In Earnest this iphone 3g user has android lag concerns.

[switchthreesixty]

Hello,

First time post here.

Backstory:
I have been using an iphone 3g for over two years and desperately desire an
upgrade. I bought the IP4, but could not bear it's proximity issues. Because of this I am being "shoved" to Android. I have every reason to go with Android. I need a "phone," something an IP4 simply has yet to be able to provide.

However, I still want to feel like I am actually "upgrading" when I get a new phone. However, after having every reason to go to Android I feel like I am downgrading in a sense. This is due to the lag I find in Android phones. I bought and returned an HTC Evo and played with a mytouch 4g in the store, both supposedly sound and cutting edge devices. But yet, they display more lag then my nearly 3 year old phone. This perplexes me.

So in the end my question are as follows;
Will the Nexus S have similar lag and slow screen responsiveness that the Evo and Mytouch 4g seem to have?

Is there any tweaks, much like those found on a pc, to eliminate this lag and stuttered screen responsiveness?
(Please note: I am aware of the effect multitasking has on performance and the Evo and the Mytouch I used were not running a ton of apps in the background to cause the lag)

 

[MartinS]

The Nexus S is snappy for me. The dedicated GPU sees it much faster than the Nexus One in Snapdragon.

I had an iPhone 3G (not S) a few phones ago so my memory is a little vague, but everything seems comparable...

 

[switchthreesixty]

comparable[/U]...

See that is just it. I want to feel as though I am upgrading, not side stepping and getting something "comparable."

I bought a WP7 Focus, but returned it due to half-baked support for the micro sd slot. However, it was buttery smooth. It flicked and responded much better then my 3G. It is how I want Android to feel like when I put my finger to the screen.
But, after using supposedly top notch Android hardware it still shows considerable lag and non-responsiveness.

With the Nexus S, does it feel buttery smooth and responsive? Or does it show typical Android hiccups here and there?

 

[quantumrand]

See that is just it. I want to feel as though I am upgrading, not side stepping and getting something "comparable."

I bought a WP7 Focus, but returned it due to half-baked support for the micro sd slot. However, it was buttery smooth. It flicked and responded much better then my 3G. It is how I want Android to feel like when I put my finger to the screen.
But, after using supposedly top notch Android hardware it still shows considerable lag and non-responsiveness.

With the Nexus S, does it feel buttery smooth and responsive? Or does it show typical Android hiccups here and there?

Feels just as smooth as my friend's iPhone 4. The browser had a bit of studdering prior to the 2.3.1 update, but it seems to have been sorted out. I think the fact that it doesn't have a third party UI running on top of it makes a big difference. It also helps that Google has tailored Android 2.3 specifically for the Nexus S, basically the same thing Apple does with iOS and the iPhone 4.

 

[timcity]

I have found that the smoothness that you are lacking is most likely due to the way the browser is designed. You could try using the opera browser because it works more like the iPhone and wp7 browser where if the phone can't render the page right away you get that checker pattern instead of hiccups.

 

[timcity]

And another thing to consider is flash. Its best when set to "on demand" otherwise all the page's ads slow things down.

 

[fangorious]

I've noticed a couple of times mine didn't auto-rotate from portrait to landscape, but other than that everything has felt very smooth. The Nexus S (indeed the whole Galaxy S line) has the same GPU, and the CPUs are base off the same ARM Cortex A8 spec. So hardware-wise they have the same capabilities. The problem with lag in the Galaxy S line is that Samsung made a bunch of changes to the OS (the file system is horrible). The Nexus S is pure Google software, so it isn't affected by the issues people with the Vibrant/Captivate/Fascinate/Epic report. Go to a BestBuy and try the demo model, start off by doing a factory reset so you'll know you are seeing pristine settings/configuration.

 

[chrlswltrs]

I returned my mytouch 4g to get the nexus s. It is HTC crap that slows down their phones.

I had an iPhone the day it was released and an iPhone 3gs and then a couple Droid phones on verizon and the nexus s is by far the best phone I have ever owned.

 

[AndreaCristiano]

I returned my mytouch 4g to get the nexus s. It is HTC crap that slows down their phones.

