Perhaps the Drive PDF viewer is fast, but I never liked how it uses RGB subpixel antialiasing on a phone with no fixed pixel layout, to and the GUI felt bare bones to me.
Anyway I installed Element and the scrolling feels a lot smoother, at a stable 60? fps without constant hitches like in Flutter apps.
I noticed in Flutter apps there's a process named usap64 that burns CPU on startup and when I scroll through a list.
Flutter on iOS has had animation hitches since the switch from OpenGL to Metal. Animations drop frames on their first run, during shader compilation [1].
0. https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/ 1. https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/61450
Seriously dude...
Not all consumers live in a place where salaries are high and electronics are cheap.
Out of all the places where this impossible combination is somehow the case... do you know of any that have attractive rent options and cheap inbound flights? xD
https://phonedb.net/index.php?m=device&id=6573&c=samsung_sm-...
Can't deny I boggle at current-day budget-level devices with 2GB RAM tho. Like, wat.
They were actually given to me by a friend who wasn't using them, who learned I didn't have a phone.
I probably used Android for a cumulative total of 20 minutes from 2006-2020 before this. EXTREMELY interested in the platform, absolutely (and came up with some ideas for apps), but yeah, wasn't really viable to pursue.
Here, have two LifeProTips:
1. Rewrite your DNA during conception to edit out all the weird obscure medical issues you might otherwise get lumped with
2. Ensure you quantum phase-shift when selecting the reality you're born into so you ensure you skip the world(s) with a broken medical systems that doesn't have fundamental interest in research and discovery
Alternatively, spend nearly 30 years trying to get anyone at all to listen, without the resources to pay people to listen to you cuz you can't work.
</rant>
(In all seriousness, the Note 3 takes 10 seconds to open a new tab. I'm absolutely looking forward to upgrading. But it'll be sad to stop using it.)
Which suggests the build process is a bit broken.
Take 1: Galaxy Note 3 with Android 5
Hokay then. Moving on I guess?Take 2: Galaxy Note 4 with Android 6
...Yep this is definitely running at about 19-20fps, maybe 23fps. It's not smooth. It's... responsive... I guess? But NOT smooth.
I experience the same effect when in websites that have long scrollable areas inside position:fixed divs or position:absolute divs anchored to the viewport edges.
Chrome seems to be able to special-case "scroll the root/body of the page" in such a way that it can run at like ~45fps on the Note 3 and pretty much the same on the '4. Random divs don't get that special-casing, and scroll rather choppily... exactly like this app.
I tried a Flutter API demo a while back and experienced identical behavior.
My reference case for rendering speed is the Drive PDF viewer (!), which on my Note 3 runs at easily 55-60fps and has just about the lowest latency I can recall of any app I've tried on that device. So I know the hardware can actually update very quickly... if you aren't reconstructing Mt Everest on every frame in the fast path ;)
"BuT DeVeLoPeR PrOdUcTiViTy"
Well, hot take: industrial/brutalist design can be a great fit for the "look" parts of apps... but not the "feel" parts. That always needs to be the result of a feat of integration engineering, for the UX to, well, feel good. All these toolkits break the "look" down into nice little manageable components... by applying isolation principles that also break down the cohesion of the "feel" as well in the process. In the name of progress. Or something.