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Comment by fredoliveira | Hacker News Reader

I have one main point that bothers me about 99% of multitouch phones they're making these days (and the reviewer says this is present on the Nexus S too): they still haven't figured out scrolling properly. How can it be that my first iPhone had stellar scrolling with no real slowdown, and so many years later no competitor product seems to have nailed it also?

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It's because android does not take advantage of the GPU to render the scrolling effect. The iPhone does. This was a design decision early on, and has caused plenty of ire.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=6914

Another reason this was a poor decision is that since the phone has to use the main CPU to render the scrolling effect, the battery drains very quickly while scrolling through a webpage. Scrolling around on webpages for around 20 minutes usually drains my battery 25% or more on my HTC EVO.

Rumor is that android will use the GPU for its UI in honeycomb, and looking at the tablet they were showing off, the effects and scrolling looked very fluid.

Re: the battery drain Is the EVO that much of a power hog? How much of that do you think battery usage is just the screen vs. the scrolling effect?

On my HTC Incredible, I can scroll through webpages / browse the web for many hours, provided I'm connected to wifi. On 3G, definitely a little less.

This is absolutely my #1 complaint about android after going from an iPhone to a nexus one. Even though the hardware is probably 4x more powerful than my old iPhone, the scrolling still manages to be significantly slower and less accurate. With the iPhone the illusion is complete - that your finger is connected to something physical that you can move effortlessly. With android you are acutely aware that you are working with a rough approximation of something physical. It may or may not behave as you intend.

I assume Apple got there first and filed as many patents as they could.

That hasn't stopped Google from adding multi-touch.

Another thing that bothers me is that many (expensive) phones feel like being made from cheap plastic.

So I'm inclined to believe that many phone makers are just clueless imitators.

Another thing that bothers me is that many (expensive) phones feel like being made from cheap plastic.

That's because they are made from cheap plastic.

I'd really love to know why on earth they don't use better materials on all of their high-end phones.

I mean, sometimes they get it right and use a nice rubberized material. And then they blow it again, like on the Galaxy S where the plastic back-over is a harsh insult to the otherwise excellent hardware.

Is that rubberized plastic really so much more expensive?

You don't need to reach to the expensive glass or metal to make a phone feel less like a kids toy!

I don't understand why they make phones like the Samsung Captivate out of slippery smooth plastic. Phones are for holding not for squirting out like a bar of soap.

The Samsung Captivate (AT&T's Galaxy S) is very well made and still very thin.

No GPU acceleration.

"they still haven't figured out scrolling properly"

Probably because 'proper scrolling' isn't something you can log a job ticket in trac to get addressed by a developer at some point.

It's likely so tied into OS performance that it has to exist at very nearly the top of the hierarchy of goals/needs.

I'm sure it does at Apple... it's a reflection of their DNA.

I'm convinced that the overriding factor in there not being Flash on iOS is because when they were making the first gen iPhone, they would not have been able to get the browser to scroll 'snappily' if they entertained the notion of including the plugin.

I agree with what you said, but that makes me rephrase my question to: so why isn't it on other companies DNA yet? I mean, it's not like the model isn't working at Cupertino. If you're going to imitate something, at least imitate the things that make people trust a device.

  * no slowdowns
  * consistent UI
  * simplicity/flexibility

Unfortunately, this kind of dedication to polish requires authoritative leadership. Someone has to be willing to say "no, I will not ship it in this condition". And, that feedback has to happen throughout the development process, not just at the end.

Jobs' autocratic leadership has many flaws, but it also makes this kind of gatekeeping possible. I can't think of another major corporation in the mobile space that has a single decision maker who is both involved in development decisions as well as go-to-market timing.

I'm curious as to whether the Windows Phone 7 devices scroll smoothly, in many ways their phone team seems to be working closer to the Apple-way than the Google-way.

I was just fumbling with a Windows Phone 7 and I must say, I’m really, really impressed. Everything is extremely polished, the aesthetics are crisp and fresh and it’s damn fast. It feels like a typical modern smartphone, yet it is clear from the first moment you turn it on that it is quite unlike an iPhone or Android phone. (Funny enough, the only thing I didn’t quite like is its behavior when you reach the end of a list. It’s springy but lacks the enthusiastic bounciness of the iPhone.)

It was clearly developed with an eye for detail, not the list with features. I often think that Android is exactly the other way around. (I can’t blame Google, though. I’m not even sure whether what Google is doing is wrong in any way. I happen to prefer small details to a huge list of features but that’s just me. I don’t know what the majority of people want.)

Microsoft deserves to be lauded for its mobile OS efforts. The sad news for Microsoft is that even though I like Windows Phone 7 a lot I probably won’t buy one any time soon. The ecosystem just doesn’t feel right (yet?).

They are smoother indeed - I was very surprised when I first tried one out a few weeks ago.

Windows 7 uses the GPU for its interface, so I'm guessing it is smoother than Android.

I don't notice any egregious problems on my HTC Incredible. Or, any scrolling problems at all actually.

Actually i haven't seen any scrolling performance issues on Nexus S so far.

I care more what my phone does-- than whether or not it has a slightly lower framerate while scrolling lol.

Well, great for you. It does not invalidate the article conclusion, and I quote: "The Nexus S feels half-baked. It's not an iPhone-killer, and in my opinion it's not a must-have phone..."

Not only that, but no one has been able to nail the physics of it either. The elastic snap back at the top of lists (I'm not sure if Android has this, but the cheap Samsung phones do) is very unnatural, and slow.

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Interestingly, the patent describes moving a document with an object (finger) "on or near" the touchscreen.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...

Andriods don't use the elastic band effect. 2.3 apparently has a new effect where as you approach the end of a list, the background starts changing colour slightly. This continues as you try scrolling past the end. Anandtech says it's vaguely reminiscent of watching stressed plastic.

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