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frostythesnowman
On The Verge since Dec 29, 2011
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Eh, pinch to zoom in OSX is definitely not less smooth than a touchscreen. Here is a video of me pinching to zoom a few times in and out, it’s flawless save for the frame rate being around 25 which is due to the screen recording, it’s normally no less smooth than what I see with my Surface and 8X.
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Possibly because it’s single stage not the two stage found on dedicated cameras and WP, that makes a huge difference IMO.
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The drivers are emulating a scroll wheel, that is why it is acting like a scroll wheel. If whoever made your laptop updated the drivers to hook into the right APIs that Microsoft provides you would have a fairly similar experience between touchscreen and trackpad.
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I can’t speak for 7 and prior, but in Windows 8 there are OS level gestures for things like pinch to zoom, smooth scrolling (by subpixel, not line) and specific gestures such as showing charms and cycling through tasks. OEMs just need to hook in to them and they’re golden, unfortunately most are instead emulating a scroll wheel in drivers.
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Drivers full stop, if we need any proof take a look at the Logitech T650, it gives an outstanding trackpad experience in 8 and 7. Accuracy is no less than what Apple has with their solution.
There are of course poor hardware too found in cheap machines, but the drivers should reflect their limitations by not trying to shoehorn in too many complex gestures that won’t be reliable. It’s unacceptable that my first laptop I bought in 2004 features more reliable trackpad support than most that are sold today in 2013, even multitouch like 2 finger scrolling.The issue is OEM laziness and cheapness, they go for a “good enough” quality of experience rather than a great experience.
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I believe it is both, RT just isn’t using the Tegra 3 to it’s potential, RT is a heavier OS in the first place, and Tegra 3 isn’t a very fast chip with a serious flaw in it’s very low memory performance that’s likely become very apparent with the larger size of RT.
I’ve heard good things about the experience of RT on a Snapdragon based device, and I’ve personally found Atom based devices be much faster than the RT. The Snapdragon is similar in raw performance to the Tegra 3, and the Atom is much faster. So that does point to it being both at fault.
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The 925 is a T-Mobile exclusive in the US, it’s unlocked everywhere else in the world which so happens to be where a lot of WPs sales are
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It’ll actually help the whole PureMotion business, OLED displays refresh far faster than an LCD even with the overdrive that Nokia employed on the 920. I believe it’s a 1ms G2G response where the 920 was achieving around 12-16ms G2G
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There are two key points that make it completely worthwhile the effort releasing it right now:
Weight: 185g → 139g, people complained the 920 was too heavy so they addressed it
Thickness: 10.7mm → 8.5mm, people complained the 920 was also too thick so they too addressed that.If you look back at the reviews of the 920, almost every review complains about the above and really not much else as far as hardware goes. If they have the improvements ready they absolutely should push them out, at 6 months and on more carriers in the US is a decent time to do it anyway.
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627.AM is a well design app, notable because it doesn’t follow the templates but still looks great and fits with WP.
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Skydrive is damn cheap compared to the rest, 20GB extra for 0.83$ a month is 1/3 Google’s price and 100GB more for 4.19$ is almost 20% less.
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Outlook.com allows for unlimited storage, not Skydive here but mail storage. The cap is instead that only so much mail can come in or out, a move to slow down spammers that no one will normally run into.
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HP also tends to make tolerable trackpads, they get the basic tracking and scrolling right which is nice, not something that can be said about most unfortunately
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Logitech Trackpad T650, already exists and is an excellent implementation of a trackpad in Windows 7 and 8. I’m talking excellent even when compared to what is found on a Macbook.
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To my knowledge, the only way for Microsoft to help OEMs more is to do what they’ve done with WP and say that OEMs need to use X, Y or Z trackpad in their laptops and write all the drivers themselves.
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Sorry, I must have miss-interpreted what you said
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The T650 is an accessory trackpad, the same concept as the Apple Magic Trackpad. I’m sure Best Buy would have some on show in at least some stores, or some other retailers of the type so you could try one out.
What Microsoft has done is created a number of gestures that OEMs can hook onto, standard ones like two finger scrolling and pinch to zoom in addition to some custom ones such as a three finger downward swipe to get to the desktop and the edge swipes to get at the task switch and charms. It’s up to the OEMs to then create a driver that recognizes the various swipes. So they have done a bunch of work for the OEMs, it’s just up to the OEM to implement the driver that picks up the swipes properly.
Your issue with the scroll wheel jumping in place of a smooth glide is a case of the OEM choosing the wrong hook most likely, or as I’ve seen sometimes writing their own (terrible) implementation by scratch. I can’t speak for Windows 7, but in Windows 8 the hook for a smooth scroll is there in addition to the hook for a mouse wheel scroll. If you ever do use the T650 you’ll notice is has the perfectly smooth scroll that’s identical to using a touch screen to navigate. -
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And this is Microsoft’s fault how? The tools and resources to design an application properly are there, it’s all on Google to use them.
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It’s all about drivers that the OEMs are using, if there is one thing the Logitech Trackpad T650 shows it’s that it is more than possible to have excellent trackpad support in Windows. I’d put the T650’s gesture support and consistency at the level of the Macbook trackpad in OSX, which means essentially flawless. It’s a side effect of the race to the bottom they got into, it likely takes some time to tune a trackpad to be just right so OEMs will get it to a “good enough” stage and call it done. It’s quite unfortunate indeed.
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It’s really software makers who need to up there game now that there is a reason to, Microsoft has had great resolution independance for years now so it’s just up to 3rd parties to start developing applications which comply with the standards Microsoft set.
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I have a feeling you haven’t done much development for WP, it’s very common to use the template Metro designs but developers have the freedom to branch out and do other designs. 627.AM is a good example of using a flat and minimalistic approach that works with WP but with a totally different layout.
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It is true though, different strokes for different folks.
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If I compare my 8X against my old Focus the 8X is far faster normally, but there are some odd instances where that “loading…” will pop up like you’ve found. I wouldn’t be surprised if how often it slows down like that has some relation to the lower end specs of the 620.
3rd party apps are far faster always on the 620 I presume? It’s not even a competition between my two handsets.
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I’ve got a Surface RT 64.
Overall it’s quite decent once in the apps I find, essentially no frame dropping but some visible content draw lag when scrolling through some applications like Bing News that still annoys me. Application launch time is a real massive issue though, quite frankly it is bordering on unacceptable when the Windows Store takes 7 seconds to load fully and many others are in that range too. Both aspects have a decent way to go until they’re as great as WP8, where there is zero draw lag, buttery smooth and quite quick app load times. I hope this is something Blue improves, especially launch times.
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