The Care and Feeding of the Android GPU

bonch writes "Charles Ying argues that Android's UX architecture has serious technical issues because, unlike the iPhone and Windows 7, Android composites the interface in software to retain compatibility with lower-class devices. Additionally, Android runs Java bytecode during animation, and garbage collection blocks the drawing system. Google engineers dismiss the desire for hardware-accelerated compositing and cite more powerful hardware and an avoidance of temporary objects as a solution to the collection pauses, but Ying argues that will just lead to [a lower] average battery life compared to devices like the iPhone."

Comments

Not about battery life

[SoftwareArtist]

There's a myth going around that battery life is strongly affected by how efficient your code is. On most phone, it's simply not true. By far the biggest power drains are the screen and the radios (cellular, wifi, bluetooth). On Android, there's even a handy battery monitor built in that you can use to confirm this (Settings->About phone->Battery use). I can spend half an hour playing a high end, graphics intensive game (Hero of Sparta) on my Nexus One, and when I then check the battery use, I find that even while I was playing the screen and the cellular radio standby were still the dominant uses of power.