Android 2.2 FroYo Offers Huge Performance Gains: Dell Streak Tests | Hacker News Reader

Android 2.2 FroYo Offers Huge Performance Gains: Dell Streak Tests

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17 pointsMojoKid6 comments

2.2 offers big theoretical performance improvements over <2.2. We all know that.

The graphs on this, however, are ludicrous. It's putting the 2.2 device up against 2.1 devices, adding questionable statements like "Even Samsung's 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird chip can't compete versus the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chip in the Streak, when the Epic 4G is running Android 2.1 -- but over a 3X improvement from Android 1.6 to 2.2 on the Streak?"

Yes, JIT offers big performance improvements. It doesn't somehow make the Snapdragon a better chip, however.

These results are reflective of the strengths & weaknesses of the Samsung system versus the Snapdrapgon, with the Snapdragon having a better FPU & thus winning by far on Linpack. The previous-generation Snapdragon SoC in the Streak (8250) also has a weaker GPU so the Samsung beats it in graphics regardless of OS.

But Froyo on a Snapdragon is very old news indeed. The Gingerbread source will be out any minute now.

I don't think that was the intent of the statement. Read it again. The Hummingbird chip can't compete versus Snapdragon when it's tied down by Android 2.1... that was the point.

Indeed. I said questionable. Go to any review of the release of Android 2.2 and you can see the performance improvements that are pretty much universal across devices. This simply conflates the two and implies something that isn't true.

With 2.2 the Streak is competitive with other 2.2 devices. There is no surprise there, given that it runs essentially the same processor as the Nexus One.

The Dell Streak is actually a QSD 8650, while the Nexus One runs the QSD 8250. Both phones run on the Qualcomm dual-core architecture: arm9/arm11, with one processor dedicated to linux "apps" and one dedicated to the "amss", aka modem software stack.

I have both devices sitting on my desk here, so I ran a comparison. As I suspected, they are close. Also note that the Dell Streak's resolution is much higher and I'm not sure how/if the benchmark takes that into account:

  Linpack (higher is better):
  Nexus One: 32.94 MFLOPS
  Streak 2.2: 33.373 MFLOPS

  CaffeineMark (higher is better):
  Nexus One: 5587 (rank 124)
  Streak 2.2: 5738 (rank 109)

  An3dbench (no idea how scores stack up):
  Nexus One: 4746, Fill rate = 10MP/s, Game level FPS = 24.87
  Streak 2.2: 4495, Fill rate = 17.65 MP/s, Game level FPS = 32.26

Great data, thanks.

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