True, the iPhone 4 is slow, and iOS 5 ran better than iOS 6, which in turn ran better than iOS 7.How are they more "immersive"? That's a pretty vague statement to make. Also, how are they more fluid if they stutter more? That's a pretty contradictory statement to make. I have to disagree with people who say older iOS devices still run great, I put iOS6 on my iphone 4 before I sold it and it ran considerably worse than iOS 4 or 5 on it.
Maybe the browser hangs, but the mouse pointer stays as responsive to your movement as ever.
I have an iPhone 5 (iOS 7), it experiences the very same occasional lag and hiccups that any other phone does. If someone tells you their phone is 100% buttery smooth, be it an iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone, they are lying or have selective memory. All phones experience occasional lag and stutters.
My wife has the 5S, it also experiences lag and stutter. Her phone will randomly freeze for a few seconds in Messages. Not every day, it happens maybe once or twice a week but it does happen. My iPhone 5 keyboard lags every now and then, where I'm typing but the letters don't start showing up until a few seconds later. Usually it happens when first bringing the keyboard up. In Safari a webpage will be loading and I start scrolling down, but then it pulls me back up to the top as it loads other things.
These are all examples of things I have experienced on iOS and Android, it's not exclusive to any particular OS.
I was an iOS user and switching to Android frustrated me for a week b/c you get accustomed to exactly how the screen responds. Now I can't use my wife's iPhone without experiencing the same frustration. I tap and tap things occasionally and nothing happens.
In truth, iOS is not always 100% buttery smooth, I will agree. But in my experience, even an iPhone 5 is smoother than pretty much all Android phones I've tried (up to 2013).I have an iPhone 5 (iOS 7), it experiences the very same occasional lag and hiccups that any other phone does. If someone tells you their phone is 100% buttery smooth, be it an iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone, they are lying or have selective memory. All phones experience occasional lag and stutters.
My wife has the 5S, it also experiences lag and stutter. Her phone will randomly freeze for a few seconds in Messages. Not every day, it happens maybe once or twice a week but it does happen. My iPhone 5 keyboard lags every now and then, where I'm typing but the letters don't start showing up until a few seconds later. Usually it happens when first bringing the keyboard up. In Safari a webpage will be loading and I start scrolling down, but then it pulls me back up to the top as it loads other things.
These are all examples of things I have experienced on iOS and Android, it's not exclusive to any particular OS.
How are they more "immersive"? That's a pretty vague statement to make. Also, how are they more fluid if they stutter more? That's a pretty contradictory statement to make. I have to disagree with people who say older iOS devices still run great, I put iOS6 on my iphone 4 before I sold it and it ran considerably worse than iOS 4 or 5 on it.
Wife got an iPhone 5S and the animation is absolutely annoying. My Note 3 is so much faster in response time
I don't know why some people keep insisting on comparing older and/or less expensive phones to iPhone/iOS. If you take the best of the current generation flagships from the top three platforms, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone (can't speak about Blackberry since I don't own one), there is little appreciable difference in responsiveness for normal users, though there are cases for all three where you can get them to lag, hitch, freeze up, etc depending on the situation, and on paper or in benchmarks I'm sure you can find differences.
To answer the title question, "Will android ever be as responsive as iOS?", I think the answer is "yes", or "close enough as to make no difference", considering what the current situation is. If you are extremely sensitive or focusing intently on just touchscreen responsiveness and ignoring other UI elements then maybe iOS takes the crown (I'd argue Windows Phone does) but the reality is none of these operating systems are flawless, but they are good enough for most consumers at the high end.
Apple doesn't make inexpensive phones (the fact that the cheapest current iPhone is still in Nexus 5 territory should give you some clue) so it's only fair to compare similarly priced phones at the top end. It's not fair to penalize other manufacturers for giving you choice.
I look forward to seeing the crop of phones arriving this fall. iPhone 6, One M8 Prime, Galaxy S5 Prime, Lumia "McLaren", and whatever else is in the pipeline from the other manufacturers should make things interesting.
I'm not interested in fairness, nor am I interested in price/performance or broader OS capabilities. I started this thread to specifically discuss input lag/touch responsiveness between the two major mobile OSes, I had no intention of it ever devolving into a general iOS vs android thread.
Where the discussion goes is obviously out of my control, but all I really care about is what's the root cause of the difference in input lag, and what google is trying to do about it (if anything.) Perhaps the difference is minimized by the brute force power of the latest android flagships, but that's just papering over the issue and is outside of the scope of the discussion (the one I intended to have, at least.)
IIRC, I did hear something similar a while ago, that iOS puts UI updates on the highest priority (basically system interrupt?) whereas android does not. IMO it's the right way to do things - no one should tolerate an unresponsive touch UI any more than they should tolerate a mouse cursor that wasn't responsive.
Regardless, is there any way to modify this behavior?
Yeah, that was a post by a google college intern kid from like 2011.
The funny thing is that the response from Android devs was pretty furiously passive-aggressive. You had them saying shit like he was going on a "do not hire" list.
Wife got an iPhone 5S and the animation is absolutely annoying. My Note 3 is so much faster in response time
I think all this thread is proving is that people are sensitive to different degrees on every possible things and put varying degrees of importance on them.
1. I, like many others, have used both iOS and Android devices for years and don't find them materially different outside of browsing. I totally give Safari on iOS the leg up in rendering smoothness compared to Android browsers. Otherwise on a modern, Android flagship, it's anywhere from imperceptible to a non-issue.
2. You, like many others, notice a difference and it bothers you (outside of normal acclimatization). While the difference continues to decrease due to raw horsepower (and I don't think it should matter how an issue is solved outside of its results) - you still notice a difference. I would like to see something more objective regarding this with a modern phone like the M8 or Z2.
3. Android L, whether for this reason or not, will have several major improvements that may improve this issue for the users in group #2. I'm hoping that this does improve the browsing rendering difference on Android phones.
No one agrees with you that this is the case.If it's takes a $600 flagship to match the input lag of a $300 2 year old iPhone 4s or a sub $200 windows phone, then I don't consider that a solved problem.
No one agrees with you that this is the case.
I def agree that it doesn't matter how it's solved outside of results, but that is one comparison that should be taken in context of price. If it's takes a $600 flagship to match the input lag of a $300 2 year old iPhone 4s or a sub $200 windows phone, then I don't consider that a solved problem.