Another nokia apologizer on the prowl

Welcome back NukNuk, missed your postings!

technically it doesnt matter if one of the 400x800 wallpapers on your n900-desktop is plain black or a colored picture - its still a wallpaper that needs to be rendered.

a better option (to make transitions smoother) would be to completely disable wallpapers or set a single static wallpaper for all desktops.

also, one thing i am not sure what to think about: could it be that the n900 is rendering in 3d while the desktop is shown?

try this: open an app so the taskswitcher-button is activated. go to the desktop. scroll a desktop halfway and then let go (so that it would scroll to either the left or right side to focus a desktop)
just as you let go, push the taskswitcher-button and have a look at the left or right border of the screen.
you will see a mirror-like-effect.

btw, the transition effects, the floating icons, desktop sliding effects etc are all done in 3D and by the GPU and not the CPU. The GPU on the N900 is as fast iPhone 3GS if not double the speed. So obviously the issue isn't with the hardware. It's all software.

Well, if you get N900 to only run 1 app at a time and never multitask, it's actually pretty darn smooth. The task witcher animation is smooth, launch/close app transition animation is smooth. Might still not look as fluid as iPhone but I think that's just a different in animation quality or framerate and not a fault with hardware.

I reckon it's just not prioritised well enough to "always" be smooth.

i think maemo 5 UI is fast and fluid enough. any refinements will be welcome but i have no complaints. playing around with transition times (slow them down) and u see how truly smooth they are. the n900 handles the effects with good frame rate. and also when transitions are set off u see just how FAST programs and menus can load!

I am assuming now that the OP is meaning scroll-speeds, transitions, etc when talking about UI fluidity for this post.

If we go back to the very basics of computing theory, so that people do not misunderstand what higher resolution actually means. A mobile device or computer has basically limited amount of resources, namely CPU, GPU, memory, storage and i/o. I/o here is between different components, such as between CPU and memory. Between the GPU and memory, etc.

If you have 2.5 times higher resolution in pixels, it means that you will consume 2.5 times resources (well, I am simplifying things here). The bitmaps, the icons, etc will use 2.5 times more memory and thus more i/o time as well.

Now iPhone is using many tricks to make the fluidness in the UI such as double-buffering the scroll area and making the UI scroll that image even though it is not fully rendered (i.e. try browser or scrolling very fast). There is nothing new or wrong with this approach, basically you are trading one resource to another resource, in this case memory for more responsiveness. With higher resolution, you need more memory to do the same.

There are many many things that might be done differently in Maemo to even increase the fluidity more, but do not underestimate the effect of higher resolution (i.e. try running your favorite 3D game in 800x600 resolution and 2400xsomething, the GPU might be able to do it, but some other parts of your system will choke). And more memory is more power consumption, etc.

This is just to correct some misunderstandings people have shown in this thread. Everything is always a trade-off. People can then decide whether one trade-off is better than another trade-off or if a third way would be better. Advancements in technology (i.e. less power-consuming memory, cpu, etc) and evolution in the UI frameworks will always help of course, so eventually your resource situation changes and you have to make different choices on how you balance things.

Thank you loranth, for nailing it right on the head and saving me from writing this very same post.

-Thom

If Nokia knew it was going to push 2.5 times the visual data, it should have been able to push 2.5 more times via the hardware. Under-engineered a bit perhaps?

The converse of what's being said in disgust about the iPhone - limited screensize, simplified UI, et al - the converse is also true. More complicated, higher screen resolution using the same-ish hardware as the lesser powered iPhone and no interest in making it more powerful is odd.

And the above post was brought to you by the words "devil's advocate"...

there is nothing wrong with the speed of the n900. or the actual effects themselves. its that they are set at a dam low frame rate, probably somethin like 15 frames a second or less. up the frame rate and hey presto nice smoothe transitions, if it cant be done then its due to poor coding cause the phone is more than able to multitask and have smoothe effects. scrolling is also awful, and needs loads of work. whether they will actually sort these things out is another question though. im so happy with my n900 i try and overlook the transitions, but it dont half get on my nerves sometimes. seiously if it can run the operating system and bounce evolution at the same time it can handle some transition effects,

OK guys.

why is the desktop four desktop smooth scrolling. but everything else is bad.

i have had a read about the comments about the res but the desktop is at a high res with widgets and it scrolls smooth and fine. but EVERYTHING else seems to be unoptimized