I had an iPhone the day it was released and an iPhone 3gs and then a couple Droid phones on verizon and the nexus s is by far the best phone I have ever owned.

Have to agree. HTC has nice hardware but that's it. There phones are laggy and buggy. Motorola's are almost lag free but Samsung even with there touchwiz is lag free and the nexus S with pure gingerbread is amazing! What the galaxy S was meant to be
PS I was an iPhone owner 1-4 so I was like you before I tried and found

 

[quantumrand]

I returned my mytouch 4g to get the nexus s. It is HTC crap that slows down their phones.

I had an iPhone the day it was released and an iPhone 3gs and then a couple Droid phones on verizon and the nexus s is by far the best phone I have ever owned.

The MT4G does have some extra RAM (768MB) and a slightly more powerful CPU, so you'd think the SenseUI would run decently on it. Kinda suggests that it's not very well optimized for the device.

Just goes to show how important it is that software be optimized for the device it's on. That's why I believe the Nexus S will continue to run Android even better than these upcoming dual-core phones and such.

 

[AndreaCristiano]

The MT4G does have some extra RAM (768MB) and a slightly more powerful CPU, so you'd think the SenseUI would run decently on it. Kinda suggests that it's not very well optimized for the device.

Just goes to show how important it is that software be optimized for the device it's on. That's why I believe the Nexus S will continue to run Android even better than these upcoming dual-core phones and such.

I have to agree here as well I believe the optimization of vanilla android with the nexus will out class the dual cores still

 

[DukeL]

With the Nexus S, does it feel buttery smooth and responsive? Or does it show typical Android hiccups here and there?

Not a chance in hell does it feel buttery smooth and responsive. Only place you will get that is sadly iPhone.(And maybe wp7 havent spent too much time with it) I often find myself swiping twice on the Nexus S to get to the next home screen. While it works and is pretty fast the software is just not written as efficient as ios so you will not get that liquid magic responsiveness you find in iPhone 4. You wont get it in any android device, I've tried them all. Still what you lose in responsiveness and liquid os feel you gain in openness and freedom to customize to your hearts content!

 

[quantumrand]

Not a chance in hell does it feel buttery smooth and responsive. Only place you will get that is sadly iPhone.(And maybe wp7 havent spent too much time with it) I often find myself swiping twice on the Nexus S to get to the next home screen. While it works and is pretty fast the software is just not written as efficient as ios so you will not get that liquid magic responsiveness you find in iPhone 4. You wont get it in any android device, I've tried them all. Still what you lose in responsiveness and liquid os feel you gain in openness and freedom to customize to your hearts content!

Maybe yours is broken? The only time my Nexus S doesn't swipe to the next screen is when I do it wrong (I'm still kinda used to the way my old phone did it, with a slow swipe past a certain point. The NS uses fast short swipes). I've got several demanding widgets and the live wallpaper as well.

Besides, the App Drawer is the only thing you can compare to the iPhone, since the iPhone's interface really is just a list of apps. That said, the App Drawer on my NS is smooth as silk.

 

[AndreaCristiano]

Not a chance in hell does it feel buttery smooth and responsive. Only place you will get that is sadly iPhone.(And maybe wp7 havent spent too much time with it) I often find myself swiping twice on the Nexus S to get to the next home screen. While it works and is pretty fast the software is just not written as efficient as ios so you will not get that liquid magic responsiveness you find in iPhone 4. You wont get it in any android device, I've tried them all. Still what you lose in responsiveness and liquid os feel you gain in openness and freedom to customize to your hearts content!

Yea dude what the hell are you talking about? I sold my iphone 4 got a captivate and that was almost as smooth as the iphone and the Nexus S puts that to shame. So you either A) dont own a Nexus S and are BS'ing or B) yours is broken

 

[MartinS]

The Nexus S is smooth.

The only place it is not quite as smooth is in the browser. But remember that it doesn't cheat like the iPhone.

