their functionality will work faster. I think it matters less whether you'll have a couple dropped frames when scrolling.

I really gotta see these things in person. There's no way to sit here and just theoretically judge these things.

I agree. It's best to play with all devices you're considering. I thought the Ipad Mini was fine until I started playing with it and compared it to my N7 and the normal Ipad.

I haven't heard much buzz about the wireless charging of the N7. How does it work? If I read one of you guys' posts correctly, I don't need to buy anything else to get wireless to work.

You buy any compatible wireless charger and put the tablet on it to charge.

 

[dilla]

It's not old hardware. It's one of the fastest chipsets right now. Like I said, from Qualcomm only Snapdragon 600 and 800 are newer and they're just updated Krait cores. The cheapest devices running them are above the 500$ range and the difference is maybe 30% in CPU performance, while GPUs are the same. It's a win-win because they manage to keep the price low while offering great performance. If you want the fastest there's Xperia Z Ultra with Snapdragon 800, but it costs 700$ and still it's behind the new Nexus 7 in most other areas. The performance difference between the XZ and new Nexus 7 is still way smaller than the difference between the first N7 and the new N7.




Trouncing? That Snapdragon runs circles around the Mini processor. It will run circles around the Apple A7 too. There's really no comparison. The thing with UI smoothness is not a matter of hardware but the way OS works. It's the single biggest issue people have with Android. A single core phone running Windows Phone will have smoother experience as well because iOS and WP stop everything to make the UI render smoothly so it appears snappy. The moment you touch the screen 100% of resources are relocated to make scrolling smooth, because that's how newbies tell whether a device is "fast" or not.
The point is that since Jelly Bean Android is smooth enough to offer comfortable and lag free experience while quick CPUs mostly reduce the time needed to do what you need to do. You'll launch apps faster and in app menus and their functionality will work faster. I think it matters less whether you'll have a couple dropped frames when scrolling.



I agree. It's best to play with all devices you're considering. I thought the Ipad Mini was fine until I started playing with it and compared it to my N7 and the normal Ipad.



You buy any compatible wireless charger and put the tablet on it to charge.

I made a mistake and confused the hardware for a second. When I said "trouncing" I meant the Mini is trouncing the 7, not the 7.2 Of course the 7.2 would be better than the Mini. I meant the 7, not 7.2.

I know that I'm not getting the best hardware in either the Mini or the 7...Or the 7.2, compared to the, obviously, more expensive tablets out there, like the Sony you mentioned.

And I think I would say that I would much rather have responsiveness over the quickness of performing the tasks Android is supposedly better at. My Touchpad was great when switching between my PowerPoints and my PDF of the book I was going to reference. But when scrolling through both documents, I noticed the lag. I had to readjust a good bit, because I was expecting the scrolling to be as fluid as my finger motion was. It was a bit annoying.

While I have been mentioning the current Mini a lot, I don't think I would buy that edition of it, and instead wait for the update that is rumored to be due out later this year. Which is where my waiting game comes into play. It'll give me some time to learn the 7.2 (never used the 7) and then see the Mini 2 and hope for both a screen upgrade (Really hoping for Retina, otherwise I'd be a bit disappointed, even if they improved it a slight bit like to finally play 720p content) and an upgrade to the chipset.

A friend of mine said it should be on par with the current iPad in performance, still staying a step behind it so as not to cannibalize sales, much like the iPod Touch is behind the 5, and maybe even the 4S as well.

Well, the main thing is the tablet is sold and I have the money for an N7.2 as we speak. If I wanted the Mini 2, I'm sure I'd need at least $100 more which could be covered by me selling my shit BlackBerry and my economic Linksys WRT120N router. I don't plan on buying a tablet beyond the $400 price range, but I may even consider refurbished current-iPads with Retina. That would be at the very bottom of the list, just above not buying a tablet at all.

Someone asked about my MBP. My C2D, 4GB of RAM, 250GB HDD MBP. I threw out the number $1300-1500. They didn't seem shocked. I could negotiate down to $1300 and still be happy. I paid $200 less for it, lol. I could skip the tablet as a whole and get about a $1500 pool of cash and make a run at the Retina MBPs when they are refreshed with Haswell.

