Hi, I'm posting after a few months of taking a break from the FreeRunner - which happened after I bought my wife a new Samsung Galaxy Spica - and promptly re-appropriated ;-). The phone runs Android 2.1 on a S3C6410 processor at 800MHz max.
It was a nice opportunity to experiment with Android on the current generation of phone hardware - having read about the hardware limitations of the FR too many times. And after my 3 month experiment I tend to agree and disagree with a lot of what I've read. I really don't know how best to list out my experiences - so I'm going to list what comes to my mind in no particular order :- 1. The Android (unofficial but optimised) build 2.1 takes longer to boot on the spica than SHR on FR (kernel 2.6.29). The difference is about 10-12 secs - but significant. With the new SHR kernel - the diff could go up to 25 -30 secs (I didn't measure). I wasn't expecting this and I would like to conclude that :- a) SHR distro and the kernel guys are doing a great job - I just didn't realise how much!! :-) b) Samsung's kernel optmisation sucks :-/ 2. The Android theme is simpler and yet better looking than the default SHR theme. Seems to me that using a lot of plain black with some appropriate white and yellow makes android faster on slower hardware too. The Android on freerunner master images seem to confirm this - kinetic scrolling there is more responsive and the overall GUI look is better. Perhaps we need a simpler more Android like theme to get even better performance with decent looks. 3. Android has a better browser. While I made Ventura to address this partly, the new EFL port of webkit is still in progress 5 months after I thought it was close to being released. Once that happens, I think its a matter of time before the browsing experience on the FR is as good as the best. 4. Running the Spica at 400 MHz bought out interesting results a) other than a delay in launching apps, post launch there wasn't much difference in the performance. b) there is about a seconds advantage that the faster processor speed provides, and in most cases that is enough to make the phone feel a lot faster. FR takes another 1-1.5 secs (avg) during the launch of most apps as compared to the Spica at 400MHz and that seems to be make it feel like its really old. c) startup times are crucial to the overall experience. d) I tried making intone faster by pushing some pre init stuff out - and the experience was much better - but not stable (for intone). e) Maybe some more work can go into making app startup faster on SHR (just a thought). 5. The 640x480 resolution on the FR and the glamo chip are perhaps not a great design decision after all - as raster has been saying all this while. I wasn't convinced - but the qualitative difference between the spica's screen at 320x240 and the FR at 640x480 starts to wear off really fast as you get used to the larger screen and the faster experience on the Spica. I love the FR screen, but it seems like without decent hw acceleration for X, we wont be getting UI goodies and usability at the same time. 6. BUT :- a) I prefer the openness that SHR/linux provides over the better experience Android provides on the Spica. Android may have a lot of apps - but I always felt restricted with not being able to ssh, tether, run my own programs, use other linux tools and projects and generally mess around with the spica. I ran debian on it (on Android) - but it just wasn't the same. I prefer the freedom linux/X provides over Android any day. b) I think EFL is a much superior toolkit for touch screen experience over a variety of form factors. It has the fundamentals in the right place, but it seems like the cross-platform, semi-commercial nature of Qt is causing a shift towards Qt in most embedded projects (Linaro, Meego etc). Of course having better hardware to use with time is helping too. Now if only EFL could get a few more commercial sponsors and a stable release roadmap with specific dates - things just might improve. Canonical's decision to use EFL for their netbook launcher was a great boost. And EFL needs better GUI design tools - though editje seems to be moving in the right direction. c) It seems like having a faster processor is not that much of an advantage - unless you get to gaming (which also needs better graphics hardware) or extensive mathematical calculations. Once you get to floating point calculations, the integer only FR processor really gets stuck. d) The ability to use the radios on the FR easily is something thats a big miss. Its painful to try using bt, wifi is better and the GPS seems best. But none of the network management tools are really as easy as anything on Android. Things just work with a click there (and perhaps a selection). This is the only thing I miss the most. e) As a mobile phone, I couldn't make out much difference between the Spica in comparison to the SHR on FR. I really didn't feel much difference in making calls, storing contacts and using SMS. Maybe that's because my needs are simple - no MMS's and I never use conference etc. As above, using a bt headset is another matter all-together. f) I would love to be able to run SHR on the Spica. Is anyone looking at porting SHR to different phones? Only, I doubt that samsung would happily provide the required drivers. Then again, they had to release the kernel sources - so maybe those could be used. g) I like the resistive touch screen's precision over the capacitive one. But the capacitive screen seems more responsive and once I get used to either - it takes a little while to go from harder but precise touching (resistive) to lighter but larger surface area touching (capacitive) and vice versa. h) The android development process is a lot better. The emulator helps greatly during the developmental cycle and the documentation is comprehensive. BUT - there are hardly any open source projects there. In spite of the better dev tools, its faster to be able to use another projects code to start from / modify to develop your program than to start coding from scratch. It would be great to have an emulator. At least a current toolchain will help as compared to setting up the entire bitbake chain. Overall, I think the FR is not that bad at all. I wish it had a better graphics accelerator - but with a slightly more sober theme (mostly black) and better radio management - I can see that it would be quite usable. The ability to use X and other linux programs is a huge plus for me. I'd be willing to trade the better UI/usage experience for the freedom here. The community here is also a lot more technical, open and collaborative. The community around the Spica seems to have mostly end users. Or is it that only technically inclined people own FR's anymore? Just thought the community would like to know. -- View this message in context: http://shr-users-discussions.2691941.n2.nabble.com/FR-vs-Spica-Android-tp5161366p5161366.html Sent from the SHR Users discussions mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Shr-User mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shr-project.org/mailman/listinfo/shr-user
