Tablet deal - or maybe not

Well, while the Nexus 7 might be great for playing complex games at home, the lack of 3G makes it less practical for its intended function: being transportable.

Quadcore is (currently) overkill for most people. Anything except for games runs perfectly on dualcores.

@agenthex: No, thats not true.

It’s very unlikely anything > 1 will ever be useful in mobile space (which is power constrained). Even on desktops, with far more sophisticated apps, single thread performance is most critical.

What’s not true? Everything in android was designed for 1 processor on a phone. Is that difficult to believe?

But there is a noticeable difference between single, dual and quadcore. These mobile cpus work different from those in desktops.

I dont know about RAM though, but I'm sure Android will be adapted to better hardware.

Android might once have been designed for one CPU, but we are up to 4.1 now. Just compare a dualcore Samsung tablet with an Asus quadcore tablet side by side.

While performance on a single core is important, the thing with these tablet processors are that the quad core processor here and the single/dual core processors are around the same clock speeds. They also perform quite similar per core.

I use my Nexus 7 for book reading, internet browsing with WiFi at home and heavy 3D gaming. I have a dual core tablet and that lagged on some games that run perfectly on my Nexus 7.

Android can and does take advantage of multiple cores and GPU rendering. The UI smoothing in 4.1 is very noticeable and it works, but if you compare it to iOS products the iOS ones are smoother because Apple coded the UI to be atop level process, this means that UI is processed above everything.

Lack of 3G does make a dent in portable usage for some people. But why not buy a pocket WiFi device with a data sim card? I use my phone for portable internet usage. You could also tether your phone to your tablet.

OR look up the Asus PadFone 2.

Yes, mobile software is different in that it’s more primitive than desktop equivalents, so multi-core is even more useless than on the desktop.

Multicore is more important on mobile technology than on desktops IMO. I say this because people always “minimize” apps without realizing, this then keeps the app running in the background taking up CPU and RAM; Android 4.0 and up is very good at dealing with this and the multicore CPUs help a lot.

For comparison purposes: When an app is “minimized” in iOS, the OS takes a screenshot of the current app screen then stops the process for the app but remembers where the user left off (like the hibernate option on Windows computers). Upon resuming the app the OS displays the screenshot while it loads the app back up again. This is why iOS may seem faster when it really isn’t and is not truly multitasking capable. iOS is a very heavily UI orientated system.

Tethering uses a lot of battery.. and I cant fit a WiFi device in my pocket, I barely get my 7" tablet in a pocket. :P

But seriously, those WiFi devices have a runtime of max. 6 hours.. and 3G needs less energy than WiFi on a lot of devices.

This is due to factors other than inadequate cpu’s. For example, it’s very unlikely the two are using equivalent ARMs or graphics chips. The later is most critical for game performance.

I really have no idea what you’re trying to say. 4.1 doesn’t depend on multiple cpus. An example of some insight into why this isn’t a trivial problem from someone who knows what they’re talking about: Google Workspace Updates: New community features for Google Chat and an update on Currents

WiFI actually uses much less power than 3G or 4G when in use. WiFi only uses more power than mobile data when idle (connected or searching for connection).

I never said that Android depends on multiple cpus. :open_mouth:

Background apps in androids are for the most part paused anyway, just like ios. Android apps don’t “multitask” unless apps specifically ask to be (ie notified of events). This is done for very good reason, because cpu cycles cost power.

What you’re talking about is only why the apps appears to show up quicker; it’s not as if google engineers are so stupid as to redraw them in the background. Android can trivially implement this and still be much slower for reasons some of which are iterated at the link above.

What I’m saying is that the android ecosystem as a whole simply doesn’t utilize multiple cpus. There might be a fixed cost to running the OS which can take advantage of two, but this cost decreases as single core speed increases.

That’s the app developer’s fault. Apps need to be coded to allow multitasking/running in background or disallow the system to suspend it if the app is idle for a long time.

Multithreading is very difficult, and often ineffective on OS which aren’t optimized for it. It’s rarely done well even on mature desktops OSs which are far superior in that regard.

Maybe in another 5-10 years we’ll start seeing more mobile apps which take advantage of this, but I doubt what’s being bought right now will be around them.

Apps don’t have to be able to take advantage of multiple threads to make multi core CPUs useful, only the OS has to be. If the OS couldn’t use multiple cores, then I doubt they would make so many different CPUs with multiple cores.

The OS can assign an app to use a certain core if it does not use multiple cores itself. E.g. You have 5 apps running on a quad core system. The OS may have 2 apps running on core 1 and 1 app each for the other 3 cores.

The background apps aren’t doing anything more than syncing your mail (upon request/trigger of the app itself). That’s why android pauses their execution in the first place by design.

BTW, I’m well aware of how computers work.

I’m not just taking about mail apps. I mean any app that stays running when you “minimize” it and when you reopen it, it resumes seamlessly. Like a game or other heavy app that would otherwise bog down a single core when left running in background.

Again, Android pauses all background apps, for good reason as noted. If you don’t know what this means/implies, please ask.

However, as also noted, even with a multitasking windowing UI of full desktop experience this isn’t a big deal, simply because people don’t leave interactive tasks like games running in the background.

If you mean paused as in game menu paused, then yes that does happen. However if you mean suspended paused then you are half correct. I played a game to test it out. After minimizing the game while in play, re launching the game will have it go to the game pause screen instantly and you can resume playing like if you had gone into the pause menu normally. There are no stuck screens or reloading the game. But after leaving the game for an extended amount of time, say 10 minutes, the game will need to reload it self because the OS has suspended it like you said. This is for an app that does not tell the OS to not suspend it though.

By definition an interactive app doesn’t do anything without interaction.

Again, android specifically pauses tasks which aren’t foreground by placing them in a state which won’t be scheduled for CPU time. This has nothing to do with “pausing” a video game or closing it, but an internal function of the OS itself.

Now Im thinking again of buying Ainol Aurora 2, but with touchscreen tested before shipment.

I just dont know wich cablesaccesories I need with it??

Because I’ve read that they shipped Aurora 1 with some cables, and Aurora 2 without them (you mus buy them separately). But I dont know what cables I need.

I think Aurora 2 has good IPS screen, its google market cmpatible etc etc.

It has all except Bluetooth.

Vectrex - couldnt I use wifi connection instead of bluetooth for that??