A new reason to upgrade your phone: Fluid scrolling!

November 4, 2011 | By andrewbares

WP Bench on Radar (left) and HD7 (right). Click for full size.

If a front-facing camera, better screen, longer battery life, sharper design, and better camera aren’t enough reasons to upgrade your Windows Phone, here’s a new one: More fluid scrolling in your apps.

When taking my new HTC Radar out for a spin through the Engadget app, I noticed how perfectly fluid the scrolling was. Gone is the choppy, low frame rate scrolling that plagued the app on my old HD7. As I tried this on a number of different apps, I noticed that the improvement was basically universal. Fandango was another good sample app to show the difference between the two devices. However, I should mention there are some apps where there is no difference.

This smoother scrolling is likely due to the new GPU in the HTC Radar, which all new Windows Phones have now. When testing WP Bench, the GPU scores an average of 37 frames per second, while the HD7′s GPU only scores a weak 18 frames per second.

Now combine better scrolling with the rumored 32 GB Focus S and you have a killer phone! We can only hope that rumor holds true.

About Andrew Bares

As an avid gamer, I see the Windows Phone as a solid platform for mobile gaming. I will review almost every WP7 game and give you an idea if it is worth your money or not! In addition to gaming, I have been using Windows Mobile since 2005, and understand just about everything there is to know about the Windows Phone platform. Xbox Gamertag: DirtSurfer07 (add me!)

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Tagged htc radar, wp bench

Anonymous

Well done test.
http://twitter.com/MGVanS Matt Van

It could also be that they are using NAND memory now instead of the slow microsd.

http://www.facebook.com/jeanaugustin.beugre Jean Augustin Beugré

As i already said i have a Samsung Omnia 7 (with nand storage) and my stats are :
- CPU : 20691 ms
- Data : 23362 ms
- GPU : 569 frames, avg : 19 F/s

http://twitter.com/efjay01 Ef Jay

Right, now all of a sudden all our older devices are crap, and we should all rush out to buy the latest and greatest. Or maybe it was just the HTC that’s been crap all along.
Anonymous

You could have compared that HD7 to an Optimus 7 or Omnia 7 for the same results, it’s just thanks to NAND storage.

Anonymous

Exactly. It has very little to do with the CPU, it’s all about how the images (and data) are held and cached in memory.

http://www.facebook.com/jeanaugustin.beugre Jean Augustin Beugré

Ckeck my reply to MadMonk3y
http://www.gadgeterija.net Denis Jelec

Incorrect.
http://www.facebook.com/johnny.westlake Johnny Westlake

No. They’re also not cached in NANAD storage – what happens is Silverlight visuals, which are vector by nature, need to be transformed into bitmaps to be used by the GPU. To that end then, The CPU must “rasterize” the silverlight visuals, IE turn them into bitmaps. This takes up a notable amount of CPU. Of course, once this has been done it’s then handed off to the GPU to do the actual animations (in most cases) which can handle them very well. Obviously, everytime the visual changes then that bitmap has to be recreated for the GPU to use, otherwise the onscreen display won’t update like you expect it too (as the GPU would still be using the older bitmap representation of that silverlight visual)

In the case of scrolling, only really what’s on screen and a couple of items above and below the screen actually exists. When you scroll, it creates items as you need them (helps save RAM). Obviously, whilst you’re doing this, it’s drawing new vector silverlight visuals on the CPU, and then having to create bitmap visuals on the CPU as well, to send to the GPU. The GPU then animates them scrolling (I.e. Moving up and down). Obviously then, the more CPU power you have the faster items appear whilst scrolling. And of course, the better your GPU and smoother it will look as it’s compositing and animating all those bitmaps – because of course a better GPU can simply handle more bitmaps, giving a smoother framerate. ((Of which, the data is stored in Video RAM – not NAND memory)

http://www.facebook.com/jeanaugustin.beugre Jean Augustin Beugré

I have a Samsung Omnia 7 (with nand storage) and my stats are :
- CPU : 20691 ms
- Data : 23362 ms
- GPU : 569 frames, avg : 19 F/s
Anonymous

Nope. I have an Omnia 7 and I have also these “stutterings” in Xbox Live or on pivot swipe…
Anonymous

Really? I’d love to see this investigated more. I’m on an omnia 7 and certainly always felt the engadget app a bit stuttery. It’s not always huge, but i always feel just using the engadget is much easier due to the browser always being reliably smooth. Nice to see even the new low end phones are getting faster.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1300735256 Andrew Bares

I owned a Samsung Focus a few weeks ago. It’s not cause of that.
http://www.gadgeterija.net Denis Jelec

Incorrect.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Milad-Bazzaz/100000479683479 Milad Bazzaz

thanks, good to see that because a lot of apps are a pain to navigate through.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BRAFV3VMJPYUPVWLEBLFM2DFAY Goenawan

@facebook-1300735256:disqus can you do the same test for HTC Titan and Samsung Focus S? I’m getting confuse which device I should choose for my Omnia7 replacement
http://munch11.myopenid.com/ 2in1

Omnia 7
cpu: 33530ms
data: 46674ms
gpu: 586 frames, avg: 19 F/s
Anonymous

it’s just a badly optimised app. Flickster, for example, runs perfectly fine on the older devices.
http://twitter.com/abhi1manyu Abhimanyu Jamwal

Ok!! got your point, i will go and buy the new phone….HTC Titan…..will you be paying me through paypal or send me the phone directly? because, i surely don’t get these phones for free from HTC nor do I have a website with so many ads that I have to find articles hidden beteen ads all over the place
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5ZUD73FFTF3JFLR64AD62R7Q6I Eric

Not only will I not upgrade my wp7 phone because the second generation of devices have mediocre specifications. They are all underpowered devices.

But mainly I will switch to Android. I have been patient with wp7, but now I give up.

I am fed up with crappy hardware and this locked down and dumb OS + all the wp7 bugs (keyboard, zune, Fm Radio and IE mobile not managing multitask).
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ian-Cavalcanti/100002178260420 Ian Cavalcanti

The CPU is the same but in 45 nm, the only thing es that the Radar uses a NAND storage and a new GPU, and for me sorry but is not a reason to upgrade. It’s funny how some of you guys in the media, said for 1 month a go: “No reason to upgrade”, and now you guys have the latest models, says that the Windows Phone 1º generation is not fluid… But well, i have to say that the Radar looks very nice and the display is really better than the old HD7
Andre

I’m sorry, but that’s just your phone; my HTC Trophy runs apps very well without chopping. Minor details aren’t enough to convince me to upgrade. Give me WP8 and WinNT and I will
José Villaró

Stop the presses! Breaking news!

Faster hardware makes things run faster, better and more fluid! Who would’ve known???!!!
Tony Duarte

funny, never noticed any of those jerky motion things on my hd7.. anyhow, thats alright, i’ll wait until the “real” new generation of windows phones come out. These 2nd generation look more like 1.5 than 2.