
Apple’s iPhone 5 touchscreen is 2.5 times faster than Android devices - bumbledraven
http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/apples-iphone-5-touchscreen-is-2-5-times-faster-than-android-devices/
======
kyro
I'm so glad to see actual numbers for this. Time and time again I've been
called delusional for saying that Android devices have more observable lag
than iPhones. It is a very, very small component of the overall device and OS
that has an enormous affect on the overall user experience, at least to me. It
doesn't seem to be that big a deal to many as evident by phone sales, but it
drives me absolutely nuts and is the main reason why I won't make the switch
to Android.

~~~
doomlaser
For comparison, here's another set of benchmarks from a guy who appears to use
the same methodology (240fps camera, count frames between input and screen
response in custom lightweight apps).

[http://www.collectingsmiles.com/news/measuring-latency-in-
co...](http://www.collectingsmiles.com/news/measuring-latency-in-colors-why-
game-devices-are-better-for-games-than-smart-phones-2/)

iPhone 5: 81 ms

Galaxy S3: 104 ms

Galaxy Note: 71 ms

Nintendo 3DS: 23 ms

PS Vita: 49 ms

And, to add a tv game console into the mix, apparently the latency between
input on a PS3 wireless controller and home screen interaction is also about
50 ms.

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_respons...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_responsiveness_in_video_.php?print=1)

~~~
codex
From the linked page: "THIS IS HOW COLORS! PERFORMS ACROSS DEVICES – WHICH
MIGHT NOT BE HOW OTHER GAMES/APPS BEHAVE ON THOSE SAME DEVICES. Each device
has their own way of doing input and rendering, and we have done more work on
latency on some devices than on others."

In other words, one test was designed to be a benchmark from the ground up,
and the other is a cross platform app.

~~~
makomk
So basically, for all we know the Android version of their app is just coded
worse than the iOS one.

~~~
Osmium
> and we have done more work on latency on some devices than on others.

Or, conversely, they had to work harder on their Android app to bring latency
down to that of the iOS app. Just not enough information given to know.

------
kmfrk
To get an idea of the impact and importance of touch latency, see this
intriguing demo by the Microsoft Applied Sciences Group:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4](https://youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4).

Drawing is one of those things that has felt awful on iOS devices to me.

~~~
coldtea
> _Drawing is one of those things that has felt awful on iOS devices to me._

Compared to what, since, according to TFA they have the smallest touch
latency?

Perhaps you haven't tried the right apps. Most drawing apps (including major
names, like Autodesk's) have slow-ass drawing code. Heck, some painting apps
are even slow on my iMac (Corel Painter, ArtRage).

That's not because of "touch latency" though. It's because of slow draw
engines. And I say that, because I've seen apps with very fast responsiveness.

Try Procreate ( [http://procreate.si/](http://procreate.si/) ), which uses the
fastest engine I've seen (specially coded in OpenGL and 3D-accelerated). And
check the artwork created with it by some of the community users (there are
2-3 videos on their site it's AMAZING).

Two other apps I found fast (but not as fast) are: Ideas, by Adobe, and Paper.

~~~
kmfrk

        Compared to what
    

Paper, dude(tte)! The analogue, lowercase-letter kind. :)

Paper and Procreate are excellent apps, but the input lag is very noticeable
on my iPad 3; if you move your finger really fast and stop, you can see that
it takes a short amount of time, before the drawn line catches your finger.

It wasn't long ago that dead-tree books were preferable to tablets, before
Retina was a thing. And you could still argue print books are preferable.

Sometimes, the best Technology can achieve is the bar set by the non-digital
world, and until then, it's going to feel grating to pedantic curmudgeons like
yours truly. :)

+++

EDIT: A closing thought. The highest bar is always human perception:

(1) The optimal FPS for a videogame is, to my knowledge, 60.

(2) The optimal display resolution for a reading device is, TMK, ~326 PPI
(Retina).

That is the goal. Anything lower than that will stick out and annoy people
like me. Anything higher is not for the engineers, but the marketing
department.

~~~
lukeschlather
have you tried the microsoft surface pro?

