N900 - Yes, it sucks. - Page 31 - maemo.org

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jjx	2009-11-25 , 12:30
Posts: 474 \| Thanked: 283 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Oxford, UK	#301

Originally Posted by ossipena

It's very interesting to see that the issue doesn't occur (or only very slightly) when zoomed out and showing a complex web page with tens of thousands of characters and plenty of images. It only occurs when you've zoomed in fully.

actually it is very logical. when zooming in, all characters except i,I,F,H,l,L need exponentially more details if you dont want characters to look blocky. when zooming out, level of detail needed is decreased.actually it is very logical. when zooming in, all characters except i,I,F,H,l,L need exponentially more details if you dont want characters to look blocky. when zooming out, level of detail needed is decreased.

You may be sort of right, but for the wrong reason.

The "more details" you refer to is approximately the number of pixels at the edges of each character - i.e. the edge length, which is roughly the complexity of geometry calculations if the page was rendered as a big vector scene. The total increases with zooming out, not decreases, because although the characters need less detail, there are many more characters; the latter dominates. (O(n) vs. O(n^2) thing with scale).

But most renderers treat small characters differently, as prerendered greyscale bitmaps in a font cache, and draw them as little images. That's much faster than drawing the vector shape each time. Whereas most renderers draw large characters as vector shapes, because they'd take too much memory to cache as an image, and it's probably quicker to draw as a vector shape anyway - because you can take advantage of solid colour fills.

That could be enough to explain the different behaviour. But I'm not convinced. The amount of time it took to draw (quarter of a second or so) was vastly longer than the time it normally takes to draw that much area, whether as bitmaps, full colour images or vector shapes for large characters.

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hallokitty	2009-11-25 , 12:34
Posts: 36 \| Thanked: 13 times \| Joined on Nov 2009	#302

Originally Posted by borland

That is absolutely not true. WindowsXP runs perfectly on 366Mhz Celeron. There is no jittering, scrolling is smooth- I use one as a file server (yes I am cheap.)

Although you won't be having much fun with flash on that machine

That said, XP uses 2D hardware accelerated rendering paths only for the desktop, and on the n900, surely it can use the 3D hardware to get far smoother scrolling

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jjx	2009-11-25 , 12:37
Posts: 474 \| Thanked: 283 times \| Joined on Oct 2009 @ Oxford, UK	#303

Originally Posted by hallokitty

Although you won't be having much fun with flash on that machine

That said, XP uses 2D hardware accelerated rendering paths only for the desktop, and on the n900, surely it can use the 3D hardware to get far smoother scrolling

Yes, and eventually, with enough software updates (probably using Qt) maybe it will do that

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	daperl	2009-11-25 , 12:45
	Posts: 2,427 \| Thanked: 2,986 times \| Joined on Dec 2007	#304

Originally Posted by kanishou

But that's exactly what the N900 browser does too. All the fluid animations, scrolling, etc are using a pixmap buffer, while the actual page rendering is happening in the background.

Yeah, sorry, it was very confusing, but I was trying to contrast zooming techniques of Safari and the n900's window manager. I wasn't talking about the n900's browser.

__________________
N9: Go white or go home

Last edited by daperl; 2009-11-25 at 13:31.

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	NotTheMessiah	2009-11-25 , 13:16
	Posts: 373 \| Thanked: 40 times \| Joined on Nov 2009 @ Norwich	#305

That is absolutely not true. WindowsXP runs perfectly on 366Mhz Celeron. There is no jittering, scrolling is smooth- I use one as a file server (yes I am cheap.)

But what if you start piling on work for the CPU? Things start taking a while to respond right? I've had a few machines with processors around the 600MHz mark and even with a clean install of xp once a few programs were on the go it was noticebly sluggish. Perhaps not with the scrolling but definately in general performance. Actually i used to have a 366 celeron myself, and this thing certainly was not that responsive, ok again scrolling was ok but that was about it! the thing was ungodly slow even with a fresh install of xp.

