Dear Everyone, I condsider to purchase either Apple's iPhone 3GS or Samsung's Omina II (i8000). To purchase such device is not small investment at all. I can compare hardware specifications, but how the device's Operating System influences game speed? Because we all know that Windows Mobile is slow on hadnheld devices, will this influence game speed, if the game uses DirectDraw? What in general is the impact of the Operating Sysem on game performance? Thank you. With regards..

The iPhone is not directly comparable to Windows Mobile.


The operating system is usually not an issue when it comes to game performance.

You say "we all know that Windows Mobile is slow on hadnheld devices". This is like saying "Windows is slow" or "Linux is slow", or "OS X is fast". The operating system itself provides some basic services but is not responsible for the performance of the product.


Your own design philosophy, the device's hardware, and the device's drivers as supplied by vendors are all much more important.



As one example, there was a great device, the Dell Axim X50v. It had incredible hardware, was one of the few devices with real 3D hardware, had a ton of memory and a very fast cpu. It had one major drawback --- memory writes blocked the entire system due to a hardware design flaw. The device was wonderful for viewing media and playing some great games. But if you needed to actually write data the device was horrible.

As another example, many of the HTC Touch devices have incredible hardware. But the manufacturer chose not to implement their own drivers to take advantage of the hardware, instead using the default software rasterizers. As a result, these devices (which are excellent for most purposes) have serious performance issues when running certain apps.


Neither of these had anything to do with the OS. The performance was based on the vendor's choices, and the performance varied based on how you actually used the device.

Dear Frob, Rip-off

Thank you for your comments. If I understand correctly, if there is a new device coming, like Samusung Omnia II, it is still a risk to assume if there are going to be any game development problems.

On the one side, the device has GPU and DirectX support, on the other side, there might be problem with drivers, memory writing, or anything else...

Quote:
Thank you for your comments. If I understand correctly, if there is a new device coming, like Samusung Omnia II, it is still a risk to assume if there are going to be any game development problems.

You may also want to ask this on the samsung mobile innovator forums (http://innovator.samsungmobile.com). You have a good chance of getting Omnia I specific questions answered there.

Dear j2inet,

Thanks for the link. I got registered and posted my question in there.

Best regards,
Rene