Ice Cream Sandwich gives Android mobes brainfreeze – Sony Sony says its customers should avoid upgrading their Android devices to Ice Cream Sandwich, adding that many of them won't get the option anyway. In a blog posting on Sony's Developer World the company explains why the latest version of Google's mobile OS uses a lot more memory and is slower than its predecessor, not to …
The ASUS update to my Transformer has rendered a formerly stable tablet into a crashing paroxysm of misery. Since being moved to ICS the random crashes, the looping "boot" crash and general idiocy of having the screen come on for no reason at all when suspended is making me very unhappy. But I've wondered if this is less an ASUS issue and more a problem with Android 4.0?
Nope. Check out any Transformer forum, including XDA. It's an epidemic. And it is highly dependent upon Transformer model as well, to further complicate things. The blinky screen thing seems to happen only when docked in the keyboard.
The boot-loop and random reboot crashes seem to be limited by doing a factory reset, but eventually they re-appear. There appears to be some sort of cache issue with the current build which could explain why it's like playing whack-a-mole.
"Mines fine, but then I'm running the official Asus update, not some romantic from XDA with added extra sauce/spyware."
I'm running the official version too - but it doesn't alter the fact that many people (including myself) are experiencing issues such as random reboots, shutdowns and the inability for the device to have an uptime greater than 72 hours.
I suggest you actually go and read some of the relevant forums before making uneducated guesses as to what the actual situation might be.
Same here - official ICS update from Asus and the original TF is pretty much unusable. Can crash on a whim, and the reboot-loop is especially irritating, it can drain the battery very quickly. Check out transformerforums.com, this is not an isolated incident.
Very funny, how Sony tries to tell us we shouldn't worry about it always using last Year's tech in their phones, cause all that extra processing power is pointless...
I hate it when companies try to charge premium prices while being cheapskates on components.
Samsung will be ruling that market, till Sony decides to get their act together and offer the same value.
Maybe a dumb question (from a non-Android user) but why don't you?
Is the upgrade process one way or something? Reason I ask; I also know of environments which first make a backup ('snapshot') of the phone before upgrading, thus allowing you to revert all the changes should something go horribly wrong.
I would "root" my device installing clockwork mod (custom recovery), backup everything to disk images on sd and do a last second (right before installing) file backup using titanium backup.
That time you will have chance to go back to the exact moment before upgrading.
Otherwise, if you think like Nokia/ symbian backups, it doesn't exist on android. Uncle google wants everything on cloud.
I'm also running the official ASUS version with no issues whatsoever. After I got my Galaxy Nexus I stopped using my Transformer till the ICS update came out. I use my TF101 several hours a day for everything from games, to reading e-books, to remote desktop, to working with documents in Polaris Office (surprisingly useful bundled app). Writing this from my tablet right now actually. I also manage about a dozen TF101s at work all with the same stock software. No issues there either. Maybe time to contact ASUS. In the US you get a 1 year warranty, in the UK/EU I believe it can be 2 years or more. I've had good luck getting motherboards etc. replaced by ASUS when they broke down. Just a thought.
I installed ICS on my Nexus S last week, and if anything, it runs faster and smoother than Gingerbread and the battery life is definitely better. I haven't seen any delays in switching back to the home screen or dialer. From viewing the specs, the Xperia Arc S looks like pretty much the same capability, except for a higher-res camera.
Maybe it's Sony's add-ons that are the problem?
No of course not really. It's just the usual Sony hating bile that certain writers here post...
The Arc S (left in the video) is running the leaked version of ICS just fine. This whole article is twisted words to make a lame story...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzbleVFyQYQ
Only an idiot would believe that Sony didn't make some of the best kit around. My PS3 is now 5 years old, and it's still bang upto date with the latest Blu-Ray and 3D support, and still kicking out killer games and adding new streaming services and extra value. How is that not futureproof?
The shear amount of crud they bundle can't help and needs root to remove most of it.