I'm getting ahead of myself here. I got exams, can't be worried about this shit, but.... I can dream, right?

 

[Shadows]

Any good non rootblock screen widgets for 4.2 s4?

 

[Pittsey]

Of all the good old US citizens on here, who is going to pick me up a Chromecast to play with. I don't think it's something I'd use more than once, but for $35, it's worth a play.

 

[masta247]

I know that I'm not getting the best hardware in either the Mini or the 7...Or the 7.2, compared to the, obviously, more expensive tablets out there, like the Sony you mentioned.

But for its time you're getting better hardware in 7 and 7.2 than Ipads (despite their significantly higher price). Ipads historically had better GPUs as gaming is more advanced on iOS but that also changed with 7.2 packing Adreno 320 which is a very capable GPU. The point is that there's still no game on Android that'd fully push it. It even maxes out demanding benchmarks at 60 frames per second, and there are no games that get close to being as demanding.

And I think I would say that I would much rather have responsiveness over the quickness of performing the tasks Android is supposedly better at. My Touchpad was great when switching between my PowerPoints and my PDF of the book I was going to reference. But when scrolling through both documents, I noticed the lag. I had to readjust a good bit, because I was expecting the scrolling to be as fluid as my finger motion was. It was a bit annoying.

To put it in perspective though you had 2 Scorpion cores on Touch Pad. Each Krait core is about 3 times quicker, and there are 4 of them. You're going to see major difference - on those 4 Krait cores it's going to get smooth. Scrolling might be slightly less super-smooth than on iOS or WP, but it'd be quite close to that. Also hopefully Google works on that and improves UI smoothness further with next updates as they did in 4.1. The way it works now in worst case you might have some dropped frames while scrolling when there's background activity happening at the same time, because Android doesn't stop it while scrolling, which is what WP and iOS do, which is what makes scrolling so smooth on those systems.

Well, the main thing is the tablet is sold and I have the money for an N7.2 as we speak. If I wanted the Mini 2, I'm sure I'd need at least $100 more which could be covered by me selling my shit BlackBerry and my economic Linksys WRT120N router. I don't plan on buying a tablet beyond the $400 price range, but I may even consider refurbished current-iPads with Retina. That would be at the very bottom of the list, just above not buying a tablet at all.

You can always grab the 7.2 now to play with it and resell it later if you decide you'd rather have the Mini 2. The 7.2 is a steal.
I guess after you get used to the 7.2, which might take a few days because of different size and form factor, you wouldn't like the Mini anymore afterwards. Coming from an old 10 inch 4:3 tablet that runs rogue Android on outdated hardware you probably have a different perception and Mini might sound appealing, as it's basically a smaller Touch Pad that runs iOS.

If it comes to getting a full sized Ipad personally I think a 7 inch tablet compliments laptops much better than a 10 inch one. I'd much rather take a 7 inch tablet with me granted I don't have much storage space and if I do, I'd rather have a light laptop than a 10 inch tablet.

 

[dilla]

But for its time you're getting better hardware in 7 and 7.2 than Ipads (despite their significantly higher price). Ipads historically had better GPUs as gaming is more advanced on iOS but that also changed with 7.2 packing Adreno 320 which is a very capable GPU. The point is that there's still no game on Android that'd fully push it. It even maxes out demanding benchmarks at 60 frames per second, and there are no games that get close to being as demanding.



To put it in perspective though you had 2 Scorpion cores on Touch Pad. Each Krait core is about 3 times quicker, and there are 4 of them. You're going to see major difference - on those 4 Krait cores it's going to get smooth. Scrolling might be slightly less super-smooth than on iOS or WP, but it'd be quite close to that. Also hopefully Google works on that and improves UI smoothness further with next updates as they did in 4.1.



You can always grab the 7.2 now to play with it and resell it later if you decide you'd rather have the Mini 2. The 7.2 is a steal.
I guess after you get used to the 7.2, which might take a few days because of different size and form factor, you wouldn't like the Mini anymore afterwards. Coming from an old 10 inch 4:3 tablet that runs rogue Android on outdated hardware you probably have a different perception and Mini might sound appealing, as it's basically a smaller Touch Pad that runs iOS.

