i'd throw ANDROID-1147 and ANDROID-1376 in the Android technical management "absolutely really just doesn't get it" bucket. otoh, the issue Charles Ying of Satine.org rages aobut, ANDROID-6914, seems much more questionable to me because the issue itself is really complex.
the two tickets, "Support for external keyboard, mouse" and "Browser doesn't render SVG images" both strike me as absolutely essential to making smartphones competitive with PC's. people have been happily attaching fold up keyboards to Palm Pilots for a decade now, SVG is perhaps the only sane route forwards for resolution independent apps and animation, and Apple has found religion on both these topics-- yet Android is obstinately behind.
otoh composited gpu acceleration is not nearly the huge obvious win C. Ying boasts it as. the gpu is more power efficient than the cpu for intensive applications, but a smartphones natural state is not intensive use. mr guy of android points out a number of complexities-- opengl drivers only supporting a single context, opengl acceleration proving less speedy than software implementations. it places huge emphasis on driver support, which any embedded wonk will tell you is a scary prospect.
although gpu acceleration is becoming better supported, keep in mind that the smartphone market expands, both up and down, with broadcom & others putting out chips designed for sub $75 smartphones. android is definitely not winning the race for the top atm, but performance has always been a rather lonely market-- that said, unsmooth experiences dont fly. software graphics focus insures a base level of performance for everyone, and strikes me as the right place to start to insure a speedy experience not subject to external interrupts.
the current silkiness situation is a little sad. it'll get better. more relevant to me is Android not playing in the ecosystem-- external peripherials, UPnP/DLNA, SVG-- these are the real things that will make or break not Android, but the open digital web, and Android is failing, badly, even in compare with non-web-enthusiasts Apple.
the two tickets, "Support for external keyboard, mouse" and "Browser doesn't render SVG images" both strike me as absolutely essential to making smartphones competitive with PC's. people have been happily attaching fold up keyboards to Palm Pilots for a decade now, SVG is perhaps the only sane route forwards for resolution independent apps and animation, and Apple has found religion on both these topics-- yet Android is obstinately behind.
otoh composited gpu acceleration is not nearly the huge obvious win C. Ying boasts it as. the gpu is more power efficient than the cpu for intensive applications, but a smartphones natural state is not intensive use. mr guy of android points out a number of complexities-- opengl drivers only supporting a single context, opengl acceleration proving less speedy than software implementations. it places huge emphasis on driver support, which any embedded wonk will tell you is a scary prospect.
although gpu acceleration is becoming better supported, keep in mind that the smartphone market expands, both up and down, with broadcom & others putting out chips designed for sub $75 smartphones. android is definitely not winning the race for the top atm, but performance has always been a rather lonely market-- that said, unsmooth experiences dont fly. software graphics focus insures a base level of performance for everyone, and strikes me as the right place to start to insure a speedy experience not subject to external interrupts.
the current silkiness situation is a little sad. it'll get better. more relevant to me is Android not playing in the ecosystem-- external peripherials, UPnP/DLNA, SVG-- these are the real things that will make or break not Android, but the open digital web, and Android is failing, badly, even in compare with non-web-enthusiasts Apple.