~~~
kmfrk
Nope - I haven't even _seen_ one!

------
blehn
It's a shame that Apple is negating that responsiveness with painfully slow
transitions in iOS 7

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQC_W0c-C8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQC_W0c-C8)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK2yVUkyjE0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK2yVUkyjE0)

~~~
kmfrk
I have a sneaking, completely unsubstantiated suspicion that many of the weird
transitions on iOS 7 are to hide choppy performance.

They are definitely way too long for someone to have seriously considered it a
good idea on its own.

It drives me completely mental that I get a fade-in transition, just by
turning on the lock screen of my iPad.

~~~
ajross
That's not unlikely, and it's not insane either. Processes are getting bigger,
frameworks are taking more memory, and things take longer to fetch back in on
app transfers. So if you want the apps to be snappy, you have to make sure
they're in memory. Android devices have settled on clubbing the problem over
the head with 2G of RAM (basically keeping stuff from being paged out to start
with), while Apple went with 1G and has to play more subtle tricks.

Performance is about tradeoffs. The stuff measured in the article is response
time of foreground apps. Getting the app into the foreground to begin with
isn't free.

~~~
gtufano
Just to note that iOS have no paging (don't know about Android, but I suspect
the same).

~~~
andrewaylett
It's definitely not paging in the traditional, OS-level sense, but the
standard Android (and, I think, iOS) behaviour of providing applications with
a framework to restart exactly where they left off _should_ be pretty much the
same in theory. In practice, not so much.

~~~
nucleardog
Err, I see no way in which the activity life cycle is like paging.

In typical paging the application's memory is taken from RAM and placed onto a
slower storage medium to free up RAM.

In the activity life cycle, Android is just telling the app "you're in RAM,
but you're not running" or "you're going to get killed because I need the
space, if you want to give me a bit of state information I'll hang on to it in
RAM for you".

I don't see how the two are comparable at all, and I don't see how you could
have paging without using a secondary storage.

------
programminggeek
This kind of responsiveness is actually the kind of thing that Apple is sort
of famous for by designing both the hardware and the software, but it is
surprising that Samsung is still behind.

I think the other thing that is not very often taken into consideration is how
resolution impacts responsiveness. The more pixels the graphics card has to
push, the slower the screen to redraw.

Pairing bigger devices with big resolution means that achieving consistently
high performance is harder without equal advances in graphics processing.

~~~
devindotcom
If I'm not mistaken, they license a lot of stuff from Synaptics. But that
said, many do so and don't get it working as well as Apple does. I talked with
a Synaptics guy who said it's all about the implementation, and "bad" or
"slow" touchscreens are generally just poorly optimized in the OS.

------
blinkingled
Interesting that none of the Android devices tested are Tegra based. Nvidia
being gaming focused had to do something about touch latency so they did
DirectTouch which was designed for better latency and lower power draw. Given
the architectural differences between DT and others, I think DT should do at
least somewhat better. See here for example -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DehlRJZPsDY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DehlRJZPsDY)
.

------
joeblau
I have the Lumia 920 and when I have to develop on my iPhone 4 or use a
friends iPhone 5/4s/4, this is my main problem. Lumia screen is so responsive
that even iPhones 5 feels sluggish to me. Typing is especially challenging so
it's nice to see that $AAPL addressed the screen response. Next upgrade to the
screen needs to be to fix the size.

~~~
ryanpetrich
Is the Lumia 920's touch digitizer significantly different from the Lumia
928's? (which according to the graph has an average latency of 117ms)

~~~
joeblau
I'm not sure. I just know that my 920 feels very responsive, I actually
haven't looked into why :). I'm sure that's the case for most consumers. They
just notice something better but don't investigate.

------
Steko
It seems like an important thing that benchmarks didn't even really exist for
until now but I think the topline number is off? 55 ms to 114 ms how do they
get 2.5 times faster?

2 times faster is already very impressive, no need to exaggerate further
(although I guess thats how you get the clicks).

~~~
rallison
It is possible the author was using the best times for each device for the
calculation, which does approximately equal 2.5x. That said, I agree with your
point.

