[Maemo 5] Angry Birds on N900 and iPhone: a comparison
 

ok, i purchased the game Angry Birds on both platforms..and while the n900 has the superior resolution, it seems that my wifes ipod touch (2nd gen) has the superior color and framerate.

The color part kinda ticked me off i remembered that the n900 only has 16 bit colors i think and the ipod has 16m colors (18 bit i believe).. The difference was so noticible i was left wondering why wouldnt they didnt opt for the higher color depth instead.

Then the game runs much smoother on inferior hardware. That may be partly because the resolution on the n900 is higher..but it kinda sucks (i like touting features of my phone to friends but i seem to have lost this debate)

still an awesome game..just wish the colors were as deep.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

did you turn screen brightness to max on n900 when comparing color deph?

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

errr... the screens I've seen on iPods/hones have all been worse on colours than the n900 display. Kinda weird if they intentionally used bad graphics on the game...

I got an idea. Take screenshots from both devices with the game in same state and post them here. :O

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

fps overall on this device is in my opinion on unacceptable level. Sometimes it is almost smooth but still gets little jerky. Its just one thing that irritated me after i had used iphone. With one program running. But after awhile you forget it :) Actually i have had this same problem with different distros on pc and different hw....I'm starting to think that xorg or display drivers are not optimized and there is some really big problems with vertical sync or some other thing.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

alexreed88, 18 bits encode 262144 colors, not 16 million. Where did you pull your numbers from?

I strongly doubt that you can tell the difference between 18 bit color and 24 bit color, or a difference between two frame rates if the lower one is at least 30.

And yes, you will lose any debate based solely on perception and motivated by insecurity, lack of knowledge, and vanity. In fact, both parties entering such a debate will.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

i cant believe that it is the color dept of 16bit ..

a resolution of 800x480 can display 384K pixels/colors at the same time, and then it can choose in a "pallet" of 16M. that seems more then enough.

Isnt it the resistive screen? that has more layers?

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

Slender: Agree totally about the FPS overall. As an ex-iPhone user myself I've kinda ignored it since the N900 can do so much more compared to the iPhone. Would be nice at some point in the future to have a handheld with well optimized stuff, raw power is one thing, but if its used badly it's not that big a deal. Currently I'm just missing a lot of basic features like a decent media player, portrait mode, games like Tower Madness Zero etc.

Then again, now I've got a good keyb for IRC, SMS & IM, and a better toy for my nerdy needs. ;)

edit: The FPS was basicly the first thing I noticed in the device first, just doing something as basic as scrolling the virtual desktops. No idea why it's that bad. :/

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

(note that i don't have a device, so i haven't seen the colors)
16 bits can encode 65536 colors. That's actually pretty little and is immediately obvious - just set your desktop color to 16 bits and feel the pain. From the films i've seen of the device, 16 bit color is unlikely. 18 bits would be extremely weird, since 18 makes no sense (multiples of 8 are preferred for technical reasons)
24 bits may sound weak compared to the 32 windows boasts, but as my linux desktop can confirm, there's actually no difference. My money is on 24 bit color for the n900
I wouldn't blame the makers of angry birds if they cut some corners to more easily port it to maemo. How much would you invest in porting your app to, say ... solaris (i.e. a niche, not very used os)? I think that's where the problems come from: the producers not optimizing the app very much
Here's a better benchmark: upload the same movie to both devices (assuming ye olde iphone will let you do that ;) ). Then run is side-by-side and see

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

While i mistakenly quoted 18bit from a site i read, nowhere in my debates has any opinions or deduction based of any insecurity, lack of knowledge, or vanity.
Also it quite annoys me a bit when people tell me that i wont notice a difference between color depths when the difference is quite plain in this example. ;)
I am not at home at the moment to post a comparison of the screen shots but when i do i will share.

oh and yes i did turn the brightness to the max. Had to do the same when comparing it to the pre.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

I maybe missing the point but all the sites I visited state the Iphone 3GS and the N900 both have 16M (16.777.216) color displays 24 bits.

or are you talking about the color dept inside the game?

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

its quite possible that it could be just in-game. ill do some other comparisons.

but also there has been instances where ive seen on some high end winmo phones where the specs stated 256k or 16m but winmo only supported 16bit...

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

It's not a completely fair comparison as the iPhone's resolution is 2.5 times less than N900's. There is also no multitasking on the iPhone.

From what I've seen, the framerate looks good when it's not dropping frames. There seems to be some weird stuttering in the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKKb5EyP-S8

I think this has something to do with the OS, it's propably doing some stuff in the background which takes up CPU cycles and makes Angry Birds drop frames. Could be that the user in the youtube video is running too many apps at once or maybe a widget is refreshing itself every once in a while, causing the stuttering?

