Archive for the ‘g1’ tag
Android G1 hardware DOES support multi-touch
There has been a lot of uneducated speculation about whether the Android G1 could support multi-touch. I just came across this post by a smart guy who recompiled the synaptics touchscreen driver and got it to track two fingers. Bravo!
No stupid YouTube video like previous attempts at proving this, just some clean console output (trimmed):
x 688, y 3921, z 17, w 1, F 0, 2nd: x 0, y 0, z 17, w 1,
x 696, y 3892, z 21, w 1, F 0, 2nd: x 0, y 0, z 21, w 1,
x 700, y 3887, z 24, w 13, F 0, 2nd: x 0, y 0, z 24, w 13,
x 700, y 3868, z 53, w 7, F 2, 2nd: x 2859, y 1168, z 53, w 7,
x 697, y 3867, z 61, w 6, F 2, 2nd: x 2863, y 1162, z 61, w 6,
x 692, y 3864, z 64, w 7, F 2, 2nd: x 2863, y 1166, z 64, w 7,
x 683, y 3860, z 67, w 10, F 2, 2nd: x 2867, y 1170, z 67, w 10,
x 677, y 3857, z 68, w 11, F 2, 2nd: x 2867, y 1170, z 68, w 11,
Android performance 1: The G1
We are starting to develop on Android. The first Android device, of course, is the HTC/T-Mobile G1. We got one of the units this week, and I am just starting to look into exactly how fast the G1 runs. Performance is a hard thing to measure, but I wanted to start blogging about it in the hopes we can start a discussion and learn more about how to best measure and optimize performance on Android devices.
The best way to start, I think, is to just list the hardware specifications (from Wikipedia).
- CPU: Qualcomm MSM7201A (MSM7200 details)
- 528 MHz. ARM11 (same family as iPhone).
274MHz ARM9 coprocessor (not really “dual core” as is commonly claimed).
Java hardware acceleration but not on the Dalvik VM (Android). - GPU: (Shared with CPU)
Capable of 4M triangles/sec.
Capable of hardware-based image signal processor and JPEG encoder. - Video Decoding:
Chip supports 30fps VGA in
MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, Windows Media® and RealNetworks® - Video Encoding: (Not yet available on Android!)
Chip supports 30fps VGA in
MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264 - Network speed:
Supports T-Mobile UMTS (3G) 800/1700/2100 MHz
Possibly supports AT&T UMTS (3G) 850/1900/2100 MHz. This disassembly shows the RTR6285 radio chipset, which supports both 3G platforms. However, there are two power amplifiers — one at 2100 MHz, and one at 1700 MHz (T-Mobile frequencies). Nevertheless, I don’t think the 1700 MHz amplifier attenuates 1900 MHz. Look at the datasheet and see what you think. So AT&T 3G would probably have a reduced range, but I think you could make it work.
There are a few open questions I’d like to answer related to this specification list. Can the G1 support AT&T 3G (see above)? Does the Android JVM benefit from the CPU’s Java hardare acceleration? Does the JPEG encoding (Bitmap class) on G1 tap into the hardware?
We should also run a series of benchmarks and compare the Qualcomm processor’s Java performance, to, say, an Intel Core 2, for a number of tasks. That way we can roughly estimate how fast something will run on a G1 before actually porting and deploying. If you’ve seen any benchmarks like this, let me know, so we don’t reinvent the wheel!
Next time (Android performance 2):
- Benchmark for a simple array-indexing loop.
Android spam: Faster than UPS
We decided to get an Android G1 phone for work, and it arrived today. I was excited that we had already received two text messages!
But not so happy when we looked closer. One was a message from T-mobile, sent yesterday, telling us what the phone’s number was. Useful — timely. The other message was from “FStick13″, also sent yesterday. Not so useful — but timely. Nice work, spammers, you beat the delivery guy. If only your talents were used for something a little more positive.
