Will android ever be as responsive as iOS?

[Eug]

As far as the cause, I don't know what it is, but I personally don't really care what the root cause is ultimately. I care more just that it exists. Or at least, it existed until 2013 at least.

It's been noticeable all the way up to 2013 model phones. Dunno about 2014 models though, since I haven't tried any 2014 models.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I think we just need to step back and admit that Java and Dalvik aren't the most optimal systems to use.

Not for smoothness, no. Never was the point.

The point is that Android can be put on x86 and 70%+ of apps "just work" without recompiling. Short of some sort of Rosetta-esc translation layer iOS will never do that.

What gets me about this whole issue is that Android is held to a ridiculous standard.

Compare it to Windows (not Windows phone real Windows) or OSX (especially early retina machines) and Android is WAY more responsive. Android is probably the second most responsive major OS of all time. That is a huge win.

But since Google doesn't grow magic beans it can't make an OS with compromises that allow it to run on two different CPU architectures and thousands of different devices perform the same as an OS that just runs on ARM in an ecosystem that has three new devices a year on average.

Heck, I bet there were more models of Android phones announced in 2014 than ever was made for iOS, even going back to ones modern iOS doesn't work on anymore.

Life is compromises people. If your top priority is smoothness, iPhones are the device for you...

 

[Eug]

Not for smoothness, no. Never was the point.

The point is that Android can be put on x86 and 70%+ of apps "just work" without recompiling. Short of some sort of Rosetta-esc translation layer iOS will never do that.

The annoying part is the minority of apps that don't even work on other ARM phones running Android.

One of the reasons I left Android is because some big apps written by big companies wouldn't even necessarily run properly if the phone wasn't a Samsung Galaxy xyz or a Nexus.

 

[s44]

As another data point, my household has an HTC One M7 (mine), iPhone 5s (wife's), iPad 2 (kids mainly), and an HP Touchpad with cm11 (mine). I have not noticed consistent input lag on any of them, especially not to the point that one device was noticeably slower. Maybe the OP's fingers move faster than mine.

I remember a thread or two (reddit? here?) about the Moto G touchscreen being less-than-ideally responsive vis-a-vis other Android devices, so I think it could be just the particular device.

Again, the Moto G has similar horsepower to the 4S, not the 5S.

 

[poofyhairguy]

The annoying part is the minority of apps that don't even work on other ARM phones running Android.

Sure thing, the hardware market is very fragmented which means not even a Nexus is 100% compatible with the ecosystem. Of course, whatever new iPhone Apple launches this year will have also have compatibility problems with old apps, and might never properly run 100% of iOS apps either.

This is the exact same thing we dealt with in the Windows ecosystem for years, but now its a huge deal for some reason. Heck, some old Gingerbread-era app works better on my modern phone than any Windows 98 application works on my Windows 7 PC. We have made progress.

One of the reasons I left Android is because some big apps written by big companies wouldn't even necessarily run properly if the phone wasn't a Samsung Galaxy xyz or a Nexus.

Sometimes big company apps are the worst! They want their iOS and Android app to look the same, and they develop it first in iOS, so the only solution is to bolt that iOS app UI onto Android despite how crappy it runs. Some of my most hated apps are from big companies, while some of my best apps (like are holo from head to toe) are made by small single developers.

But that isn't unique to Android. One of the biggest pieces of crap ever is one of the most popular Windows applications of all time- Quickbooks. The bad guy wins sometimes in real life.

The trick is: can it do the functions you need?

If what you need is responsiveness and consistent UIs, Android will never be for you.

If what you need is THE most functional mobile OS (as in can do the most computer functions) then welcome to Androidland.

Most people don't need that functionality and only buy Android thanks to marketing. Gotta love the sheeple driving down hardware costs for us nerds....

 

[Mopetar]

I think we just need to step back and admit that Java and Dalvik aren't the most optimal systems to use.

It isn't Java or Dalvik, but the way the operating systems are designed. iOS is very similar to BeOS in that it puts user interaction before anything else. For example if you open a web page that's really long and start scrolling as fast as you can, iOS stops rendering the page to keep the scrolling fluid. Most other operating systems prioritize rendering the page and if the scrolling isn't smooth so be it.

