iPhone 5 Touch Screen Twice as Fast as Android Touch Screen

[RedwoodPaul]

So we talking about iPhone spec now, hmm, atleast in one area it beats Android.

Actually wise-ass, we're not talking about "specs" at all... This is a measure of real world performance.

Additionally, in case you haven't figured it out, android is an operating system. iPhone is hardware, ios is software...

I think what you're really trying to say is that you spend too much time reading articles on MACrumors, and it's a constant reminder of the deep regret you have for using an inferior mobile... ?

 

[mrxak]

I have noticeable lag even on my iPhone, so I suppose people are not equally receptive to the lag. I play online games, I can even notice 30ms lag, let alone 100ms, which is quite a long time in the world of games.

The brain will try to compensate, but ultimately you're right, 100 ms is a huge amount of time as any FPS player can attest. Your brain has to work harder at those latencies and it's more prone to error or disorientation. Oculus VR has been hard at work getting screen latencies as low as possible, and their target is 7-15 ms. Generally the brain can perceive all the way down to 20 ms for the start of acceleration, but as the Microsoft Research video clearly shows, we're capable of moving our hands at a much greater speed, and can perceive lag even lower than that. My guess is getting touch screens on phones down to just under 20 ms would eliminate any sense of keyboard lag. For larger screens on tablets, especially for drawing applications, you'll need to get under 10 ms, if not very close to that 1 ms mark.

I think people underestimate their reaction times a lot, not realizing that speedy perception is a survival trait evolved to keep their ancestors alive in a world where danger can come on very suddenly.

 

[pr5owner]

Hah! Ha! We're faster than windows & Android. Nyah-Nyah!

Oh yeah so much lag on android... actaully the interface on iOS is so dog slow it takes twice as long to get anywhere plus you still have no ability to make shortcuts to inside of setting menus or programs (in the video i had 2 shortcuts that open documents on my google drive)

http://youtu.be/mFMpg9mKACU


if lag is so big of an issue, why you do put up with such slow IPS LCDs? 16ms is pretty horrendous, gaming monitors are 1-2ms and do not ghost no matter what is being displayed.

 

[Swordylove]

I felt embarrassed by this feature. When all that someone can come up with is screen (a) is so many "milliseconds" yes that's right "milliseconds" faster than screen (b) then you know the opposition is clutching at straws and is really worried.

It is features like this that make Apple look totally ridiculous and paranoid. If it was my company I would not want this type of comparison to be drawn. It makes one look like that's all you've got in your arsenal.

It makes them look good to me.

 

[makinao]

Hmmmm... So this is one of the reasons why I always felt impatient with my HTC One.

 

[l0gikb0mb]

Who cares about screen speed? I've got a hex-core 6.5GHz ARM Z4-X345 with 64 petabytes of RAM, AND an SD card and removable battery.

Sure, my phone still lags now and then -- when doing CPU-intensive tasks such as going back to the lock screen -- BUT SPECS MEAN EVERYTHING! (except for if the specs are in Apple's favour, such as here)

Wow. you have no clue.

 

[\-V-/]

It makes them look good to me.

I don't even know what he's ranting about. This comparison wasn't even done by Apple, nor was this fact even demonstrated by Apple at any point in time. It's just a real world performance benchmark and the iPhone 5 clearly surpasses all the top flagship phones listed in terms of response times. Nobody is "toting" anything from their Apple "arsenal"... as if factual, real world performance needs any defending.

 

[pr5owner]

Hmmmm... So this is one of the reasons why I always felt impatient with my HTC One.

maybe you should drop your sense interface and get Nova Launcher.

 

[topmounter]

Wow this changes everything. Why? I have no idea.

 

[ohbrilliance]

Wow. you have no clue.

I think you need a new sarcasm detector.

 

[TimCook]

I guess it is OK to talk specs as long as Apple beats Android. As soon as you bring up specs that are better in an Android device, all of the sudden you are a "specwhore".