I'd finger the 512K RAM as the main cause though. It's just enough to keep Gingerbread going without too many stalls, I'd guess ICS pushes it just over the edge.
I'd also want to look at the Android memory priorities in their build and some of the kernel tuning. When memory gets tight I've seen massive performance changes from tweaking the memory thresholds, ICS may have reached that critical point on Sony phones.
Me too, I've been running it on mine since December (when it was first released) and I haven't had any problems. This paragraph sums up the real problem nicely though:
"A booting application that has to load all its graphics into memory, to enable hardware acceleration, and then does a load of SQL stuff, could take longer than five seconds to respond to a system query which is unacceptable to the Android OS, which promptly generates an error."
What that means is that Sony are performing long-running operations on the UI thread - which means the UI will freeze and causes Android to fire up an ANR (Application Not Responding) dialog. This is advised against in the Android documentation[1] and there are even testing tools/modes to help prevent it (Strict Mode[2]).
Sony can't RTFM so blame ICS. Figures.
[1] http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/design/responsiveness.html#avoiding
[2] http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/StrictMode.html
There was a review on is very site slagging a tablet because it wasn't running ICS. Yet if Sony and an above poster are to be believed it's probably bets not to have ICS unless you have some pressing need for something not available without it.
Also, this surely means that Google must continue to provide security updates and bug fixes for previous Android versions since not all devices can run ICS?
Asus is far more responsive than other vendors in providing fixes. I've already received an ICS fix recently, whereas my mobe hasn't received a patch for Gingerbread from LG since last August despite lots of issues with battery life and HSPA+ connectivity.
OP's problem with Transformer has zero to do with ICS in particular and probably is a hardware issue with his kit.
And as I said, it is not. Please go to XDA or transformerforums and see for yourself. The number of "folk remedies" that only temporarily cure the problem are astounding. Asus has sent out bug tracking kits to volunteers on the XDA forums to assist in tracking it down, because they can't find it themselves. And more alarming are the reports that tablets by other manufacturers are having similar issues with ICS (But that I cannot confirm).
Isn't this just showing Google are finding out that creating an OS is hard? We don't rush out to get the new version of Windows or even MacOS until seeing how it turns out after all, and they have public betas/RCs as well... even more reason to be cautious with Android when AFAIK a new version is totally unknown territory for the huge majority?
No obsession...in the case of Asus tablets you aren't really given the option to ignore the update. You can only defer it for a time, after which it forces you to go to ICS.
Ignoring any issues with ICS, the features make it worthwhile. I discovered the home screen application grouping thing by accident, but I really like it.
If ASUS, or whomever, push the update out that's not related to what I'm asking about.
What I am asking about is why people with perfectly useable devices suddenly decide they don't work any more because a new OS is out? Also why are Google not providing security and bug fixes to anything but the latest Android version or, if they are, what does it matter if a new device doesn't have the cutting-edge OS installed?
Bugs are discovered, and Google tend to fix them.
Its the device manufacturers and the network operators that are refusing to provide updates.
My HTC Desire got quite reasonable updates until 2.2.something hit. then it went very quiet for a long time. So, I put CM7 on it instead. The reason I did this was to be able to work around the small amount of application memory they put on that phone. The phone was tolerable, but I couldn't have more than a dozen apps of various flavours before it ran out and cut off the auto sync for gmail etc.
I was lucky though, as I bought my phone direct from HTC. Other people I know with the same phone, via an operator, didn't get updates (security, battery life improvements, the works) until much later, if at all. As the operator didn't want to spend money getting them approved.
There have been (are?) security issues in android. Updating to the newer versions is useful if only to prevent the spread of badness (esp as the the browser is tied to the OS version..)
For the same reason everyone always wants the newest version of anything, of course. It's a free update with improvements and people want to try it out.
And I think Google have been updating old versions up to a point. Manufacturers and telcos slow the update process down by wanting to 'test' everything before it goes OTA, though.
