Quick Look: Faster Card Animations Patch 50
Some people prefer substance; others, style. When it comes to speeding up the Palm Pre, “substance” means background garbage collecting, reducing the number of running processes, and more adventurous (and potentially warranty-risking) efforts in overclocking. On the style side, a user can tweak the Pre’s graphic user interface (GUI) so it looks faster and more streamlined, changing the experience without actually changing how quickly it is running.
One of the most effective “style” efforts is the Faster Card Animations patch by forum member Xanthinealkaloid. The patch alters the animation settings for the Pre’s cards. The basic patch (EXPRESS) slightly speeds up the icon pulse, while accelerating the card’s initial jump, switching and movement out of the way of another card. There are also two other versions: one that speeds up the icon flashing even more (“HYPER”), and another that eliminates the glow entirely (NONE). All three are available via the webos-patches feed in Preware and webOSQuickInstall.
To get a sense of the differences, take a look at the following four (admittedly somewhat blurry) videos. The first shows the default card animation:
In the second, the regular (EXPRESS) patch is installed. As you can see, cards move and open more quickly, it's posted at the top
In the third, instead of the EXPRESS patch, the HYPER patch is installed. The difference is in how quickly the icon flashes while the app is fully loaded:
In this final video, the HYPER patch is combined with 800 MHz overclocking (via the Uber-Kernel) as a test [please note that PreCentral does not endorse or recommend overclocking or kernel replacement for ordinary use], showing both style and substance:
As always, we appreciate both the creativity of the homebrew community, and the openness of Palm to efforts like this patch, which can significantly improve the user experience of the Pre without need for jailbreaking or substantial changes.
What do you think? Does it make the Pre seem faster or does it just make your eyes dilate?
50 Comments
First!
We need new hardware, otherwise... EVO, here I come!
dude, that is getting old... your bitching wasnt even in style when you said THE SAME EXACT THING on other articles like 2 weeks ago. figure out some other way to troll and leave the posts to the people who actually care about their phones... as for everyone else, lets notify hp that this troll doesnt deserve any new palm hardware when it comes out... especially when the new palm phones blow this dillhole's evo out. of. the. water.
+1 wishing he would go already..lol
Please buy your EVO and go away and be happy!
@Caricomomierda
Good luck with 4-5 hour battery life. (see... Pretty much any post on the HD2)
The Bugatti Veyron is the fastest production car in the world...and uses a full tank of gas in under an hour.
I think I'll stay with the Lamborghini Merchilago thank you. :)
omg +10000 for the car reference... that is the post of the century
see you..... enjoy your new phone
I love the HYPER patch / 800MHz kernel combination. Been using it for a at least a week now.
+1
They just make the phone like it should be. I cannot wait for the next phone now that we have a glimpse of what this can do at 800.
Me too. But I've had some bizarre hanging and Luna restarts when using the UberKernel that I don't get when using SPK. The latter is, unfortunately, no longer being developed.
The fact that I don't get these issues with SPK suggests to me that it's not a hardware related issue. I'm considering doctoring, then installing UK to see if I can replicate the issue.
Long and short, I'm looking forward to an 800MHz (or faster) processor that's supported directly by Palm.
i have had some weird glitches too, but i think it is 1.4.1.1 because my wife just got a pixi yesterday, updated it while it had nothing else done to it, and it does some of the weird things my pre does. so let us know if it works or not
Looks like maybe there was something with overclocking causing problems:
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/244474-screen-800mhz-screen-off-50...
Of course, this wouldn't explain why I saw no problem in SPK since it uses the same code as UK.
i must be thick, but i dont understand what the problems mean
Some people are having problems with the 800MHz UberKernel where it stutters and pauses for long periods of time. These pauses can cause a crash and reboot. But these issues were difficult to reproduce. So the problems only showed up sporadically. As a result it's hard not to wonder whether or not the issues were entirely in my head versus a real problem.
It turns out others were experiencing it.
ahhh I see... I actually have had that with and without the 800MHz installed... I thought it was a 1.4.0 and 1.4.1.1 bug. But either way, it is not in your head. No worries.
Wonder what is the difference btw 800MHZ overclockinng vs hyper patch/800MHZ overclocking.
How does hyper patch effect battery life? Make it better or worse?
i dont think i have seen a difference... just makes it snappy and fast instead of just fast
This patch coupled w/ the 800MHz Kernel is wicked fast!
I used to feel the desperate need for new hardware, now I just desperately want new hardware!
It's a great experience check it out...
New hardware FOR THE WIN!
Thanks for the info. I guess I had the ultra installed before, but the super fast pulse was a big turn off. the one shown in the video was much nicer.
I highly recommend this patch. It is snappy and combined with the (not endorsed) overclock kernel, it's uber-snappy. :)
Even though you call these 'style' patches, the fact of the matter is that with these patches installed users spend less time waiting for the phone. This DOES make your Pre faster to use.
NO IT DOES NOT!!!! As mentioned in the article, it just kind of hypers up the animation. Count one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, etc from the time the finger touches the App Catalog application until the time that it is actually fully loaded and usable. It does not complete launching until four-one thousand in both the before and after. The overclocking is a completely different matter mind you. It is certainly an interesting experiment in perception though.
Well, it DOES shave off a few fractions of a second considering our mind perceives the window to be opening, when in fact it's already open but going through the animation routine. Definitely interesting :)
By removing the wait time between interactions, you actually spend less time waiting for the phone to show information and more time interacting with the information. Yes, these only speed up the display of screens by reducing the transitions. That means that you, as an end user, spend less time waiting.
The less time you spend waiting for the phone, the faster it is. Sure, this isn't increasing the clock speed, but it IS speeding up the interactions with the phone.