If it comes to getting a full sized Ipad personally I think a 7 inch tablet compliments laptops much better than a 10 inch one. I'd much rather take a 7 inch tablet with me granted I don't have much storage space and if I do, I'd rather have a light laptop than a 10 inch tablet.

Right. The iPad is just too big and unnecessary to use in conjunction with a notebook.

I'm hesitant to buy the 7.2 and sell it, simply because I'm trying to pay for it all with money made from selling this old stuff here on the island. And while I will have a surplus of funds if everything gets sold, I'd rather just spend time with the tablet in store and go from that. Reselling it, I'd lose about $20 or more, even if it was used for just a week.

But we'll see. I need to visit two stores when I get home; Best Buy and the Apple Store.

 

[masta247]

Buying the 7.2 you'd use it for at least a few months - the new Mini is not likely to be released earlier. You might as well never have to sell it if you'll like it, and with the first gen Nexus 7 I've never heard about anyone having one and not liking it. If you sell it after a few months you'll lose maybe 30$, that's the price you'll pay for having that tablet for months, to me that'd be worth the experience. If you sell it on the island you're likely not to lose anything though ;-)
If I were in the states anytime soon I'd get one despite having the first gen Nexus 7 and sell the first Nexus 7 after coming back here for more than I paid for it last year, because we don't have hardware on Google Play in Poland and it costs ~300$ new in Polish web stores.
It's your choice though. That's what I'd do, but I also wouldn't buy a piece of hardware I didn't like.

 

[dilla]

Buying the 7.2 you'd use it for at least a few months - the new Mini is not likely to be released earlier. You might as well never have to sell it if you'll like it, and with the first gen Nexus 7 I've never heard about anyone having one and not liking it. If you sell it after a few months you'll lose maybe 30$, that's the price you'll pay for having that tablet for months, to me that'd be worth the experience. If you sell it on the island you're likely not to lose anything though ;-)
If I were in the states anytime soon I'd get one despite having the first gen Nexus 7 and sell the first Nexus 7 after coming back here for more than I paid for it last year, because we don't have hardware on Google Play in Poland and it costs ~300$ new in Polish web stores.
It's your choice though. That's what I'd do, but I also wouldn't buy a piece of hardware I didn't like.

Yeah, but I'm hopefully done with the island at the end of August and never coming back. Cooning people on the price for the 7.2 wouldn't really be possible. That's why I'm planning on waiting it out for the Mini. The rumors are that it's going to be in October, although on reputable analyst said it won't, so it's a crapshoot at this point.


I'll have to assess my need for a tablet in general once I get back to the States and hopefully if I decide to wait, I can wait until the Holidays, when the 7.2 might even be discounted or simply on sale at other places. Or Black Friday too.

Putting media on the iPad is a chore, though. You can't just drag and drop, unless you use iTunes. I do like Android using Finder to let me place it directly on the tablet. I bring this issue up because not all my files are popular file types. Sure, there's PDFs and avis for videos and books, but some come in .chm and some videos are FLV or M4A or some shit. Android doesn't bitch at me for it and there are players for it, but I'm not sure about iOS simply letting me put it on there. I'd have to jailbreak it, for sure, which won't be an issue, but like I said about Cydia, it's complicated for me and those iPhone Explorer programs from Cydia are just a bitch. Or I just don't know the directories of iOS as well as I do Android's.

 

[Pittsey]

So.... Masta.... Do you have android 4.3 on your amazing phone?

No...! Why the devil not?

You don't want it? I don't believe you.

You like Samsung's customisations? Bullshit.


I have Android 4.3. I conclude that my phone is superior to yours.

 

[ARon]

to be honest my phone is better than yours if yours has touchwiz

 

[masta247]

So.... Masta.... Do you have android 4.3 on your amazing phone?

No...! Why the devil not?

You don't want it? I don't believe you.

You like Samsung's customisations? Bullshit.


I have Android 4.3. I conclude that my phone is superior to yours.