"What I am asking about is why people with perfectly useable devices suddenly decide they don't work any more because a new OS is out? "
Because they AREN'T perfectly usable, or there wouldn't be a new update available! It's only the new Apple-induced culture of updates that makes people believe that a new update could only be available because there are new features to add. I see people on the net every day who are actually disappointed when they receive an update that doesn't add new features, even when it fixes a thousand bugs under the surface
Once up on a time updates were about fixing things that were wrong with your devices but nowadays - in the tablet and phone market at least - it's just a dick-waggling contest to see who can put out the lamest new home screen. I'd hazard a guess that this is why updates are so less frequent nowadays. Yeah it pisses me off that Ubuntu asks me to update some obscure X component every 30 minutes, but at least my system won't be compromised by an exploit that's been in the wild for months and months.
For the majority of users, they don't care. But you are on a tech forum here, where people want the latest and greatest.
Why do people upgrade their Windows or OS X machines? Because there are newer versions, with better features.
Why don't people upgrade their Windows or OS X machines? Because they aren't aware of upgrade or the current version does what they want need - don't mess with a running system.
Why do people hang fuzzy dice on their rearview mirrors? No, honestely, why? I can't think of an answer.
I got my update yesterday and my Sensation is running faster and smoother than before and there are certainly some usability improvements which made upgrading worthwhile.
For a lot of users, like my brother-in-law, the updates are irrelevant, he doesn't even use the web browser, address book, calendar etc. He only has a Sensation because his provider foisted it onto him, he'd be a lot better off and happier with another Nokia dumb phone.
I really think that the manufacturers need to get their act together and at least get security updates out within a month of them being released by Google. Anything else should be seen as verging on criminal negligence.
I wouldn't say obsessed, but the ICS upgrade has made a pretty noticeable improvement to my SGS2.
I like the new interface (YMMV), the handset is faster, uses much less battery, and is generally more shiny/pretty/better to live with.
Not revolutionary, but a definite and significant improvement.
Take Sony's comments with a grain of salt - they are always 1 generation behind in terms of hardware (low memory, only single cores when everyone else was selling dual cores) so I'd say its just Sony's cheap hardware that isn't keeping up and they are trying to blame Android...
I assume that instead of painting stuff to the screen and repainting when necessary that ICS holds the screen in a surface. If the screen needs to be repainted or blended or some other effect it just rerenders the surface rather than repainting it. It makes for a nicer experience but necessarily uses more memory.
Not as far as im aware.
The android compositor is double buffered, so it always draws to an external surface. Now it holds that in graphics memory and updates it using the hardware accelerated apis, making it perform better.
I would suspect their hardware isn't up to it and so it's using software emulation of the api calls, rather than a specific software renderer, as was previously.
Supposition, but I could see it using more memory, maybe.
While you may have some valid points (although the idea of new stuff needing more oomph is not exactly a shocker), I wish to bring attention to the Xperia Mini Pro. I am using this to write this message.
I just went to look at running services and when I came back to the browser, it has thrown away everything and had to reload. For a mobile device with restrictive (and frequently slow) connectivity, that's the dumbest thing I've seen in ages (hint - my Defy doesn't do that). I have installed a monitor as my phone uses more data than the previous phone. Could this be your Sync program that is running? What are you syncing and why? I didn't ask for that. Additionally, why is Facebook running? I don't use nor want the Facebook app on my phone, however not only can you not uninstall it (without going root) but it is sitting there as an active app using resources.
So, Sony, the Mini Pro is quite a cute little devic, though I would suggest that before you have a go at the crap Google installs, you might first like to get your own added-on stuff in order.
please stop making crap and make good (tm) phones again. Phones, Yes... like the K810i and K700 and K750i etc...
And please use GOOD materials not crappy thin plastics (the plastic that I use to wrap my food is sturdier than casings from your phones).
Oh hell, why bother... Sony just stop making phones, dig a hole and just die!
