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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

> "The iPhone dominates in UI performance"

This is compared with a iPhone 3G, which already has somewhat pokey UI performance compared to the 3GS. On Tuesday we will likely see an even faster CPU running the same codebase. Apple is moving the goalpost for UI performance seemingly faster than Google can keep up.

It is IMHO one of the main failings of Android - the UI is pokey in places where it will significantly and negatively affect adoption rates and user behavior. Scrolling is a pain on a Nexus One (haven't tried Froyo though, so...)

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> This is compared with a iPhone 3G

But it's comparing with a HTC Hero. While a year younger than the 3G, it's still not a "modern" android phone (not that your argument is completely wrong as it does seem, from the reviews I read on e.g. the N1 or the Incredible, that this impression of UI slowness/unresponsiveness is still there)

> It is IMHO one of the main failings of Android - the UI is pokey in places where it will significantly and negatively affect adoption rates and user behavior.

I think a bigger issue is the interface's customizability, leading to HTC shipping its own Sense UI rather than working on improving the "main" Android UI (by folding their improvements upstream)

I have not noticed any slowness on the Droid however ... ?

My HTC Incredible is every bit as fast as my 3GS (which is to say, no noticeable lag or slowdown what-so-ever).

Which says a lot considering it has twice the RAM and 66% more CPU power... (though it has nearly 4 times the surface)

Keep in mind things get even faster with 2.2's JIT.

Try going to the same webpage on the Droid and an iPhone 3G (yes, 3G). Start scrolling around; you will definitely notice stutter on the Droid that isn't present on the 3G.

>Apple is moving the goalpost for UI performance seemingly faster than Google can keep up.

You can't make statements like that until you have a Nexus One running Froyo side-by-side with the new iPhone. Google just introduced a newly optimized Dalvik Virtual Machine, and I expect it will be quite competitive.

I have a 3GS and an N1 running froyo. The iphone is still faster/smoother by a wide margin. In fact, the much touted speed improvements in froyo are hardly noticeable IMO. As a full-time Android dev, I wish they were.

> In fact, the much touted speed improvements in froyo are hardly noticeable IMO. As a full-time Android dev, I wish they were.

So Froyo improves speed in applications, but doesn't improve UI responsiveness much?

Would make sense if most of these improvements come from the JIT: UI stuff (especially responsiveness issues) generally isn't about tight loops, so the JIT compiler wouldn't help much.

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