 

[switchthreesixty]

I was finally able to demo the Nexus S. I loved it. I felt it was buttery smooth. Responsive and swiped from one widget filled screen to the next with grace and ease. However, I agree with others here that the browser is not smooth, nor does it make intuitive sense when double tapping or pinch to zoom. It re-crops when I pinch to zoom when I don't want it to. On balance, I can live with this.

New question, although, I am somewhat high jacking my own thread.

T-mobiles data caps:
I currently have ATT and have their unlimited plan(grandfathered in). Not sure I want to give this up.
T-Mobile has unlimited but is throttled at 5 GBs.
My concern is that I work building security at nights with lots of time to kill.
My phone being the main source of entertainment to pass the time.
Almost every morning I like to stream Mike and Mike on ESPN radio.
Between streaming radio, web, email, and a more than average amount of gps I assume I will burn through that throttle threshold fairly quickly. Is this assumption correct?

 

[MartinS]

Double tapping on the browser works for me in every situation. No need to use pinch from what I can see.

 

[quantumrand]

I was finally able to demo the Nexus S. I loved it. I felt it was buttery smooth. Responsive and swiped from one widget filled screen to the next with grace and ease. However, I agree with others here that the browser is not smooth, nor does it make intuitive sense when double tapping or pinch to zoom. It re-crops when I pinch to zoom when I don't want it to. On balance, I can live with this.

New question, although, I am somewhat high jacking my own thread.

T-mobiles data caps:
I currently have ATT and have their unlimited plan(grandfathered in). Not sure I want to give this up.
T-Mobile has unlimited but is throttled at 5 GBs.
My concern is that I work building security at nights with lots of time to kill.
My phone being the main source of entertainment to pass the time.
Almost every morning I like to stream Mike and Mike on ESPN radio.
Between streaming radio, web, email, and a more than average amount of gps I assume I will burn through that throttle threshold fairly quickly. Is this assumption correct?

I believe the browser has a setting to turn off the page reflow. Give the "Auto fit webpages" setting a try.

I actually came from a grandfathered unlimited plan on AT&T. I found that their fair use policy actually kicks in at 2GB, though I don't believe they actually did anything other than send a letter asking you to be more careful with your data use.

As far as data use is concerned, 5GB is about 30 hours of streaming video or 50 hours of streaming audio. For the most part, emails and webpages will be negligible. On a 5 day work week, a few hours streaming video every day will probably put you over that 5GB cap. Any chance your building has Wi-Fi? If so, you wouldn't have to worry about your data cap at all.

 

[TheTorch]

FACT: Android lags.

I've extensively used a Nexus One at work for development and recently used a Captivate (Galaxy S) with a custom (optimized?) ROM and some purported lag fix that eats up 1GB of the internal memory! Neither of them is as fast as 2 year old iPhone 3GS, much less an iPhone 4.

I couldn't help but chuckle each time it lagged for no apparent reason given the high end hardware. The app list scrolls at about 20 FPS. The browser stutters EVERY time you zoom or scroll. When you scroll the page there is a noticeable delay between the time you slide your finder and when it begins scrolling. I did not notice any difference with & without Flash installed. The touch response delay is unacceptable and makes the whole thing look like a joke next to the iPhone.

The transitions and UI effects on Android (2.2 and up at least) are better than iOS and the black level on the AMOLED displays make them look REALLY beautiful; especially when something magically appears out of the black background. All this is completely ruined by the lag.

All the user applications are made in Java, so I expected lag to begin with but it wasn't as bad as I expected; but it lags none the less. Development is EXTREMELY easy on Android compared to the convoluted mess it is for the iPhone. However they should not have compromised user experience to make developer's lives easier.

 

[AndreaCristiano]

I was finally able to demo the Nexus S. I loved it. I felt it was buttery smooth. Responsive and swiped from one widget filled screen to the next with grace and ease. However, I agree with others here that the browser is not smooth, nor does it make intuitive sense when double tapping or pinch to zoom. It re-crops when I pinch to zoom when I don't want it to. On balance, I can live with this.

New question, although, I am somewhat high jacking my own thread.