I had the K700... it sucked donkey balls. After not wanting to go back to Sense UI or root my phone I bought the new Sony Xperia S... The build quality of the recent Android attempts by Sony has been a million times better than the K700 or the K750i.
Having said that, they've always struggled on crap software - the added bloatware (timescape, FB, PS store, the video/music unlimited crap) is really starting to p*ss me off and is unremovable (aside from music unlimited). The annoyance could just be because I was previously running Oxygen rom on my Desire, which was stripped bare of everything bloaty, but I can see myself rooting and stripping the bloat after a year.
I have the ICS beta running on my Arc S right now and memory usage is incredibly high even after removing all the crap. On a clean boot I have less than 50MB available - under GB I'd have over 150MB. This means I get a *lot* of launcher reloads, the music player stutters and burps (which is inexcusable) and the whole thing occasionally slows to a crawl.
El Reg are on the money too BTW - Sony did say all these things - did you read the blog post? If they had faith in the ICS update they would release it OTA. I think they know full well that it will lead to a lot of complaints so they are treading carefully.
I love my Arc S but they really should of put more RAM in the bloody thing.
@Robert Caldecott - You'll probably have to run a stripped down native ICS to get your performance back up there rather than the default Sony/carrier bloated ICS version.
In between mfg's and carriers throwing junk on there, it brings the phone peformance down. I'd been running hacked firmware for all my Winmobes in the early 2000's due to the manufacture "detuning" and bloating that always seems to occur. Android hasn't been different there, the last straw on my EVO4G before I rooted it was Sprint's NASCAR and other unwanted Sprint apps that sucked down my limited storage for my own apps. I love the freedom of Android and the capabilities of it, but the default Android firmwares are just as bad as the old Winmobe Firmwares on the bloatware front.
Even still, the religious decisions like for the Database accesses going through Java are going to cost CPU and memory as Sony noted, to their credit (for once they were forthcoming). Newer multicore 1GB RAM devices won't notice it as much, but the 512MB single cores will...
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Shame that they can't get ICS to work well on phones with 512MB, though I can't say that I'm really surprised. I got my Xperia Ray on a 1 year contract to tide me over until 2-core handsets dropped in price. The ICS upgrade would have been nice - but not at the expense of performance / stability. I'm quite happy to stick with GB for the rest of my contract and get a properly ICS capable phone later.
Still, props to Sony for laying all the facts on the table in their blog postings. Wish other manufacturers were as open.
Even if ICS is indeed slower and resource hungry, that seems to me an excuse from Sony so they don't need to develop for older models... "stick with the old O.S., we know it will be better for you" (and the company doesn't need to invest on old devices which are not making any more money...)
Samsung delayed the ICS update for Galaxy Note, but at least their excuse was that there was a new pack of Premium softwares delivered for free...
When I first installed ICS on my Asus TF101, I had reboot and crash issues, I was rooted and had CWM installed as well, so I decided to redo it all. I went back to HC, rerooted with Vipermod immediately after, cleared out all the old leftover junk, installed rootkeeper, and went through the several update process to get to the latest ICS, reclaiming root each time with rootkeeper. The only thing I haven't done is reinstall CWM (yet). It's been a week now and I haven't suffered a single reboot or crash and it's definitely faster than HC. Only thing I'm missing is my overclockable kernel so I can up the speed a little bit more. To be honest though, I haven't really 'needed' to Overclock it. It's more that I 'want' to overclock it.
My overall point is, yes the issue as we know is definitely there, but personally I think it's more to do with some 3rd party software not playing nice rather than ICS or the hardware, as the only thing missing in my case between the first install of ICS and the second is leftover app software and CWM, nothing else is different.
