Running the example android project on a weak android device such as ASUS ZenPad P01Z gives really buggy and slow results. Same happens when I try running my custom model on the same device.
What are the known hardware requirements or known range of devices that wouldn't be able to run TensorFlow effectively and efficiently?
I think that this is a difficult question to answer as it is too vague. Your definition of efficient and effective aren't clear.
The minimum specs as far as I know are a device running API Level >21 (although >=23 recommended).
I have it running a number of devices at a decent inference time but it depends on your definition. You can enter debug mode by pressing your volume key to see why your model is running slow and what your inference time is. I have it running on Nexus 6P, Pixel C tablet and some mid-tier Samsung phones fine.
As these demos are rather simple computations (and not too graphically intensive) then I would suggest looking at devices with decent CPUs.
Related
What are the next Android smartphones to be compatible with ARCore?
Is there a known list of future compatible devices yet? Maybe a general project schedule?
We are about to purchase some units for AR development assessments, at first we thought about trying one of the Tango devices out there (we already had a good experience with Tango), but our current bet is that the ARCore platform will beat it in terms of market share.
Currently, the compatible devices are only:
Google Pixel
Samsung Galaxy S8 (the non-plus version)
But obviously, we would prefer to choose from a wider variety (e.g. S8+, G6...)
I know that there is a known hack to make it work on other devices, but it is better to start on the right track with a compatible one while we still can.
Also, is there a way to run ARCore on emulator that connected to webcam?
For test purpose.
(I don't think this answer deserves the bounty, and I also don't think you'd get a worthy one any time soon. But let's roll anyway:)
So I did a bit of a research as to why are these the only devices supported. It's a tough question to answer of course, but we can speculate.
I read through the reddit on the subject (among other sources) and it seems that ARCore does not require some special hardware, but it does require a "calibration profile" per each specific set of camera, sensors, and builds. I.E. each device.
I've found this Medium article about what Apple had to do in order to calibrate their own ARKit coupled with some speculation about Google's calibration process.
WOW! Turns out it's a really heavy task. And it seems that Google has chosen these devices specifically because they've already undergone some initial calibration for other purposes. So it's even harder to start the calibration from scratch.
OK... So?
So... There seems to be mixed news here:
The good news is that ARCore does not rely on some fancy new hardware platform with some fancy new standards that are gonna be hard to enforce in an already highly fragmented market.
The bad news is that unless an automatic calibration process is invented, each device SKU needs to undergo a costly, lengthy and manual process. It's very hard to estimate the costs involved, and even harder to estimates the rewards.
Which brings us to where we started: My guess is that device manufacturers will not be quick to jump on the ARCore bandwaggon. Yet.
It seems that it's gonna take some time before you'd get a reliable answer to your question.
The current list of ARCore supported device manufacturers and models can be found here:
developers.google.com/ar/discover#supported_devices
To your last question around testing on the emulator, as of this week, you now run ARCore in the Android Emulator with a virtual AR camera:
https://developers.google.com/ar/develop/java/emulator
When you are using Android Studio 3.1, and Android Emulator v27.1.10, just create a new Android Virtual Device (AVD) for the Android Emulator that targets Android 8.1 Oreo (API 27) and verify that the back camera is set to Virtual Scene.
You will get the current list of ARCore supported device manufacturers and models below link.
ARCore Supported Devices
Here is a list of ARCore 1.4 Compatible Devices (last updated October 19th, 2018).
I am about to port my application on android. Since I am new to this system I would like to ask for tips on android phones for testing my app. The number of phones is pretty huge so it is pretty hard to choose the right one. Also I wasn't able to find some kind of official chart of system distribution.
I know that it really depends on hardware and how much my app demands from hardware. It is pretty basic app and I am able to run this app at 30fps on iPhone 4S.
I did some research and people are talking about the latest phones but I think that it is not necessary to buy the newest one. Also, is there option to buy for example tablet and emulate android devices on this tablet?
So my goal is to focus on devices people have the most.
Thank you for any advice.
You can run many of your tests on the Android emulator. Using it together
with the DDMS will allow you to simulate several real life situations
(arriving call, arriving sms, change position...)
You can use BlueStacks which is an emulator put on steroids.
TestFairy and UTest are awsome communities for crowd testing were you can test ~any device you can think of.
Still, it is a good idea, especially if you plan your run at Android to be long,
to maintain a small stash of real devices.
Which devices should you buy? Which OS version should they run?
The Android dashboard is the official source for answering some of these questions. It gives an
up to date statistics of worldwide distribution by OS version, svreen size/density and more:
OS Distribution
Screen type Distribution
So, true to July 2014 you would want devices running Jelly Bean, Gingerbread & ICS and you screens of types normal/hdpi, normal/xxhdpi and normal/xhdpi. This list can grow but even this will provide you with a good sample of the Android device ecosystem.
As for manufacturers, the picture is clear: Samsung is the winner. Exact number &
distributions are harder to find here, but a Google search might help.
If my memory serves me write some 65% of all Android devices are Samsungs made with
Galaxy S3 taking 15% (of ENTIRE Android market) and Galaxy S4 = 10%.
Device screen features:
Galaxy S2 is normal/hdpi
Galaxy S3 is normal/xhdpi
Galaxy S4/S5 is normal/xxhdpi
These will probably be your best bet. You will do smartly to install on them 2-3 different OS versions, at
minimum Jelly Bean and ICS.