That's not at all true.
It's simply incorrect to quote specs when you have no idea what they mean in the real world (such as every android fan out there who brags about having 4 cores, higher clock speeds etc.)
If they just had a look at real world benchmarks on anantech.com they would realise that those specs do not make them more powerful than the iPhone with "lower specs"

Example: The iPhone 5 is actually far more powerful than the Galaxy S4 in almost every way, despite being a year older and not having Samsung's highly coveted "4 cores"

 

[keysofanxiety]

Wow. you have no clue.

Would you be so kind as to elaborate?

 

[mrxak]

Super slow? It takes a person on average 300-400 ms to blink. So 59 ms, you're talking about 5-6x faster than the blink of an eye.

I don't know about you, but I can easily see when somebody blinks, so I'm not sure why blink time matters. But since you brought up blinking, the corneal reflex or "blink reflex" to protect your eyes from a finger is faster than the Android touchscreen response to a finger. iOS is apparently faster than the corneal reflex. So there's that.

Look, nobody's saying that Android devices suck and iOS devices are amazing at this. At least, nobody serious. The fact is both Android and iOS touchscreens are probably an order of magnitude slower than they should be. It's just that Apple's devices seem to suck about half as much, and that's probably because they prioritized user input response to a greater degree than Android manufacturers, which is a good thing. But hey, I can still sense a bit of lag scrolling on my 4S. I just hope when I get my 5S on Monday, it'll be less.

When we see phones down at the 10-15 ms latency range, and tablets down at the 4-7 ms latency range, then we'll have devices that are good enough and further development is probably not necessary. For something large like a table where wide sweeping motions can be made, 1 ms may even be too slow. The good news is there's now a new benchmark that can tell us just how close we are to that ideal.

 

[ghettochris]

With a normal display frame rate of 60 Hz, the best you can average, even with instantaneous touch processing, is about 8 mS, which is about half a frame time.

FPS gamers can easily feel when a couple frames are being dropped by the GPU, so we know that an extra 16 or 32 mS makes a difference, vastly more lag with an extra 50 mS.

I can't wait for 120 hz to be the standard, so that would be 4 ms 240 hz and 2 ms would be even better.

 

[pr5owner]

Example: The iPhone 5 is actually far more powerful than the Galaxy S4 in almost every way, despite being a year older and not having Samsung's highly coveted "4 cores"

while the dual core in the ip5 is quite fast, 1GB of ram can only go so far, 16GB of storage can only hold 16GB of storage.

if you have 75GB of music, you cannot fit that on an iphone no matter how shiny it is, but you can fit that much on an S4.

no matter how optimized your software is, a 1500mah battery is laughable in 2013, i have not seen a single iphone 4 or 5 get more than 2 days of usage, even my old galaxy nexus could get 2 days while being linked to 5 push email accounts, fb, twitter, g+, and a bunch of other crap.

 

[TimCook]

while the dual core in the ip5 is quite fast, 1GB of ram can only go so far, 16GB of storage can only hold 16GB of storage.

if you have 75GB of music, you cannot fit that on an iphone no matter how shiny it is, but you can fit that much on an S4.

no matter how optimized your software is, a 1500mah battery is laughable in 2013, i have not seen a single iphone 4 or 5 get more than 2 days of usage, even my old galaxy nexus could get 2 days while being linked to 5 push email accounts, fb, twitter, g+, and a bunch of other crap.

Image

If you really want to carry around 75GB of music on you... well... I don't really know why seeing as you are never going to listen to all of that no matter what device you have it on

But I guess you're meaning that other phones have external storage options, and I can certainly see the benefits of that. Likewise the iPhones battery is puny, you are right. Though it does manage to get surprisingly good run times on that puny battery even while outperforming many other phones.
The iPhones small compact form factor has its benefits, but also its drawbacks - there's no way to fit a significantly larger battery, nor external storage in there
The truth of it is I would love to see a larger iPhone (around the 4.5'' mark) as it would allow apple to add a ton more

 

[SgtPepper12]

while the dual core in the ip5 is quite fast, 1GB of ram can only go so far, 16GB of storage can only hold 16GB of storage.

if you have 75GB of music, you cannot fit that on an iphone no matter how shiny it is, but you can fit that much on an S4.

no matter how optimized your software is, a 1500mah battery is laughable in 2013, i have not seen a single iphone 4 or 5 get more than 2 days of usage, even my old galaxy nexus could get 2 days while being linked to 5 push email accounts, fb, twitter, g+, and a bunch of other crap.