"When I first installed ICS on my Asus TF101, I had reboot and crash issues, I was rooted and had CWM installed as well, so I decided to redo it all. I went back to HC, rerooted with Vipermod immediately after, cleared out all the old leftover junk, installed rootkeeper, and went through the several update process to get to the latest ICS, reclaiming root each time with rootkeeper. The only thing I haven't done is reinstall CWM (yet). It's been a week now and I haven't suffered a single reboot or crash and it's definitely faster than HC. Only thing I'm missing is my overclockable kernel so I can up the speed a little bit more. To be honest though, I haven't really 'needed' to Overclock it. It's more that I 'want' to overclock it."
Whereas I want to make a few calls, do my online banking, read the Guardian and play a few games. Seems like Android isn't for me then...
Wow! That's a multi-hour solution to a problem that causes pain for about a minute each time it happens. In my experience as a TF101 owner, it's about once a week.
On a broader note, as others have pointed out, the Android update model is broken. Imagine Dell having to package up fixes for Windows and you see how stupid it is. I'm not buying any more Android devices until there's a reliable, simple way to get security updates.
Sony has a point - ICS is a bloated mess with extortionate hardware requirements. Unfortunately geeks these days seem to not be able to criticise Google due to their irrational following. Google are forcing phone makers to bump up hardware specs to hide Google's inefficient coding. Microsoft would never hear the end of it if they still did this, yet Google does much worse with their battery-guzzling bloatware and barely a word of outrage is spoken.
Hmm...the Fanboys as you called, aren't making the phone. Sony, HTC, LG, Samsung, etc are. It is there responsibility to insure end users that any new version of OS works adequately on their hardware. What we see here is another Sony fiasco. Nothing to do with ICS.
ICS is a fine peace of OS for a SmartPhone. If its requirement are higher than the phones of old (1+ year old), well, that's the cost of going forward. ICS wasn't designed to run on olds hardware, but on new ones. If Sony wants to still push it on their decayed hardware, the solution is in the hand of the users who just have to switch to a better smartphone making company. Want a name? Samsung is one of them.
A quick look into the phones in the article shows they all have 512MB of RAM, +1GHz CPU's with Adreno 205. My Desire Z has the same specs (i overclock from 800Mhz to 1GHZ) yet I can run an XDA port of the HTC One V which is buttery smooth with good RAM usage. The HTC One V itself has 512MB of RAM so this looks like an issue with Sony's bloatware. HTC have been quite open recently in saying Sense is bloated and re-written a Lite version for the V. Their ICS upgrade program sucks though..
Even then, it seems native GB phones from other manufacturers are sporting 768+ MB so most should be fine.
Ps, the Xperia Play also has a 1GHz CPU, Adreno 205 and 512MB of RAM.. Ooops.
1.4ghz here now overclock, 380mb RAM free running Sony ICS from last month.
Watch the idiot that wrote this, arrcke ear his words (not that there is ever retractions or updates on el-reg, they won't even post the update linked earlier)
Sherlock, as wondering what stock the writers has and what his motives were for posting this tripe.
I have been running a custom ROM with 4.0.2 for a few weeks, followed by 4.0.3 and as of the weekend, 4.0.4 on my Desire HD. It is as smooth as silk - Chrome Beta works perfectly, most of my old games are still fine - and this is from a custom ROM without access to all the relevant drivers (Camera's still a bit flakey). Massive praise to the Ice Cold Sandwich crew - and my anecdotal experience would suggest if your ICS is performing poorly, point to the phone manufacturer and not Google.
Is this Sony totally stuffing up their handsets with older chips in fancy packaging or Google making a stuffing putting the two fingers up at vendors? Probably both.
All this custom ROMing is just a waste of time. I know the fandroids get a kick updating their device with a new custom ROM every week, but what's wrong with a stable OS that's locked down a wee bit more and coded more efficiently.
Oh yes, you need to be a fanboi supposedly to get one of those with something called iOS. Thumb me down if you want, but I still see plenty of users abusing 3GSs in the wild. Don't think many Android devices get past a year before people get fed up with them.
"Is this Sony totally stuffing up their handsets with older chips in fancy packaging or Google making a stuffing putting the two fingers up at vendors? Probably both."