The Android Development Tools in Eclipse and Android Studio both have emulators that can be used to emulate different devices, including tablets and phones. You don't need to buy anything to be able to test your app on an emulator. The emulators run on your computer.
For more information
As for what devices most people have, while I don't have official statistics, looking at my own applications' downloads, most people are using either a Nexus 4 or Nexus 5.
I have developed an Android application which uses JNI (java native interface) for Archos 43.
Had no problems and i was able to run the application smoothly.
Later I tried to run the same application on Samsung I9100G Galaxy S II as well as Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II.
I was able to run the application on I9100G but not on I9100.
The reason being that the JNI part of the application was not supported on I9100.
I did try to get to know the reason for this and was able to find that I9100G uses Ti OMAP 4430 chipset and PowerVR SGX540 as GPU whereas I9100 uses Exynos 4210 chipset and Mali-400MP as GPU.
I suspect that the reason might be the change in chipset (since Archos 43 uses Ti OMAP as well). But any further results couldn't be obtained from my search.
update The application makes use of bluetooth. While trying to connect to a custom hardware(CH), am not able to get any response from the CH when am running the application on I9100. The bluetooth communication part is written using jni.
So my question is whether am not able to run my application with JNI on I9100 because of the chipset and if so why ?
Also a more general question is which devices support Android JNI applications and what are the basic features necessary in a device to run an Android JNI application ?
(I spent a considerable amount of my time trying to find the answers for all these questions and any help will be greatly appreciated.)
Thank You.
All Android devices 'support' JNI, that is how a big part of the OS is implemented: Java services and frameworks using native libraries via JNI. There are, however, different architectures, and if you have a native module, you need to make sure you build one for each architecture you want to support. Even if you are targeting ARM devices only, there are ARMv5 and ARMv7 ones out there. ARMv5 should work on all, but is slower.
Galaxy SII devices probably use the same architecture, so you've hit some other problem/bug. What errors did you get? Post logcat if available. Maybe you are trying to access hardware that is not available on one of the devices? Or link against system libraries that are for some reason missing?
Now that you disclosed that the problem might be related to BT on 2.3.3, it all makes sense. The Android Bluetooth interface before 4.0 was not standartized, and it's most likely that your code is TI OMAP - specific. So, if you want to support other chipsets, you need to communicate to other drivers, or target devices with ICS and higher.
I am beginning Android app development and I would like to know which device would give me the most comprehensive testing environment. I would like my app to be compatible with the most number of devices without breaking the bank by buying a dozen devices. Just testing on the emulator is not an option because it runs at 1/10th of normal speed.
OS Version
Should I purchase a device with the most common OS? As of now, 2.2 is the most popular. Obviously, a 2.2 device wouldn't be able to test run an app made for 3.0. But is the reverse also true? If I buy a 3.0 device, would that allow me to test all lower versions?
Tablet or Phone
Given that my app won't be dealing with phone calls, should I be buying a phone or tablet? Are the two sufficiently the same except for resolution? Has your app ever worked on a tablet but failed on a phone? The Apple iPad has a neat emulation mode for iPhone apps. Is this feature also available on Android tablets?
Price is also a big consideration when choosing a tablet over a phone. I'm not going to sign up for another cellular plan, so most phones would have me fork over $500+. That would come out to be the same price as the Motorola Xoom. But arguably Android phones are much more popular than tablets, so a Xoom wouldn't let me see what most of my users would be seeing.
In general it's up to you, I suggest you Google Nexus S, because of NFC module in that phone (only that phone nowadays as I good know have NFC), besides that it has everything you need. Big plus for screen.
Android 3.0 is made generally for tablets but of course you can write application in 3.0 and run it on 2.2 or 2.3 just look for backward compatibility, and use reflection.
Also good to know that it does not depend of your phone which version you have it's up to SDK ver which you choose during creating project, in general you can set 7 as min SDK and test it on phone with 9.
If you are creating applications which requires a lot of custom drawing/animating such a game, then a slew of devices would be ideal to test against resolutions, DPI, RAM, CPU power, etc.
If you are using more of the native components then you do not have to worry as much about the different screen types and sizes as these tend to scale very well.
This question was brought up at GDC's Android Developer Day, you may be able to find the video online. Basically, it boiled down to trying to get one of each kind of device, low end, mid, high. It was also recommended that you built for the newest SDK, then start building against older ones, fixing, testing, rebuilding.
Therefore, I would personally recommend the Nexus S.
The company I work for does Android development on the original G1, HTC Hero, Samsung Epic 4G, and HTC Incredible.
I would like to start doing some Android development, and would like a cheap device to deploy apps to, just for testing and demo purposes. Is it possible to deploy apps to, for instance, an Archos 28? I don't know much about Android development yet, and haven't found a good answer to this question elsewhere. Thanks.
I can recommend the A28 for development. The user experience is rather crashy, part of the problem lies in the low RAM (128Mb is very little for an Android device). But I developed JGame on an A28 and did not run into firmware bugs. It also runs Flash 10.x in case you want to experiment with that.
I second that you should in particular worried about devices with a larger display. I found that graphical performance can be much worse on those devices. The A28 has a pretty good GPU considering it has several times fewer pixels than the average Android device.
Yes, it is running android 2.2 froyo. That should work fine for development purposes. Just keep in mind that some people will be using your app on cell phones that may be "larger" than the archos' screen size.