This kind of problems might get ironed out after updates to the OS, game or both.

edit: have the game myself on iPod Touch 8GB (ARM11 @ 533MHz if my memory is correct) and it's silky smooth - in comparison the N900 version is a disappointment, although the bigger real-estate is nice.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

Actually..the framerate is fine..its just not as fluid as its counterpart. My main gripe is the color. And i did the comparison with no programs open and closed unnecessary processes in xterm.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

I don't know if the LCD framebuffer on the iPhone is 16, 18 or 24 bits -- what I know is that by default, the Apple provided OpenGL skeleton will render to a 32 bpp frambuffer and dither.

I believe most serious games correct this (and set it to the more appropriate rgb565, like what we have on the N900). Easy way to solve this question is asking the game developer :), but my vote is that the iPhone game also uses 16bpp and thus the difference in color quality is either a bug or a caused by something else.

As for speed, well, the SGX on the iPhone (3GS) is just better and also has way less pixels to move.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

You are right about the sgx, but i was comparing it to the iTouch with the 2g hardware

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

I don't know where this myth that the N900 displays 16M colors came from. No matter what the screen hardware can display (18bit maybe), the OS runs in 16 bit mode.
Yes, you'll notice a big difference between 16bit and 24bit when looking at undithered color gradients. But dithering, especially at the high resolution of the N900, makes it less noticable.
BTW, 32 bit colors is the same as 24 bit colors, with the additional bit unused or used for storing a transparency value. Both display 16M colors.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

So you skip blaming and jump straight to accusations? :D

Seriously though, both iPhone and N900 versions of Angry Birds use 16 bit color mode and the assets are pretty much in the same format.

Also, no corners were cut while making the N900 version. Neither one of the versions is a port of the other, they are both exactly the same game and optimized as much as we were able to. The only reason why iPhone version went out sooner was the delay in Ovi Store opening.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

Allow me to add my experience as follows:

a) Although the N900 is slightly dimmer,

b) Color-wise the phones are quire similar. N900 seemed a bit better but it could be bias. Same goes for HD2.

c) My N900 runs the birds like nobody's business. I haven't had a single slowdown unless there was a call or notification. It might be your phone that runs stuff.

d) I saw the app run on both. There is no performance difference in either, the animation is smooth. I have a water cooled quad core with a dual GPU at home. I know framerate when I see it. It was smooth. On both.

e) the iPhone is not exactly big on multitasking. N900 is. If you have performance differences it's probably that something's not right in the background.

Oh, and, the 24 bit (16M color) comes from the specs. What really is displayed can be tested relatively easily. I will run a test tomorrow.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/1647...c795882cd4.jpg

http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/1647...1758565169.jpg
This one below I attempted to even out the brightness settings.
http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/s/1647...11b70a12b9.jpg

Seems the background is the main difference.
And yes while both framerates are quite solid' its quite obvious that the osx version is smoother.
Given the info in the above pose i suppose that the touch has a better screen calibration? Dont know the reason for the difference.

Re: some things i noticed about in the iphon os vs maemo5 debate
 

I have both devices to and the game on both.. I must say the res on the n900 makes the game look better and detailed.. but then again the colorflow and brighness level on the iphone is so much better this is mostly because of the capacitive screen. Im selling the n900, got to be a f.. nerd to get something out of this device,..

getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

so there I am, at work, not much going down, I crack out my N900 and have a play of Angry Birds, my boss has a go and loves the simplicity of the game and nearly creams he's trousers when I tell him theres a version for his 3GS on the App Store..

Imagine my disgust/shock/horror/self loathing, what ever you want to call it, when the game plays better on the 3GS than my N900, and I mean better..

- Higher FSP
- More vivid colours
- absolutely 'no' jittering

What. The. Frak!!

Please don't go down the higher resolution route, no no no, that has very little to do with this type of game, a few animated bitmaps, governed by 1/2 a sinusoidal wave, and some basic physics at the end....

... I mean, come on.... really??

I was flabbergasted, then I had the usual iTunes Vs Ovi, discussion, which I cant defend anymore, how can you, the N900 might as well not have shipped with a Ovi link,

Sooooooo disappointed my Nokia and my N900 right now, double that up with the fact that Nokia still haven't sorted out the movie play back issues, I'm really regretting getting rid of my 3GS...

... Nokia have until the next iPhone to convince me that I didn't make a 2 year contractual mistake switching to N900, if by July my beloved N900 is still a horrid mess of unfinished beta software and issues galore I just buy a PAYG iPhone, as other devices really don't take my fancy.