No its Sony skimping on memory and other hardware in their handsets. I just upgraded my SGS2 to ICS and its smooth as butter - a bit faster and much better battery life.
But the SGS2 has 2 cores and double the RAM of the Xperia Arc S (I was looking at both when I last bought a phone).
"Don't think many Android devices get past a year before people get fed up with them."
I don't think you've thought much about it at all - my last Android lasted 2 years before I accidentally tested if it was waterproof (it wasn't) and this handset is going strong, no problems. You'll also see comments here from people that are using 3-4 year old handsets running ICS.
Obviously you are an Apple fanboi, using a more subtle disguise than most...
Apple fanboi who isn't a apple fanboi, work that one out.
I can only backup that opinion by the number of average joes (more than I can count on my hands) I personally know who bought Android phones and within weeks swapping them for better models or non-Android phones. Classic case was one person who got the first Sony Ericcson android phone (X10 AFAIK). Slow as a dog. Swapped it for a HTC Wildfire - slower than a snail. Then argued the mobile co. for a HTC Desire. Even then, it was a joke for HTC to be selling Android 1.6 devices that crawled around. I also have a friend who just would love to throw out their HTC Wildfire just because it's the buggiest piece of tat they've seen. Delayed texts, slow navigation, slow response when typing out e-mails/texts. I've even tried to reduce all the bloatware they installed on it. Still no difference made.
You're clearly a fandroid who probably can ROM the hell out of their phones to get the best out of them. Most average joes can't. Even I got fed up trying to optimise the original G1.
Updated – comment from the Developer World team:
We we would like to clarify that above mentioned “challenges” have already been addressed by our SW engineering teams. For instance, we have not only optimised the RAM management by making the RAM usage for internal apps as good as possible, but we will also introduce a Performance assistant at start up when running ICS. In this Performance assistant, you can enable and disable certain services that you might not want to run on your phone, in order to optimise the performance of your phone.
We have also worked with quite a few partners in regards to architecture optimisations for SQL handling. In addition, we have also optimised the hardware usage. And as a result of this article, a number of app developers have notified us that they are evaluating if HW optimisation will be needed or not for their apps.
The aim of this article was to share our knowledge regarding the different characteristics for ICS and Gingerbread in an open way, as we strive to have an open communication with the developer community. All in all, we would like to point out that it’s our clear aim to deliver an as good ICS update as ever possible. As you might have seen on the Sony Xperia Product Blog, we’re not far from releasing it now. Thanks for all the feedback!
No wonder why game companies forced google to release a native SDK, they didn't want to have anything to do with the Java VM, which is notoriously a resource hog, maybe Dalvik is in a lesser extent than the Sun's JVM, but still is. Further, java developers are notoriously prone to write bloated code : (http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MS.2010.7). Scrap the jvm and make android a C/C++ development platform. If Objective-C didn't put off developers, I don't see why C++ should.
I'm no expert in this field, and I could be completely off base, but I wonder why Google has to use Java in the first place. Or rather, would they have to use the VM if they'd established a set of standards for Android phones earlier.
My thinking is this: if the situation were more like the PC world, all phones would use CPUs with a common instruction set, and the more peripheral hardware would use standard interfaces. The, Google wouldn't have to use Java for the operating system.
Instead of that, different phones are so incompatible with each other that using Java becomes a necessity, while bringing the new version of the OS to them still requires significant custom coding.
In the old days, programming had to be *massively* optimised to eek out as much functionality as possible on hardware with, by todays standards, exceptional limitations.
These days, the era of optimised code seems to have been shelved.
Instead, we have frameworks on top of frameworks, all geared to making a developers life easier, at the expense of raw processing power.
I recall a similar outcry with newer releases of iOS running on older iOS devices - my now aging touch 2g was spankingly fast until I upgraded to iOS 4.
It's a continuous hardware upgrade cycle driven by software - sure, that's always been the case - but I can't help feeling modern programmers have got really lazy ...