Java might not give quite the same level of performance, but it's good enough and for something like Android a VM of some sort is necessary due to the wide variety of devices and different hardware configurations. The UI choppiness is due to different priorities in the way the systems were designed. Apple built theirs to ensure that user interaction was fluid even if that meant the device had to drop whatever else it's doing.

Going forward I don't expect it to be as much of an issue as devices get more and more powerful. Some apps will grow along with the hardware to demand more resources, but unless there are dozens of background tasks chewing up all of the processing power available, Android will run fine and the differences will become imperceptible for most people.

 

[BD2003]

Not for smoothness, no. Never was the point.



The point is that Android can be put on x86 and 70%+ of apps "just work" without recompiling. Short of some sort of Rosetta-esc translation layer iOS will never do that.



What gets me about this whole issue is that Android is held to a ridiculous standard.



Compare it to Windows (not Windows phone real Windows) or OSX (especially early retina machines) and Android is WAY more responsive. Android is probably the second most responsive major OS of all time. That is a huge win.



But since Google doesn't grow magic beans it can't make an OS with compromises that allow it to run on two different CPU architectures and thousands of different devices perform the same as an OS that just runs on ARM in an ecosystem that has three new devices a year on average.



Heck, I bet there were more models of Android phones announced in 2014 than ever was made for iOS, even going back to ones modern iOS doesn't work on anymore.



Life is compromises people. If your top priority is smoothness, iPhones are the device for you...

I've never used a windows or OSX machine in the past 25 years where the mouse cursor lagged or stuttered because of other activity.

 

[s44]

I've never used a windows or OSX machine in the past 25 years where the mouse cursor lagged or stuttered because of other activity.

Then you've never used a Windows or OSX machine in the past 25 years.

Lag? Full-on freezes while FF/Chrome/Safari hangs on some website...

 

[poofyhairguy]

I've never used a windows or OSX machine in the past 25 years where the mouse cursor lagged or stuttered because of other activity.

Then you have forgotten every Windows XP machine you ever touched....

 

[shortylickens]

it already is. They just use drawing tricks to make it seem otherwise.

 

[BD2003]

Then you've never used a Windows or OSX machine in the past 25 years.

Lag? Full-on freezes while FF/Chrome/Safari hangs on some website...

Maybe the browser hangs, but the mouse pointer stays as responsive to your movement as ever.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Then you've never used a Windows or OSX machine in the past 25 years.

Lag? Full-on freezes while FF/Chrome/Safari hangs on some website...

FF is a freeze machine, but a clean installation of Chrome flies.

Adblock particularly can bring your machine to a halt as it injects thousands of CSS rules into your browser window.

 

[teejee]

Maybe the browser hangs, but the mouse pointer stays as responsive to your movement as ever.

moving the cursor has nothing to do with running the complete UI for the apps at high priority, moving the cursor is a seperate small task that doesn't involve the applications.
I'm pretty sure the touch input on Android is sent to the apps just as fast, but you can't see that of course.

 

[biostud]

Just go windows phone OS.

 

[desura]

Yes, the responsiveness difference exists and is noticable. It is why iOS devices are better overall, even if they don't always win on specs.

I expect the responsiveness issue to change with the release of Android L. I recall seeing benchmarks where HTC devices were responsive to the 40ms range, about the same as APple's. Most android devices are 120ms.

 

[Anubis]

Maybe the browser hangs, but the mouse pointer stays as responsive to your movement as ever.

then you have never actually used a computer for real work. even on modern computers its not difficult to make the entire thing shudder

before SSDs anything that hit the HDD hard in rear write would bring it to its knees, same with heavy CPU/GPU computations, heck even on modern computers, video and image editing will and can lock a computer up until its done

 

[BD2003]

moving the cursor has nothing to do with running the complete UI for the apps at high priority, moving the cursor is a seperate small task that doesn't involve the applications.
I'm pretty sure the touch input on Android is sent to the apps just as fast, but you can't see that of course.

Probably, but without that visual reference, it doesn't feel right. Obviously a touch UI has a much tougher job, since there's no intermediary....but clearly some mobile OSes are doing a better job than others. No one should be making excuses for the ones that arent.

 

[BD2003]

Yes, the responsiveness difference exists and is noticable. It is why iOS devices are better overall, even if they don't always win on specs.