~~~
Steko
Looking at the numbers a bit more closely I'm guessing the source was
comparing iPhone 5 to the pack of Android phones where it's 2.1 to 2.3. This
source said 2.0 to 2.5 which seems accurate with that so maybe it's
Venturebeat playing up the bigger number.

------
rly_ItsMe
Now that kind of Flame Wars start again. I remember the times where in every
Mac Magazine you've found a comparison between Macs and 'PCs' where they did
measure the times of flipping Images in Photoshop and were proud when the Mac
was 0.5 sec faster than the Windows pendant.

I don't care about those kind of benchmark, because its not really necessary
in the daily routine of handling a smartphone.

Can I do some calls? - Fine Can I sync my calendar and contacts? - Fine

If the reaction/ respond time of the GUI is acceptable and without some
breaks, I don't care about 1/10 sec in respond time.

~~~
MasterScrat
> Can I do some calls? - Fine Can I sync my calendar and contacts? - Fine

Then it doesn't sound like you need a device like the ones they are testing...
For heavy users I can assure you touch latency is a big deal.

------
lnanek2
Apple has had much better multitouch support from day one as well. They
started with a grid of sensors that could detect over 10 touches or something
like that. Android devices have slowly struggled up from single touch, to
single touch with a few multitouch gestures, to multitouch with an inability
to tell apart certain situations, to real multitouch for certain numbers of
points. Mostly due to manufacturers always going with the cheapest touch
sensors they could get away with.

~~~
grogenaut
It also helps that they patented putting 2 fingers on the screen at once and
so everyone was afraid to implement it until palm went mainstream with it on
the pre.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, as far as I know mainstream Android hardware has supported multi-touch
all the way back to the original G1, it's just that no-one dared do anything
with it due to Apple's patents.

------
bryanlarsen
It would be interesting to get some numbers from a Tegra 4 device because
touch latency is one of the selling features of that platform.

------
icegreentea
It would be nice to know what their testing methodology was - specifically,
was the measured times from touch to screen response, or from touch to OS
response?

~~~
kllrnohj
Read the actual report, not the venture beat blog spam:
[http://appglimpse.com/blog/](http://appglimpse.com/blog/)

> We built simple, optimized apps to flash the full screen white* as quickly
> as possible in response to a touch. The apps contain minimal logic and use
> OpenGL/DirectX rendering to make sure the response is as quick as possible.
> Since these are barebones native apps doing nothing more than filling the
> screen in response to a touch, this benchmark defines the Minimum App
> Response Time (MART) a user could experience on a mobile app on each device.

------
iansinke
The graph is just slightly misleading -- the horizontal scale starts at 20,
not 0.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Not misleading and fairly standard practice. There is no value starting at 0
when the lowest device tested is 55, all you'd do is shift everything to the
right or make it smaller and harder to see the distribution (which is the
whole point showing the distribution from 55 to 123).

As long as the graph goes up in consistent increments (in this case 10) and
shows that all these devices could move to the left (i.e. get quicker than 55)
I'd say the graph has done its job.

~~~
RobAtticus
Imagine if the x axis started at 50. The difference between the iPhone 5s and
the next one would look massive -- much more than the 2-2.5x it is. That a lot
of people do it ("standard practice") does not mean its not slightly
misleading.

------
ultrasaurus
This is a brilliant submarine ad by Agawi. Reading it, I got the impressions
that TouchMarks was some standard industry test (it doesn't seem to be).

------
rvijapurapu
I would love to see the code for each of the tests. And most importantly the
optimizations used for each. It's always important to get the baseline right
before arriving at a conclusion.