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""You really don't know how software works."
Explanation, please."
Okay... my explanation of my comment (driven by the insinuation that I as a modern developer am lazy) is this:
"In the old days, programming had to be *massively* optimised to eek out as much functionality as possible on hardware with, by todays standards, exceptional limitations."
Software also had very limited requirements in the "old days" - simpler hardware, lower expectations on what software could do, less support for multiple devices/setups. The nature of the languages at the time often required the developers to be working at a lower level than alot of today's developers anyway. I say alot, because those types of developers still exist. As embedded developers, driver authors, and many other roles you're not really thinking about.
"These days, the era of optimised code seems to have been shelved."
Not true, though it may seem that way from your casual desktop/smartphone user. Every place I've worked in there's been a drive to optimise anything they could, be it UI for desktop software, processing of data on embedded devices running ucos, or whatever. I worked for a manufacturer who built their own processors, and as a result could control and eek out every last bit from the chips.
"Instead, we have frameworks on top of frameworks, all geared to making a developers life easier, at the expense of raw processing power."
Frameworks on top of frameworks help separate complication, encourage code-reuse, and let people deal with higher level problems without the need to get into the nitty gritty. So in a sense, it does make a developers life easier - that doesn't mean their work is easy, or that raw processing power is lost. If processing power is lost, there is either a very good reason for it, or as you suggest they are terrible frameworks.
"I recall a similar outcry with newer releases of iOS running on older iOS devices - my now aging touch 2g was spankingly fast until I upgraded to iOS 4."
I'm assuming they added features, bug fixes, support for new features (that probably arn't available with your old hardware) - that doesn't come for free in terms of processing power really. It's the same on android, it's the same on windows. The more services/complication you add to the setup the slower things get. If it was that slow they should have warned you, or given you the option to downgrade.
"It's a continuous hardware upgrade cycle driven by software - sure, that's always been the case - but I can't help feeling modern programmers have got really lazy ..."
The hardware upgrade cycle isn't driven by software, it's driven by companies trying to sell more devices, or meetinf the demand from consumers for faster/cooler/smaller devices that exceed the previous devices specs/features. If anything the software is driven by the hardware cycle - software has been struggling to keep up with the hardware improvements. Multi-core development, the thousands of devices with different specs, the call from people using new phones that they want support for their device - while people using 3 year old devices demand the software also works for them still.
But, thanks to those "lazy" developers and frameworks all that is possible.
I'll probably get torn apart for a very "boo hoo, we developers are hard done to" style post... but I've had to quickly smash the post out in like a minute before I leave - so I'll have said some silly things... probably. :)
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I'd agree with that. I've had similar experiences, playing with strings when I'd begun working in .NET was always an interesting one. :)
The optimisation point about it being the last 10% - I've seen that in larger teams. It had a lot to do with getting the logic in place first, then refactoring - rather than spending time optimising code that might not make it to final product. Shifting requirements and dropping features through lack of time and so on.
Well I have it on my Samsung Galaxy S 2, and I will be ripping it off soon thank's to the phone constantly loosing connection to wireless routers.
Unable to use Youtube on Wi-Fi or Mobile data network.
Signal level has dropped, as I am no longer getting H+ on my phone anymore instead I can only get 3G and it's nothing to do with my provider as I can put my sim in my HTC Desire which has, not be upgraded yet and it instantly gives me H+.
then I'm not interested. Of course software alone would never make these possible -capable network hardware and phone hardware are required.
But I'm looking at a smart phone from a black box point of view, from the experience of it. In other words, any Operating System version beyond Android 2.3 is low on my list of wants.
Installed ICS on my (unbranded) Sensation yesterday. Once I sorted out a couple of account log-ins, so far so good. Seems to run smoothly, perhaps better than before. In fact I used to run low on memory causing the HTC Sense to have to re-load when I went back to the home screen, hasn't done that yet with ICS.
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