The end result of these patches is that the phone is removing tiny fractions of otherwise 'wasted' time.
I completely understand the difference between these patches and the overclocking patches. Yet these patches actually make the phone faster to USE. They don't make the phone process information any faster, but they do display the results to the end user in a more speedy fashion.
The end result is that the end user spends less time waiting for information to be displayed. From an end-user perspective, the results are that the phone is faster to use.
Turning off Menu animation in Windows does not increase the speed of the computer. It does increase the speed of the interface. From an end-user perspective, less time is wasted, more time is spent interacting with the machine.
With as much time as we end-users spend on our phones, I'll take the improved interface reaction times. Sure, it may only improve by a fraction of a second for each transition, but I have 1000's of transitions a day on my phone. And those fractions of a second add up.
I don't understand.
"By removing the wait time between interactions, you actually spend less time waiting for the phone to show information and more time interacting with the information. Yes, these only speed up the display of screens by reducing the transitions. That means that you, as an end user, spend less time waiting."
How? Before the patch is installed, you press a button, wait a few seconds, and the app you want opens. With the patch installed, you press the button, wait the same amount of time, and the app opens. You say "Yes, these only speed up the display of screens by reducing the transitions." The transition time is the same. The animation is faster, sure. But the animation is on the screen for the same amount of time regardless if you install the patch or not. That's what's important. Do you really think an improvement to this patch would be icons that glow even more per second?
The speed improvements offered by these patches are real, but have little to do with app load times.
This patch removes wait times for all kinds of interactions. Switching between already open applications is faster. Re-opening a previous app is faster. 'Minimizing' a running app is faster.
I've already stated, as have others, that this patch does little or nothing to load times. It does speed interactions and transitions that otherwise eat fractions of seconds... all day long.
How does it make your Pre faster to use?
I prefer a smoother card animation patch. Buttery like smoothness is the only thing I like with the iPhone. I hope we'll see it in WebOS some day.
well that day is here because with these patches my phone is just as smooth as my wife's ipod touch, and we all know it is just like the iphone
Yeah. Smooth to me implies not waiting around. That's what makes the iPhone smooth. So anything that can make the Pre faster IMHO makes it smoother.
If that is the case then I will try the patch. Thanks guys.
Do you mean the 3G[s]? Because on the 3G there's still some waiting while the thing loads up.
Not exactly; most of the time, slower means the animation will be smoother (case in point; Compiz window open/close effects on Linux).
The patch just seems to make everything . . . twitchier to me, rather than smoother. I prefer the stock app timings.
I put this patch on and it felt strange when swiping cards away, a little too fast. IMHO, the swiping animations is one of the small details that makes me love and appreciate WebOS. So I took it off and went back to default animations as I felt it flows better with the phone as opposed to quick swipes that don't really let you feel that something was swiped away.
This is a great post. It gives you the before and after and some alternatives. This could be really cool to see as someone who is just started to look at webOS.
I wish this site would do more patch highlights.
This is a very cool patch to use, installed this and showed it to a coworker who did not and he was amazed at how ''quick'' the phone was working. It is a must have patch!
This is great, Palm sees these patches and I assume they don't want to be embarrased so this should drive them to a higher standard.
+1
exactly
A must have patch indeed!!
makes it just even more fun :-)
I don't have any speed patch
but even with the 'just' hyper patch I downloaded ist just all just great!
The perfect addition to this patch is the "App Launcher Wrap Pages" - this patch speeds up the page flips, plus you can flip past the last page back to the first (and from the first to the last).
Both these patches together are fantastic.
http://forums.precentral.net/webos-patches/215154-patch-app-launcher-wra...
This may have been mentioned elsewhere, but if you just tap the icon as it is pulsing, it seems give the thread a priority boost and launch the app much faster. No patch needed. Learned this from a friend who just got a PrePlus. He saw the Verizon sales rep doing it.
I tried this on a bunch of apps. Some of them loaded faster when I did nothing.
I'm highly skeptical of this "trick" because: the guys over at MY Verizon store aren't very good with what they do, and I believe the only thing that will actually speed up an app's load time is a CPU overclock.
I liked the original card launching when it immediately came up instead of showing the card in the distance and then bringing it up when loaded. I know it may just be a matter of perception but didn't the old way seem quicker?
This is a fun patch. The phone definitely seems faster. If it's not, I can't tell. Just like the overclocking kernel, this makes my Pre look and run like the steroids are on steroids. It made me laugh as I watched it launch apps the first few times! Going back to stock animations would feel sluggish even if they're not. Good work to the developer!
I have to comment again! This patch just makes me laugh!!! This is a case where PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING! With the 800 mhz overclocking patch (which I use) the animations are so fast the damn phone seems like greased lightning. It's hilarious to watch. The perception here, while maybe not reality, is that my phone has just got into warp drive! (Note: I'm using the slower of the two available speed patches... Not sure what the "hyper" one would look like. Kind of pointless given how fast my apps appear to open.)
Does anyone know how the Uber-Kernel will interact with the "Unthrottle Downloads Patch" either negative or positive?
i have both installed and they interact fine... it feels normal if not faster with the uber-kernel
I've been using the no-glow faster animation patch since the day it came out and I love it. It does seem to load the apps faster.
Also, note to Pre users: If you're going to make a video of your phone for YouTube, you need to turn off auto-focus!
I was using the no glow since it's ipk release in the forums, after reading this, and trying it without again, I like it better without. If there's no real speed difference I prefer the smoother mellow transition. Still this is way cool & everyone should try it...
also +1 for the older stock animations where the card comes right to the front.