Android "L release" features showcased

JStrike said:
Addressing more than 4GB RAM is not the only benefit to 64bit
Click to expand...

See, that's whay you should read posts properly. I said SO FAR even on PC's there has been no benefit other than accessing more memory.
 
cerebus said:
It's a set of design guidelines that will govern all Android applications and scale across phone, tablet, smartwatch, TV and other interfaces. Whether you like the particulars in static screenshots or you don't, it will provide some very much needed consistency to the Android UI/UX.
Click to expand...

This is the important point. While I really don't like the new design language, that it will finally be consistent in very important.
 
TJ99 said:
See, that's whay you should read posts properly. I said SO FAR even on PC's there has been no benefit other than accessing more memory.
Click to expand...

There have been very big benefits to 64bit already. Read the anandtech article link to by system32
 
JStrike said:
This is the important point. While I really don't like the new design language, that it will finally be consistent in very important.
Click to expand...

In fairness it looks better in motion than in screenshots. There's a sense of dimensionality and tactility (in my view, borrowing very heavily from iOS design concepts) that will do a lot to enhance the feel of the interface. I told a friend recently that the thing that bugged me about Android is that while it's always been customisable, it feels like you're just papering over a static screen, and the underlying interactions are threadbare. This is the kind of thing I was talking about.
 
Does anyone feel that these designs more resemble windows 8 style? Like gmail vs outlook.com?
 
TJ99 said:
Did you read it?

It's about Apple iOS devices, not computers.
Click to expand...

It's about a 64bit chip that happens to be designed by Apple. If you actually read the article, Anand goes into a lot of depth as to why the 64bit Arch gives it such a big performance increase.
And a device is a computer...a cpu is a cpu, irrespective of the size of the display
 
...and then Google changed its name to SkyNet, and the everyone in the world ****s themselves...

In all seriousness though, I'm liking the new interface, they should have skipped GB and skipped right to this. :)
 
JStrike said:
Addressing more than 4GB RAM is not the only benefit to 64bit
Click to expand...

Indeed, the number of bits a CPU is described with, actually indicates the size of the registers within the processor. So for a 32-bit CPU, it can perform operations on 4-byte wide data types in a single clock cycle (e.g. INT32 and UINT32). If you give a 32-bit processor a double data-type (which is 64 bits/8bytes wide) it will be stored in two contigious registers and all operations on that data type will require at least two clock cycles, since it has to split the operations into two 32-bit operations.

For the most part, you will only see a performance gain (albeit a vast performance gain) in applications that intensively perform mathematical calculations with wide/precision floating data types, e.g. games. Your average Excel and Word will probably have a negligible gain.

BUT, in a mobile device it becomes quite important. Where it eventually trickles down to is your battery life. Using less clock cycles to perform the same operations, not only means faster processing but also less battery drain. Which is why I'm quite surprised that Android is only now starting to make inroads to 64-bit processing. My surprise is also linked to the fact that for Android to transition to 64-bit should be magnitudes easier than it was for Apple to do since the majority of Android apps are in an intermediate language (Dalvik bytecode) and not native code as is the case with Apple. For Android it should have been as simple as recompiling the OS and running existing apps in a 64-bit java virtual machine. Hence my surprise it took this long given the relatively simple steps needed to do so.
 
Last edited:
The screen shots look crap :(

I dunno why the current fashion or trend for graphics is to be more simple, to the point that they have less meaning and are difficult to understand. At the same time, the resolution of the screens are increasing, so we don;t take advantage of that :(

Even the soft buttons are now a triangle, square and circle - WTF?
 
cerebus said:
In fairness it looks better in motion than in screenshots. There's a sense of dimensionality and tactility (in my view, borrowing very heavily from iOS design concepts) that will do a lot to enhance the feel of the interface. I told a friend recently that the thing that bugged me about Android is that while it's always been customisable, it feels like you're just papering over a static screen, and the underlying interactions are threadbare. This is the kind of thing I was talking about.
Click to expand...

Initially, I was going to argue this, because Android has been moving towards a better sense of dimensionality since the advent of ICS, but it's more prominent now with this release. Naturally, as iOS 7 has been around for a while longer, it would serve as a source of inspiration.
 
greg_SA said:
The screen shots look crap :(

I dunno why the current fashion or trend for graphics is to be more simple, to the point that they have less meaning and are difficult to understand. At the same time, the resolution of the screens are increasing, so we don;t take advantage of that :(

Even the soft buttons are now a triangle, square and circle - WTF?
Click to expand...

go watch the video. the idea of the design is to get a standard look and feel across a multitude of platforms and screensizes.
 
Looks heavily inspired by both IOS 7 and Windows phone.

Which is a good thing; good ideas should spread.
 
Last edited:
greg_SA said:
The screen shots look crap :(

I dunno why the current fashion or trend for graphics is to be more simple, to the point that they have less meaning and are difficult to understand. At the same time, the resolution of the screens are increasing, so we don;t take advantage of that :(

Even the soft buttons are now a triangle, square and circle - WTF?
Click to expand...
I like the shape design, more simpler.
 
I dont like the new colour palette. Way too dull and boring. With all these stunning screens appearing on the flagship phones why bother with a boring coloured UI? They have been influenced too much by IOS methinks...
Thank G*d for custom launchers.
 
SeRpEnT said:
I dont like the new colour palette. Way too dull and boring. With all these stunning screens appearing on the flagship phones why bother with a boring coloured UI? They have been influenced too much by IOS methinks...
Thank G*d for custom launchers.
Click to expand...
iOS7 has been critiqued for having a too cartoonish and overcoloured palette.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X