I expect the responsiveness issue to change with the release of Android L. I recall seeing benchmarks where HTC devices were responsive to the 40ms range, about the same as APple's. Most android devices are 120ms.

I hope L does change it, cause that UI looks really nice. That's what piqued my interest in android again, although I guess I jumped the gun by a few months. I mean, they can't go on and on about this "material design" stuff, about how it's supposed to feel like physical objects, etc, if they havent brought the responsiveness of the base UI up to par with iOS.

 

[saratoga172]

I often wonder if we've really just gotten accustomed to the way iOS responds compared to android. If android were the first os released would we now be saying the same in reverse about apple?

Personally my first smartphone was an iPhone 3GS. I went from that to a 4 then to a galaxy nexus. I used android for about 8 months before switching back to the 5. Something always felt a little off about android but I often wonder if it was just because I got used to and liked the way iOS responded to input.

Not saying one way is right or wrong as everyone has their own opinion of things. I think it's awesome we have multiple options to choose from and personally I don't want android to be exactly like iOS. I only say this because I know people that started on android devices and they don't like the way iOS feels when they use an iPhone or iPad. It's too sticky or it feels off are the common issues I hear.

Just something I've often wondered.

Now from an iOS perspective I think android has gotten much more smooth with each version. I expect L to deliver even a bit more of that experience.

 

[Red Storm]

I often wonder if we've really just gotten accustomed to the way iOS responds compared to android. If android were the first os released would we now be saying the same in reverse about apple?

Personally my first smartphone was an iPhone 3GS. I went from that to a 4 then to a galaxy nexus. I used android for about 8 months before switching back to the 5. Something always felt a little off about android but I often wonder if it was just because I got used to and liked the way iOS responded to input.

Not saying one way is right or wrong as everyone has their own opinion of things. I think it's awesome we have multiple options to choose from and personally I don't want android to be exactly like iOS. I only say this because I know people that started on android devices and they don't like the way iOS feels when they use an iPhone or iPad. It's too sticky or it feels off are the common issues I hear.

Just something I've often wondered.

Now from an iOS perspective I think android has gotten much more smooth with each version. I expect L to deliver even a bit more of that experience.

I agree with this, it's a personal preference. I personally get frustrated with iOS, while my wife (exclusive iPhone user) feels weird using Android. We like the things we are used to.

 

[Eug]

I don't think so. Lots of OSes were released before iOS, yet people still prefer iOS over previous OSes.

 

[Tom]

I don't see it as a bad comparison, considering older iPhones still have a more responsive UI than current flagship android phones. I wasn't expecting the Moto G to be as fast as the 5S in terms of app launching, web rendering, etc.

I'm def more sensitive to it than most for sure, but it's a total deal breaker for me. It just *feels* so wrong to me.

Older iphones are not more responsive than "flagship" Android phones, neither are newer iphones.

 

[Red Storm]

I don't think so. Lots of OSes were released before iOS, yet people still prefer iOS over previous OSes.

Replace iOS with Android and you have an equally valid opinion, which is my point.

 

[gmaster456]

Android has been absolutely fluid for me for the past 2 years. I haven't had any more problems with it than I have with iOS. It has been great for me.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I'm going to say it's a personal preference thing because in my experience it is the opposite. With iOS I find myself constantly having to re-tap buttons. I find the keyboard very annoying to type with, and the scrolling is "sticky" (when doing a swipe to scroll, on Android it keeps scrolling for a bit but on iOS it stops quickly, requiring you too continuously use your finger).

Don't even get me started on the notification center. Clearing notifications is such a pain, that "Clear" button only works for me when I'm not moving and have the phone right up to my face.

I think the problem with iOS is the itsy-bitsy touch targets. I have this problem with my wife's iPad Mini all the time. Not only does iOS have really small touch targets, but the target is also placed just under the thing you want to tap, I'm guessing so you can tap things without completely obscuring them with your finger. If you're not used to it, it makes you way less accurate.

There are a lot of things about iOS I hate. The keyboard is the other big one. I heard Apple is finally getting with the times and allowing third party keyboards on iOS 8, so I'll finally be able to ditch the shitty built in one.

Other than that, I sort of like iOS, and I agree with OP. I switched my phone from Android to WP8 because the lag was just unbearable, and on WP8 everything is smooth and lag-free. My wife's iPad is a nice tablet, not least of all because I can play FTL on it.