------
DavidWanjiru
Would I, with my naked senses (eyes, touch) be able to tell the difference
between a 55ms response time and 117ms response time? Alternatively, does such
a difference add up or combine with other factors that ultimately make it
noticeable to me? How? And while we're still at it, is this winning
performance by Apple touchscreens a function of the quality of the screen
itself (or components), other hardware (ICs and what nots) that work with the
screen and are a factor in how it responds, superior code at OS level? I'd
love to hear such details, as opposed to merely telling me 55ms vs 120ms.

~~~
Derbasti
In general, your visual response time is about 200 ms. Anything below that is
fine for regular visual feedback such as highlighting a button after it has
been pressed. This is due to latency in the processing of visual information
in the brain.

Touch screens are somewhat unique however in that they track physical movement
directly. This means that they do not only have to compete with the latencies
in the visual system, but also with the predictions of physical movement that
we do. Even though we can percieve visual information only at a 200 ms delay,
our predictions of the physical world are compensated for that. Thus, even
small latencies are percievable.

I think Microsoft did some research on this and they concluded that even
single-millisecond delays in touch screen tracking were noticeable. They even
claimed that sub-millisecond delays felt "completely different" and much more
real.

~~~
PeterisP
Perceived audio latencies are much lower - I believe this is why designers
don't include much audio cues in mobile UI's; you can do that with 3-6ms
latency of keyboards/mice, but not with 50-100ms latencies.

------
Mikeb85
And this is pretty much the difference between implementing the user-space in
Obj-C versus Dalvik... I'm sure Meego would have been much better than
Android, as surely Ubuntu touch and Tizen will be...

~~~
kllrnohj
This has fuck all to do with Obj-c vs. Dalvik.

Android's input system is in C++ anyway.

~~~
pjmlp
There are JNI transitions happening between C++ and Java when calling the Apps
event handler anyway.

For those that bring NDK up, the generated code runs in a separate thread
inside Dalvik, and you have the delay of using UNIX pipes for the events.

------
PhasmaFelis
So in addition to having smaller pixels than Android devices with undetectably
small pixels, Apple now has faster reactions that Android devices with
undetectably fast reactions.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the new iPhone's unmatched fidelity in
reproducing ultraviolet images and ultrasonic sounds.

~~~
RivieraKid
The touch latency is without question detectable.

~~~
untog
Is it? I've switched between iPhone and Android and I've never noticed it. OS
lag, yes - but Android has improved on that a lot in recent years.

~~~
MasterScrat
> I've switched between iPhone and Android and I've never noticed it. OS lag,
> yes

And how exactly do you tell apart OS lag from touch latency?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Touch latency is consistent across every application, in all load conditions.
OS latency varies.

------
6ren
An intuitive way to sense latency is to drag you finger and see how far behind
the cursor trails.

Research showed that people can perceive even quite low latency:
[http://www.techspot.com/news/47784-advances-in-touch-
screens...](http://www.techspot.com/news/47784-advances-in-touch-screens-
promise-1ms-input-lag-instead-of-100ms.html) (NOTE: the article incorrectly
states this is a device - it is NOT, it's just an experimental setup to
measure latency perception, i.e. fake.)

I would expect the whole processing path - touch, bandwidth, CPU, RAM, OS,
app, GPU, display - to factor into latency, just as it does for VR (see John
Carmack's talk on latency for Oculus Rift).

Interestingly, mouse cursors seem instant to me (below perceptible latency),
though it's slightly harder to tell, because the mouse isn't on the screen
(and if you put it on the screen, the scaling is way off).

------
ppradhan
Anyone has any idea what the iPhone 5 touch screen is compared to the Nokia
Lumias? The touch on them is pretty damn fast too, clearly faster than Android
devices. But iPhone does still feel slightly faster... Maybe Lumia's and
iPhones are almost on par.

------
6thSigma
Perhaps the iOS app they built to test its responsiveness is more efficient
than the Android app they built to test its responsiveness?

------
jared314
Better link to Agawi's TouchMarks I benchmarking setup:

[http://appglimpse.com/blog/touchmarks-i-smart-phone-touch-
sc...](http://appglimpse.com/blog/touchmarks-i-smart-phone-touch-screen-
latencies/)

------
amattn
This statement is a bit ridiculous:

> "The team built a device dubbed Touchscope that can measure response times
> to a level of accuracy that is plus or minus 4 milliseconds. It then adds
> the cloud processing response time to calculate the actual delays
> experienced by users."

No way the cloud is processing anything having to do with touch handling.