Anyhow what i was really getting at is that yeah a 600MHz chip is reasonably fast for a phone but its not so fast that you can rape the hell out of it with having countless processes running at the same time and still expect the program you're working with to feel smooth and snappy. Just wont happen on a 600MHz chip.

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	NotTheMessiah	2009-11-25 , 13:27
	Posts: 373 \| Thanked: 40 times \| Joined on Nov 2009 @ Norwich	#306

That is absolutely not true. WindowsXP runs perfectly on 366Mhz Celeron. There is no jittering, scrolling is smooth- I use one as a file server (yes I am cheap.)

Actually one more point on this. the 366 celeron in question is obviously x86. and x86 is a CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) whereas the ARM chips are RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer). This means that the x86 family has more at is disposal to get a task done, therefore will be quicker. Cant expect the same performance from a RISC architecture as in some cases it will have to execute more instructions to achieve the same computation an x86 chip could do with one instruction meaning more clock cycles get used therefore causing things to run slower.

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iJanne	2009-11-25 , 13:29
Posts: 144 \| Thanked: 266 times \| Joined on Nov 2009	#307

N900 also has a lot larger resolution to move around than what is on the iPhone. I think the scrolling is really nice in the browser for example, any jerkiness that may be there (I haven't really noticed) is really just cosmetic and movement is fast.

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askarir	2009-11-25 , 14:24
Posts: 54 \| Thanked: 9 times \| Joined on Nov 2009 @ London	#308

Originally Posted by NotTheMessiah

Actually one more point on this. the 366 celeron in question is obviously x86. and x86 is a CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) whereas the ARM chips are RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer). This means that the x86 family has more at is disposal to get a task done, therefore will be quicker. Cant expect the same performance from a RISC architecture as in some cases it will have to execute more instructions to achieve the same computation an x86 chip could do with one instruction meaning more clock cycles get used therefore causing things to run slower.

RISC machines do the things they do very efficiently, and each instruction takes one clock cycle. CISC on the hand have instructions that take multiple clock cycles and because RISC intructions always take one clock cycle it is easier to do pipelining.

So it isn't quite as simple as you put it.

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	johnnyrockets911	2009-11-25 , 15:21
	Posts: 44 \| Thanked: 50 times \| Joined on Nov 2009	#309

Originally Posted by daperl

I start Holiday and parent mode tomorrow, so the earliest I'll probably get back to it is Monday. I used it for a few hours last night and I was very happy with it. It's only about 15 lines of code, mostly inserted JavaScript. There's plenty more to do, of course. For instance, there's no instant visual cue that it's happening, so one solution is what Apple did: an opaque animated overlay that eventually becomes transparent. Anyway, I'm motivated, and maybe the same time that Bundyo sorts out all his Fremantle/Diablo stuff, I'll have something more robust to insert into Tear and take it for a spin.

Do you have a blog or anything about coding for Maemo?

I love tweaking code etc, but I'm just wondering, where do you start?

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etuoyo	2009-11-25 , 15:40
Posts: 1,179 \| Thanked: 770 times \| Joined on Nov 2009	#310

Okay I have read through the first 21 pages of this thread and have come across a Playlist issue. I am going to ask something about the Playlist please don't eat me up if it has already been answered in the remaining pages and elsewhere on the site. After reading through 21 pages and starting to wonder if the phone I have been waiting for for 6 months is right I can be forgiven not reading further down or searching the site.

My issue is I want to use this as my mp3 player/phone. Now what is this I hear about Playlist issues! I don't intend to create Playlists on the phone. I already have my Playlists I have created using Winamp and Windows Media Player. If I drag and drop the whole of My Music folder from my PC on to the device won't it be able to see and play my Playlists? (I don't want to have to buy Zune HD and carry two separate devices and if I have to do that then there is more of a case to consider the HTC HD2 which I have ruled out due to lack of flash drive space for my music)

Last edited by etuoyo; 2009-11-25 at 15:43.