Comments on: Mozilla: Smartphone performance has a ways to go

To make future mobile computers behave more like PCs, does the hardware have to get more powerful? Or does the software have to get smarter?

[punterjoe]

More Hardware is no sub for good Software

17 years ago I ran a preemptive multitasking graphical environment on an 8088 platform. It was more responsive & robust than many OSes I use today on hardware hundreds of times more powerful. Insanely optimized, clever code isn't easy (or common) but can be done. If GeoWorks Ensemble could multitask on a PC/XT running DR-DOS, just imagine what could be done with the hardware in today's mobile devices, by a suitably gifted coder.

[EmbSysPro]

Agreed!

The mid to higher end mobile devices in use today have a very good amount of processing power. They are on par with the desktop system of just a few years ago and are usually crafted around a semi-custom SOC (System-on-Chip) just for the purpose of speeding up application performance.

What I glean from all of the comments I see on the poor performance of application software on mobile devices is that some developers want to carry on with their inefficient bloat-ware development style.

Frankly it's just easier to recomple an existing PC application that it is to understand how to write a mobile application.

[feranick]

Correct!

You are absolutely correct! Mozilla is currently the typical piece of software that relies a lot on fast and vast hardware to run smoothly. Instead of making it efficient (why does firefox need to use as much as 100MB of RAM?), Mozilla folks blame the hardware for being too slow. There is something inherently wrong if Mozilla follows Microsoft path: New versions require faster hardware. It means that their programming is done very inefficiently. Opera does already a much better job everywhere it runs, it has a much smaller footprint, and it scales up from phones to PCs, without complaining that the hardware is simply too slow.

[mypalmike]

Modern software is more complex

Sure, there is sloppy engineering out there. But a lot of the "bloat" comes from the requirements of modern applications. A web browser, for example, seems like a simple thing to write at first. But then you see that any real-world web browser has to support html, xhtml, css, javascript, utf-8 character encoding, proper font rendering, gif (with masking and animations), png (with multibit alpha rendering), jpeg, ssl + tls + certificates, mime, network proxies, caching, cookies, history, and other standards and technologies. GeoWorks didn't have to support any of these complexities. As a software developer, I don't see that there's much I could do different in designing a mobile browser compared to a desktop browser.

Apple has done well in adapting Safari to the iPhone - it runs smoothly without much of a sense that it's crippled by running on a limited device.

[EmbSysPro]

And that;s the RUB!

I don't doubt that you are an excellent developer but your statement ?I don't see that there's much I could do different in designing a mobile browser compared to a desktop browser? truly illustrates the mindset of platform application developers vs. embedded platform developers.

And while an enhanced feature set will increase the size of the application's runtime or the number of its plug-ins, it should not be allowed to appreciably decrease the application?s performance.

[thebumboys]

TalkBack: Mozilla: Smartphone performance has a ways to go

Safari IS crippled software. Always has been (ask the experts). The technology is here now to make a good profit on high speed net access on a "smartphone". The reason we don't have that now is our basic market fundamentals of corporate greed above all else. Wether you have the products that our current technology would allow, is decided by companies who milk the lowest possible technology for as long as they can. Just look at the iphone, this thing limps on a slower than slow connection with a junk browser. I had faster net access on my phone years ago. Look at how well they rolled out the access. Do you think they are so stupid that they didn't anticipate a lot of sales and people trying to get thier phones up and running at the same time and could have simply streamlined the proccess? They just didn't care. They got your money, so you just wait in line now. The slow access, same thing. Junk browser, they would just rather have you stay within thier realm (junk or not). A glaring example is how Apple only allows thier software to run on thier hardware, hardware that is overpriced by about fourhundred percent. My advice: do your best to support only open source software where you can, dump thier stocks in protest, speak freely amongst yourselves about what is REALLY going on, after all it is supposedly STILL a free country, isn't it?