I don't, but I could. 4.3 for the SGS4 leaked a few weeks ago.
Anyway I will have 4.3 on my N7 soon though. In this case I believe the 4.3 doesn't change anything for me. There's really nothing new that will be useful for me. I'd kinda feel bad if it was 5.0 with some cool stuff in it though, but if that was the case fortunately there's the SGS4 Google Edition and I can just flash ROMs from it

I like Samsung's custimizations. I disabled and uninstalled all bloatware and Samsung's firmware has a lot of cool little things I'm missing on my N7 and have to install apps for. There are no apps for lots of little things Samsung does.
Some things just work better - such as being able to configure auto-brightness thresholds, having battery percentage instead of icons out of the box, superior audio player etc.
I'm using hand gestures, camera modes and settings as well as managing TV with my phone quite often too.
There are really many little contextual things the SGS4 does that are not in stock Android I'd miss and there aren't many things about stock Android I miss in Samsung's firmware, other than being a little cleaner.

 

[dilla]

Oh, those screen brightness thresholds are a bitch. It's just so many numbers and sliders to deal with, I wouldn't know what to set it all at.

I have it at auto, though, and it works fine. I enabled "light decrease" and it has been rather intelligent in not turning my phone screen into a strobe light.

CM confirmed CM 10.2 is being worked on. Probably this time, next week we'll see nightlies for it. I'm excited because there's a new number behind "CM" but I know I probably won't notice much of a difference.

 

[masta247]

^ Auto on the Nexus 7 is shitty. On Samsungs you can set it to auto AND adjust it to be brighter or dimmer depending on preferences. Now the brightness is always perfect to me.

 

[Pittsey]

Except the S4 leak has bugs and is not official.

I can't believe you've gone Korean on us. I had an S3. I removed all the customisations. I want Vanilla android. If I want any of the "shitty" tweaks. There's an app for that. Each to their own.... But... You sound like an Iphone user circa 2005.

 

[masta247]

I bet the official one is going to arrive in a few days. Anyway, like I mentioned - 4.3 changes don't benefit me in any way. Low power bluetooth was there in Samsung phones since long ago. OpenGL ES 3.0 is not supported by most GPUs, even Galaxy S4 Exynos' GPU doesn't support it. PowerVR GPUs generally don't support it. I don't know anyone who uses multiple user profiles on their phones as well. And that covers all of 4.3's new features.

It's the same as the 4.2 update to me - unnecessary.

 

[Pittsey]

I edited my post while you were replying.

My phone seems more responsive and slicker. So I'm happy. It was always good, but seems better. Although it could be me. Maps flies compared to last weeks update. GPS lock instant. Route calculation instant. Choice of several different routes.

Low Power Bluetooth is a big update. I think that has been overlooked. Granted, not for everyone. But as more peripherals take advantage of it, people will realise the benefits.

 

[Pittsey]

Please don't write one of your 8 paragraph replies. As I can't promise to read it. You've turned into Rizzle.

 

[masta247]

I can't believe you've gone Korean on us. I had an S3. I removed all the customisations. I want Vanilla android. If I want any of the "shitty" tweaks. There's an app for that. Each to their own.... But... You sound like an Iphone user circa 2005.

I like stock Android, but I also like Samsung's little additions - actually on a phone I find it more useful with them. I disabled bloatware and nothing bothers me. I don't see how it's bad - it performs as good as on stock and I don't have to install lots of apps to do things I can just enable in settings. Also, battery lasts longer than on Stock according to tests. Means Samsung are better at optimizing their Kernels. Contextual menus are also more functional than on stock.
Perfect Android to me would be stock with more customization options out of the box. I'm not a fan of having 20 apps just to do things that should be there in the first place. Some of them don't work well and drain battery too.

I edited my post while you were replying.

My phone seems more responsive and slicker. So I'm happy. It was always good, but seems better. Although it could be me. Maps flies compared to last weeks update. GPS lock instant. Route calculation instant. Choice of several different routes.

Low Power Bluetooth is a big update. I think that has been overlooked. Granted, not for everyone. But as more peripherals take advantage of it, people will realise the benefits.

New maps are not exclusive to Android 4.3 though, they are an independent app. Low Power Bluetooth is one of those "shitty tweaks" that is there in Samsung's ROMs, that wasn't there in stock Android until 4.3