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Your numbers are bigger than my numbers, you won.
I hope you can feel better about yourself now.

 

[mrxak]

Yup. I notice this immediately; a lot of people don't seem to be bothered by it. To me, I equate it to having a desktop computer where the pointer doesn't quite respond to the trackpad or mouse. Interesting to see it may be as much the fault of the hardware as it is the underlying code.

In testing, people recognize mouse pointer lag higher than 20 ms consistently. Mice are pretty simple devices though and you can only really get that sort of lag if you artificially create it for such testing. Touchscreens, being much more complicated and newer technology, still have a long ways to go. It's nice to see that Apple is prioritizing reduced latency it in their design process, though, even if they're not talking about it. I suspect if they ever do get lag down to under 20 ms on their phones (and probably lower than that for tablets), they'll start advertising it pretty heavily though, similar to how they advertised Retina displays. Probably only then will Android manufacturers make it a priority.

 

[epollyon]

I guess it is OK to talk specs as long as Apple beats Android. As soon as you bring up specs that are better in an Android device, all of the sudden you are a "specwhore".

the thing is this isn't exactly a spec in the traditional sense. a spec whore is someone that looks at mhz and claims their experience will be directly affected. this is more of an end user benchmark. why? because it involves software more than a spec sheet does. this is why i use apple, its because of the vertical integration. if i need more number crunching, then i build machines and run linux for HPC. why people would want that in their pocket is beyond me.

that being said, i think android has some real potential. if they can get that much gut and make it run on so little power then you know they are oing something right. a larger phone does have clear advantages for battery. I think MS has the most anti-apple potential right now. their code runs largely native, and they have the potential to design some great products...

 

[lordofthereef]

Another one of those useless tests, the results of which will be used by people on the internet to try and win useless arguments...

Yes I have the 5S. No, it doesn't feel any more responsive than other phones I have tried. At the end of the day, what else matters?

 

[Chuck-Norris]

Uhh... When Microsoft shows how touchscreens should actually work, that makes you think that Apple has an edge?

this isnt about how they work dude, its about the resposniveness of touchscreen, which apple clearly has an edge on

you should READ the article

 

[Technarchy]

Very interesting study.

Considering smoothness and responsiveness is something iOS users often mention, me included, there is something to be said about how this study helps us understand the intangible "magic" that makes iOS devices popular.

It also may play into why my GS4 feels "wrong" at times.

 

[mrxak]

And this "calibrated touchscreen" means a lot to mass perception.

Despite a relatively lower spec on iOS devices, people love using it because of a mere calibration.

Why Android OEMs are not focusing onto it better? It means everything to have great touch screen above all else, it perceives great speed and response for anything on the screen more importantly than SoC clock or quad core.

If you're used to using iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, you'll know something is wrong and clunky with your Android. It's not about clock speed or screen size, it's about how bad your Android device is responding to your touch.

And that's really the whole ball game when it comes to perceived speed, whether or not something happens when the user provides input. A task that takes a second after a second of input lag is going to seem much slower than a task that starts right away after input but takes two and a bit seconds to complete.

As for dual core vs. quad core, Anand Lal Shimpi discussed the matter in his 5S review and seems to think that at the moment, two cores is the better target companies should be aiming for. In other words, quad core is more about marketing than anything else.

 

[Ryan Burgess]

Sooooo since I'm still playing around with my iPhone 5s, I couldn't resist testing this myself with the new slo-mo feature! Here's what the end result looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDwfRgwC4I4

FYI it's 120fps, so not as fast as the above video, but still good enough to see the lag! And the device was an iPad 1 btw. If I get time and people care enough I'll post the same type of video on a galaxy note 10.1.

 

[JGowan]

Cue the Android fans with a loud-collective-it-doesn't-matter cry.