:(

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I have my N900 to use it as a pocket laptop. I don't really care about the phone features. I had all prev. Nxxx and I'm sure I will never own an Apple product... but I feel your pain. Angry birds works a lot better and smoother on my son's iPod touch! I quit messing with his iPod touch because on that piece of s^##^& everything works so smooth and just makes me mad.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

Well......., I guess another sad story about N900.... I really like this N900 phone very much, just sad to hear more and more dissatisfy owner. After so many months since it goes public, still don't see much on ovi store and don't even have a decent useful turn by turn navigation system. My patient really start to run out with my N900.... I know lots of my other friends who owned N900 went over to Nexus One....so sad..I hope i wont be the one next..... :(

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

How does that change the validity of the resolution argument? The (lack of) game complexity mostly affects the CPU, whereas the GPU still has to draw 2,5 times* as many pixels to the screen.

Can't comment on how vivid the colors are in comparison, but it's not like the N900 is bad. I don't really care if it's best as long as it's good enough.


*Calculated using Almost TI. Try finding that in the App store :P

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

ermm i got angry birds and last week my mate downloaded it for his iphone, it looks **** on iphone compared to the n900, even my mate was like "why does it look better on your phone when its the same game" the higher res make it look much more smoother and i dont get jerks when i play.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I'm with Ronaldo. I had a chance to play it on the iPhone the other day, and it just looked so blocky and ugly in comparison.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

man i prolly gonna see my mate 2moro, i'll get video or pics if i get a change lool

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

i third that.... ive seen it played on iphone, much better on meh trusty n900. not seen the 3gs gameplay tho.....

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

SImple answer ->

Sacrificing frame rate for High resolution,

But can the iPhone do real multi-tasking? I don't think so, you can try the app to fake multi-tasking "backdoor" or whatever it called.

Simple if you like the iPhone then sell your N900 and get an iPhone. End of story and stop complaining...

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I've played the game with both iPhone & n900 and haven't really noticed any differences in gameplay. The graphics look better on n900 due to higher resolution, but the colors feel a bit more live on the iphone, which is propably due to different coating on the screen.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I could trade you my slightly used iPhone 3G for your N900 :D

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I already made a topic on this when angry birds was first released that covers all the issues you have stated.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

Yes please trade him his n900 for your Iphone so that he can play a much smoother Angry Bird on it.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I have the Angry Birds game on my N900, (well whats available to put on there anyway) and my girlfriend has it on her iPhone. the game runs the same for both of us most of the time. occasionally the 900 has a little slowdown, nothing thats really a complaint.. the iPhone on the other hand often goes in to some sort of bizarre super slowdown where it literally takes almost 2 minutes for it to finish processing a graphic/animation sequence and then finally comes back to life and plays normally again. she got the game for that because she loved it on the 900. her first impressions after getting it for her device were that it looks better on the N900, and so does most other stuff that we both have. not sure why people say the iPhone is more vibrant. so far Im very happy with the N900 display and Ive had no issues with video playback yet either.

the thing that is ticking me off though is the lack of content and working store. and the part of that that really got me a little ticked at nokia was the price tag of $2.99 (for the 5 minutes it had a price tag) for that games extra 42 levels, where apple is selling the newer version with the extra 84 levels for $.99.

a lot of people spent a lot of money on this device and it sure is starting to feel like theres a serious lack of effort from anyone other than the maemo.org community to help actually make this thing a success.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

backing up the other 3 or 4 people here.
I've also played it on both devices N900 looks better, no noticable FPS drops.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I went and read alexreed88's equally-badly titled thread, and I still don't know what you guys are talking about. Angry Birds runs flawlessly on my N900. I see no stuttering or anything, ever. But the N900's version looks much sharper.

EDIT: And I agree with MERVINATOR that the Ovi store is a monstrous, embarrassing fiasco. Shame on whoever was involved.

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

˄˄ This ˄˄

Only once I was having slowdowns when panning the screen in the game. Resolved with a reboot.
In average I only need to reboot once a week, and my battery is lasting very close to 48h. And I play Angry Birds and other games every day when commuting.

EDIT: Oh and my gf plays at least 2h of blocks every day before going to sleep :D

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

I don't know what you guys are talking about. Angry Birds on my N900 often slows down, pauses, jumps, jitters etc.

Maybe it's because in the background it's also running several instances of micro-b, downloading updates, running Doom (prboom), Duke Nukem, Wormux, Bounce Evolution, playing some music whilst showing me the lyrics, scrolling my friends' facebook status updates, giving me live update of the London Underground lines, showing me a teletext feed and running google maps, all whilst bluetoothing some files to my friends directly from a network share on my home server...

...at which point any iPhone waving friends have slipped their phone back into their pocket and sat down quietly in the corner. :D

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

Another guy here who has played Angry Birds on the iPod touch, and noticed no difference in gameplay at all, only that the N900 had a much sharper image and looked better!

I have no bias towards the N900 either, I'm typing this from an Apple product right now ;)

Re: getting a bit hacked off with nokia!! :(
 

It really slower on N900.
Besides, this the one and only normal game for N900 which was released after the N900 debute.