~~~
graue
You misread. They make a mobile app that streams stuff from their cloud.
Therefore, to calculate actual delays in their app, they must add network
response times and touch latency.

------
buster
Like a single person on earth EVER complained "boy, does my smartphone
touchscreen not react"... yeah... Actually, i wouldn't have thought it would
be >100ms for my HTC One, but it's certainly small enough that i cannot see a
difference.

~~~
damien
It is really noticeable when dragging something with your finger and the
object you are dragging doesn't stay under your finger. I'm actually surprised
the delay on all those devices are so high, I mean I can ping a Google server
that's in another city 140 miles away from me in under 10ms...

------
danielrm26
A good example of Apple "intangibles" becoming tangible. These combine to
become experience, which is really what it's about.

Nice to actually have a handle for something as important as this element of a
user's enjoyment with using a touchscreen.

------
moca
The article mis-interpret the data. It actually measures the full UI latency,
which includes touch input, event system, and UI graphics system. It is
somewhat well know that Android event and graphics systems have higher
latency. At least, I took it for granted for 5 years. The touchscreen is a
hardware component, its latency mostly depends on hardware choice. Nintendo
3DS and PS Vita have much lower latency, because the software stack is highly
optimized for games (which obviously wants low latency).

------
ksec
While i have always felt the difference. I never knew about the numbers.

And while iPhone wins @ 55ms, i still think that is a very high number for
input latency. Would have wanted Sub 20ms.

------
barumbarum
Is this also Objective-C vs Java?

~~~
tosseraccount
Yeah, C should give you 2x Java

------
code_duck
This must be one reason that musical instrument apps are unusable on Android
(all the way from my Moto Droid 2 to my Galaxy S3, one can't play drum apps in
a way that sounds decent at all) while they are generally excellent on iOS.

Per discussions I've had in the past the audio layer in Android is part of the
problem. 60-100 ms delay is a lot too, though and that surely is adding to the
perceived lack of responsiveness.

------
capkutay
Is anyone else surprised by the wave of positive media towards Apple these
past few weeks? I'm honestly so used to Apple being bashed that I was even
expecting this article to be negative near the end. I was also expecting to
see the top HN comment say something along the lines of "no this is BS I could
never use Apple products".

------
nwhitehead
It's fun to measure these sorts of numbers for all kinds of devices. You don't
need equipment that is too fancy, a Casio Exilim EX-ZR10 (cheap!) is good
enough to get numbers within 4ms by framecounting the high speed videos. I
personally find input lag on Android devices infuriating, I wish more
attention were devoted to fixing it.

~~~
modeless
It can be even easier than that: I wrote a benchmark that allows you to
measure input latency for web browsers without any specialized hardware or
cameras: [http://google.github.io/latency-
benchmark](http://google.github.io/latency-benchmark)

Of course this technique can't tell you the hardware latency of a touchscreen
or display, but it can measure all of the latency introduced by software,
which can be quite significant (and as a software developer, the software
latency is the part you can actually influence).

------
ricardobeat
I and a couple friends used to compare the iPhone/iPad vs Android by touching
the middle of the screen and wiggling it sideways really fast. iOS is always
100% precise - the area under your fingertip is exactly the same as where you
started - while Android only started to keep up after Jellybean, and is still
not as good.

------
sengstrom
"Even a two-year old iPhone 4 beat out the other Android devices,” Relan said.
“You expect this from Apple’s design team, while others may view their
responsiveness as good enough. Now we know why the Android touch keyboard is
not as snappy."

They know why but don't bother to tell us in the article...

------
madmax96
This kind of makes sense. Whenever I've used an iThing, the screen always felt
a lot more responsive than other devices. From a software perspective, their
kernel is optimized for io, and so is the BSD userland. Not a surprising bench
mark.

------
simplexion
Now you need to upgrade your eyes to notice it. Same thing with ridiculous
ppi.

~~~
coldtea
No, you don't.

114ms is quite perciptible latency -- it even breaks the persistence of vision
barrier:

"The human eye and its brain interface, the human visual system, can process
10 to 12 separate images per second, perceiving them individually."
(Wikipedia)

For reference, the average game updates the screen every 16ms (60fps) to feel
smooth.

