Perceived responsiveness of the UI

Design
#9

I can also confirm that SFOS feels sluggish to me since the beginning on my XA2.
Especially the scrolling of lists and pages (Web browser, apps) seems to lag behind the touch input and/or the scrolled content is redrawn in an apparent and disruptive way (especially while scrolling with a low velocity/speed). The native gallery and settings apps are good examples for such sluggish scrolling.
Furthermore very often the touch input is not interpreted correctly and this is annoying as hell: Button tabs will be interpreted as swipe gestures, the pinch to zoom gesture will be interpreted as a tab/swipe and vertical and horizontal swipes are interchanged. But also just horizontally swiping back and forth in the home launcher will result in all possible swipe gestures (scrolling the eventsview, opening top menu and opening the app launcher). And the laggish keyboard input shall be not forgotten.
Another issue is that UI animations seem to have a higher priority than touch input, e.g
tapping on the home screen (the screen containing the app tiles) directly followed by a horizontal swipe will surpress the swipe gesture and first display the ui animation*.

Sometimes I am playing around with the Huawei device of my gf and I am astonished by the smooth UX (especially the scrolling), even though I do not like the walled garden OS and I am a long-time Maemo/MeeGo/SFOS user.

In summary: Jolla should put some effort in improving the whole user experience. :nerd_face:

Update:
*This issue has been fixed with Sailfish OS 3.4.0.xx. :slight_smile:

#10

To get a UX nonce on board you have to speak it terms they can empathise with.
Say you are striving for a Cinéma vérité feel with hard cut immediacy, rather than the languid soft core porn feel with animation.

1 Like
#11

One more thing that makes the UI feels a slow is the activation of the pulley menus. It should just move to the option you select and not flash to show what you selected. You cant cancel it at that point anyway. And going back is always a swipe away.

1 Like
#12

Does anyone know if there is a “speed” limit in the animation transitions from page to page (or from home to notifications etc)

And what is that??

#13

I don’t know how these work, but there is a patch on patchmanager web catalog to control speeds Animation settings. I haven’t used it myself, but maybe sources can give hint how to do it in case patch itself don’t work.

#14

Thanks. Since this is doable by a patch it means that is something it can be changed easily.

The current settings is something that makes SFOS feel slow. Jolla can tweak this.

1 Like
#15

I’ve used it before, and it was great. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work on SFOS 3.4. Somebody has to fix it or repack it for 3.4

#16

I updated the patch to work on 3.4.
https://coderus.openrepos.net/pm2/project/patch-animation-settings-iii

3 Likes
#17

Thank you so much. I hope it will also work on SFOS 4.0.1.48, because I am running that version at the moment.

#18

Thank you so much! The difference is huge, at least in my opinion. The feeling is for a completely different phone :grinning:
In my opinion, this should be part of the factory settings. Thanks again!

1 Like
#19

I updated the patch to work on 4.0.1.48.

3 Likes
#20

Amazing! Thank you very much.

#21

Thanks a lot for the patch !
Is there a way to custom the swipe to event view speed animation please ?

#22

To me it feels like SF has a delay in reacting to a scroll. Indeed it even flashes an item in a list as if it was selected, before the scroll starts. This leads to a constant sense of the UI being sluggish.

#23

Yes the somehow sluggish scroll is there. The flash however is a reaction to touch. And is unrelated to the scroll. The nintendo switch interface does it also.
Android -at least the device i test- “hides” it by delaying the item selection. I have no idea how iOS handles that.

#24

I think Sailfish is using very simplistic algorithms(?) for transitions in ui. It doesn’t react to different accelerations applied when swiping, ie physics of swipes seems unnatural when compared to for example Nokia N9 or very natural feel of Miui from Xiaomi. And transitions are slow too, or linear and thats why seemingly slower? I’m no programmer myself, just trying to put to words the perceived differences compared to my other phones.

2 Likes
#25

It may or may not be unrelated, but it is disturbing as it hints at an interaction happening with that particular element, even though you are scrolling a whole list and not concerned about an individual item… On other platforms there is a flash too, but only if you actually clearly press on the item to open it or select it. I would venture that it would feel more tactile to delay the flash ever so slightly, so it doesn’t appear when scrolling.

Obviously the scrolling also should not be delayed, as that makes it feel sluggish.

1 Like
#26

I’d also like to see it go. I am not defending it.

2 Likes
#27

I also want to add:

  • Keyboard appearing when taping a text field.
  • Browser bar appearing when scrolling.

In general every transition of the os is waaaaayyyy tooo slow.

1 Like
#28

One more thing is how long it takes before an alarm you dismissed or snoozed finally stops occupying the screen. The sound and vibrations are muted as soon as you dismiss, but the reminder stays on screen for what feels like an eternity and prevents you from doing anything else unless you wait for it to go away or swipe from the left/right side. It should disappear as soon as you select ‘Dismiss’, without any delay.

1 Like