Sony Xperia Z2

[Rick Ace]

I feel like some of these posts should end up in the "ios vs android" thread xD

You bought a smartphone, Jordan. You'll now have to deal with the consequences of the iOS vs Android war. And all the offended loyalists.

 

[DylRicho]

Granted, you might not get all the animations to work smoothly at that configuration, but it's still impressive.

And if you look at the days from ICS, Android has come a long way. Android phones feel a lot more like mini-computers. You just don't get that experience from Apple.

Even 4.0.x 'Ice Cream Sandwich' is a capable version, Rick. What you need to compare 4.0.x and 4.1.x to, is 2.3.x 'Gingerbread'. That was horrendous.

Also, the people who buy devices such as this shouldn't expect it to run as fast as the latest quad-core. Quite frankly, if they do, that's their fault and their own problem to deal with. Think about you. Do you buy a Celeron-powered computer, expecting it to be able to handle video encoding as well as a Core i5, or APU machine? Certainly not.

This is where lines are drawn. Take this from a guy who used to work for a network carrier. People like me are there to help those who are new to this kind of technology and therefore offer assistance so they don't buy something underpowered (or even overpowered) for their specific needs.

 

[Jordan]

You bought a smartphone, Jordan. You'll now have to deal with the consequences of the iOS vs Android war. And all the offended loyalists.

Oh, I had a smartphone for a while. Was just not an updated one. I always been on the android side
Just this is a new smartphone that I just purchased xD (Or "Super Phone" as they now like to call them)

 

[Rick Ace]

@Dylan,

The ICS to JB leap was huge. Consider the low-end hardware devices running ICS vs JB. The differences are quite noticeable.

Gingerbread? That reminds me of the HTC Wildfire. I didn't like that one.

@Jordan,

I've never heard that term before. "Super-phone"? Can't we just stick to smart phone.

 

[DylRicho]

@Dylan,

The ICS to JB leap was huge. Consider the low-end hardware devices running ICS vs JB. The differences are quite noticeable.

Gingerbread? That reminds me of the HTC Wildfire. I didn't like that one.

I honestly didn't notice the leap on my HTC One S ... but then we're using up-to-date Cortex-A15 Snapdragon processors.

Gingerbread to ICS was a massive upgrade to performance. ICS to JB was noticeable, but not nearly as much.

 

[Rick Ace]

The difference would be noticeable on lower-end hardware, which was what I was trying to get at.

It was JB that really ended the fragmented-crisis of Android. ICS was great, but it wasn't as nearly as functional as JB.

 

[DylRicho]

The difference would be noticeable on lower-end hardware, which was what I was trying to get at.

It was JB that really ended the fragmented-crisis of Android. ICS was great, but it wasn't as nearly as functional as JB.

'Project Butter' (I believe it was called) was the process in the JB upgrade that brought the smoothness to the masses. With ICS, the smoothness was there, but it wasn't quite there for low-end devices. You could still get decent low-end phones that would run it well though.

I would say the point here is that Android by itself was always going to run well on the device, at least since 3.0 where it was unified across platforms, but the thing that hindered performance was the UIs that vendors used. If you had access to a stock Android phone like the Nexus S with an older version of Android, I guarantee that it'd run much smoother than the HTC Wildfire, with Sense 2.1 slapped on-top.

Sense, by the way, was pretty heavy on the hardware back then. Since version 3, HTC has slowly been optimizing it to run on a larger selection of configurations, and version 4 certainly feels like butter.

 

[Rick Ace]

The newer versions of HTC Sense don't have the older visual appeal.

You're right about HTC's ill-fated versions of Sense though. Why would you put that huge thing on low-end hardware? It makes you wonder if people actually test these products.

 

[DylRicho]

The newer versions of HTC Sense don't have the older visual appeal.

You're right about HTC's ill-fated versions of Sense though. Why would you put that huge thing on low-end hardware? It makes you wonder if people actually test these products.

Some of the aspects are still there, such as the 3D rotating screens, the fullscreen weather effects and the clock. And you can still get back the older multi-colored live wallpapers from within the settings, if that's what you like. With Sense 5.0, the BlinkFeed feature is only on the first screen; and you can remove it. Sense is definitely more customizable than TouchWiz (and more attractive).

And I can only agree. Android 2.3.3 + Sense 2.1 on a 600 MHz processor with 512 MB RAM ... things never were going to look good. But what annoys me is that if it was using an 800 MHz ARMv7 compatible chip, that thing could have been given Android 4.x.x and that would definitely improve its performance.

It's the sort of device that would benefit from the upgrade, being a low-end device, but it isn't going to get it because it's a low-end device. Pretty sad, really.

 

[Rick Ace]

These devices are usually developed long before they are released. As a result, the latest versions of Android might not have been available at the time of development.

Why anyone would bother manufacturing 600MHz chips is beyond me. The market for that, dried up way before HTC released some of its products. They entered a dry market.

 

[DylRicho]

These devices are usually developed long before they are released. As a result, the latest versions of Android might not have been available at the time of development.

I already know that. The Wildfire S and Desire S are from 2011. Android 4.x.x didn't hit the market until the following year.

Why anyone would bother manufacturing 600MHz chips is beyond me. The market for that, dried up way before HTC released some of its products. They entered a dry market.

Qualcomm developed the chips. HTC and others (including Samsung) used them. The market hit a sudden rise in activity and demand for performance was there. That was something you could only predict.

 

[Jordan]

Well, this phone of mine is completely gone.
Got into my truck, and just as I was closing the truck door, the phone fell out of my pocket and got squished inbetween the door and the truck. Now smashed completely.