Just read the above interesting article from the guys at PC Mag about the further fragmentation of the Android platform and the fact that the current generation of iPad hardware can't keep up with the Tegra II platform in the soon-to-be-released Xoom tablet.
Really? The iPad's hardware is technologically inferior to a device that hasn't even been released yet, running an operating system that, likewise, has yet to be released?
Yeah, I think anybody who keeps up with the technology is well aware of the current iPad's specs. The other quality device (and I stress the word quality), Samsung's Galaxy Tab, currently runs a single core processor clocked at 1Ghz. The difference between the two devices is a relatively small 256MB of system memory, operating system and approximately 2.8" of screen size.
This quote tickled me:
Executives at War Drum Studios, which works next door to Trendy in Gainesville, Florida, also praised the new Android tablet. "Great Battles: Medieval" looks quite a bit like the "Total War" series of games, with individual soldiers battling on a 3D battlefield. In the demonstration War Drum showed off, over 500 individual soldiers were modeled on the battlefield, with no redundant animations, said Thomas Williamson, the company's chief executive. In total, there are probably about 300,000 to 400,000 polygons, he said.
And would his game run on the iPad? "No way, no way," Williamson said. "If this ran on the current generation iPad, it would be about 2, 3 frames per second".
Williamson said that Google's Android facilitates games updates as it allows incremental updates that can written to an SD card. New iOS builds must be essentially zipped up into a new build, he said.
So, to summarize, this guy doesn't think that his company's game, which is currently in development for an as-yet-unreleased build of Android would run on a soon-to-be-released tablet device that reportedly has twice the "power" (whatever that means, I guess they're referring to core count, RAM and gpu horsepower specifically) of a piece of hardware that is approximately one year old.
Thank you for stating the obvious Captain Williamson...
Please note my response to the sheer stupidity of this article:
Does this mean that "Honeycomb" is yet another iteration of the Android platform? I'm confused and thats the biggest knock against Android. It's schizophrenic and it doesn't know what it is. It has plenty of other issues too (like generally poor performance when stacked up against its "iOS" rival), not to mention the fact that Android developers (God bless em') are going to have to implement a "minimum spec" requirement.
This is where I saw Android going when it first began fragmenting and honestly, this is where Android is going to bury itself if Google doesn't get a handle on the situation quick, fast and in a hurry.
Imagine buying your brand spanking new Tegra II based tablet to play the latest game only to find out that your device just barely meets the minimum spec. Then, with high hopes, you download the game only to find that it performs poorly. What do you do then? Buy a new $800.00 Xoom tablet to run the latest Android game? These devices aren't PCs and you just can't pop them open and plug in more memory, a new processor or video-card.
Potential problems like these (which leave the consumer out in the cold) do not bode well for the development of the Android platform, nor do they speak well about the responsibility Google claims it has to it's customers. Remember fellas, do no evil!
Thanks for listening to my rant, check out PC Mag's article and offer your own opinion about the subject!
1 comment:
I love it man!
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