Given those specs, responce latency of that level can be quite noticable.

Here's a domain which it totally wrecks for Android: music apps (synths, etc).
In audio, a delay of 114ms makes an electronic instrument annoying to play
live. Musicians strive to get their audio latency around or below 32ms.

If you have 114ms touch registration latency (from the moment you press
something on the screen) and then add the audio processing latency, then it
gets very ugly. That means that, however advanced your CPU and however small
your audio buffer, you'll always have 114ms of latency minimum.

To put it in perspective, it means you'll be one 1/16th note behind the beat
on a 120bpm track.

Latency is the basic reason audio developers avoid Android, and 90% of the
cool stuff is for iOS (Moog, Waldorf, Korg, Cubase, etc).

~~~
simplexion
Is that the human eye with good vision? Does this include people with poor
vision? I don't understand the link between vision and audio. Can you explain
what you mean?

~~~
smilekzs
parent made 2 points on the 100ms latency:

1\. in visual terms, it's not negligible even for _average_ human eye (and
normally speaking "bad vision" has something to do with focus, not FPS)

2\. and it's devestating for input that triggers audio

------
g4ur4v
Apple's iPhone5 is also 2.5 times expensive that Android devices .

~~~
rsynnott
The devices shown had similar RRPs to the iPhone 5 when it was still on sale,
with the exception of the Moto X.

------
bennesvig
This is one of the main reasons I switched from a Droid to an iPhone. I also
had an iPod touch at the time and the difference in lag when surfing the web
always frustrating on the Droid.

------
spupy
Newer products better than older products. More news at 11.

------
n0on3
Think about this: iOS7 brand new interface sucks so much that on previous
iPhones it lags EXACTLY like poor Android-based devices

~~~
epo
I have a 4S. No it doesn't.

------
chatman
Nice, at least the fanboys have something to be happy about. :-)

------
beyondcompute
And who doubted?

------
mehuldesai
Excuse me, but why all this energy on a millisecond type performance change.
Why dont you guys focus on build apps that solve problems or are new
companies. Your energies and brains are misplaced. Maybe its fun though.

Here's the deal. Instagram, Pinterest or SnapChat probably never considered
about the time it takes for an iphone generation X to perform. They didn't
design for it, they designed what the user needed and wanted.

I would say millisecond snapness isnt perceived by lets say 98% of the users
of these systems. Focus on the application. Whats missing in mobile ? Facebook
and Twitter are missing the picture. Focus on that guys, you are smart, but
put energy on the big problems and not some low level hardware/software layer.

~~~
codex
Perhaps it stems from Steve Jobs's philosophy on quality:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going
to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and
nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a
beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the
aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

As for Instagram, Pinterest or SnapChat: they won the lottery. They were in
the right place at the right time, and when that happens, you could design a
piece of junk and still experience massive success, a least temporarily, as
long as you have the one feature that matters (re: MySpace, MS-DOS).

~~~
mehuldesai
Quality should be there overall, but especially on those things that really
matter. This may be features for an app like facebook, or performance in a
highly responsive game. My point is blindly following performance is not
achieving quality. Quality is in the eyes of the user and has different
meanings depending on what the user perceives and is doing. We could say the
web experience using browsers has extremely bad quality characteristics from
an engineering point of view, yet it changed the world. So maybe Steve wasnt
so spot on :)

On Instagram, have you read about its starting and also Pinterest. Instagram
had a product about Bourbin or something that was not a widely used app, but
did attach to a niche of presumably drinkers. What made Instagram is that they
somehow recognized that people on the Bourbin site were really into the pics
taken of their hobby. Instagrams next app was a buggy system apparently!
However, I recall reading it was that they recognized the uptick by
recognizing the users wanted to post pics (with the filter stuff). So here,
there was no real quality, just a feature not exposed well in the social
market. Pinterest also seemed to recognize that wedding dresses and women
gained them traction. In my judgement its this recognition of opportunity and
gaps in the social market combined with what you say, the right time and
place. Right time and place can also mean partially that there is a need in
the market for something thats not well done.