T-mobiles data caps:
I currently have ATT and have their unlimited plan(grandfathered in). Not sure I want to give this up.
T-Mobile has unlimited but is throttled at 5 GBs.
My concern is that I work building security at nights with lots of time to kill.
My phone being the main source of entertainment to pass the time.
Almost every morning I like to stream Mike and Mike on ESPN radio.
Between streaming radio, web, email, and a more than average amount of gps I assume I will burn through that throttle threshold fairly quickly. Is this assumption correct?

If you have WIFI at work do what i do and rock your Nexus S on AT&T I have wifi 95% of the time. Its a great phone

 

[chrlswltrs]

FACT: Android lags.

I've extensively used a Nexus One at work for development and recently used a Captivate (Galaxy S) with a custom (optimized?) ROM and some purported lag fix that eats up 1GB of the internal memory! Neither of them is as fast as 2 year old iPhone 3GS, much less an iPhone 4.

I couldn't help but chuckle each time it lagged for no apparent reason given the high end hardware. The app list scrolls at about 20 FPS. The browser stutters EVERY time you zoom or scroll. When you scroll the page there is a noticeable delay between the time you slide your finder and when it begins scrolling. I did not notice any difference with & without Flash installed. The touch response delay is unacceptable and makes the whole thing look like a joke next to the iPhone.

The transitions and UI effects on Android (2.2 and up at least) are better than iOS and the black level on the AMOLED displays make them look REALLY beautiful; especially when something magically appears out of the black background. All this is completely ruined by the lag.

All the user applications are made in Java, so I expected lag to begin with but it wasn't as bad as I expected; but it lags none the less. Development is EXTREMELY easy on Android compared to the convoluted mess it is for the iPhone. However they should not have compromised user experience to make developer's lives easier.

I call BS. I had an iPhone 3GS before I got my Droid. The Droid had a little lag compared to my jailbroken 3GS so that I could multi task, but not much. Then I got the Droid X and now the Nexus S, both are better in every area than the iPhone 3GS. I really don't see any advantage even the iPhone 4 would have over the nexus S except maybe a couple apps that haven't made it to android yet.

Android is tailored to the nexus S the same way ios is tailored to iPhone. Any other android phone the os is bogged down by shit, whether moto or HTC or anyone else. It is great on the Nexus though

 

[TheTorch]

I haven't used a Nexus S, but I never will since 16GB is way to little for any of my activities. I have comics, music and games and 32GB is barely enough. Not having an SD card slot is plain stupid.

 

[chrlswltrs]

I haven't used a Nexus S, but I never will since 16GB is way to little for any of my activities. I have comics, music and games and 32GB is barely enough. Not having an SD card slot is plain stupid.

Since I stream all my music except for my slacker cache and I don't keep more than 1 movie at a time on my phone 16gb is more than enough for me. I usually don't have more than 5gb used anyways. I have never understood how people use so much, but I guess some people use more. While I do think it was a poor decision to not include expandable memory on the nexus s, it personally doesn't bother me at all

 

[TheTorch]

When you install apps on the iPhone/Android they get decompressed and consume almost twice as much space as when you download them. Many quality games are 500MiB-1GiB+ and comic books are 30MiB each for ~20 pages. I was actually considering finding someone who can BGA solder a new NAND chip to replace the 32GB one in my phone.

 

[quantumrand]

All the user applications are made in Java, so I expected lag to begin with but it wasn't as bad as I expected; but it lags none the less. Development is EXTREMELY easy on Android compared to the convoluted mess it is for the iPhone. However they should not have compromised user experience to make developer's lives easier.

When you install apps on the iPhone/Android they get decompressed and consume almost twice as much space as when you download them. Many quality games are 500MiB-1GiB+ and comic books are 30MiB each for ~20 pages. I was actually considering finding someone who can BGA solder a new NAND chip to replace the 32GB one in my phone.

Huh? Java is laggy? I think you're confusing Java with JavaScript, not that JavaScript is inherently laggy, just the environment it runs on (ie: a web browser). Java is actually extremely efficient and portable code.

And your mention of finding someone to solder a new NAND chip to your phone just further supports my assumption that you're talking out of your ass.