Google Uses a Robot to Test Android Phones for Lag (Video)

Lag on Android has been a problem for some time now; even if you're using a flagship phone, and especially after you're used it for a couple of months. Google plans to address this head on though, as per a Google Plus post by Francois Beaufort, a Chromium Evangelist at Google.

In the post, Beaufort has included a video titled Chrome Touchbot, that explains how Google uses a robot to test for lag.

The robot, manufactured by Finnish company OptoFidelity, measures the end-to-end latency of Android and Chrome OS devices, according to Beaufort's post. The video, captured by a high-speed video camera shows how drawing a line on a screen is done in segments that fade in slowly. You can see the test in the video below:

You can even check lag yourself with the same latency tests. The post was first spotted by Engadget.

The robot can identify lag, and then the team can determine if hardware or software problems are responsible for the issue. By doing this, Google has been able to identify, and address some of the problems of lag already, and it really has come a long way from where it was two years ago, or even one year ago. There's still quite a way to go though, but hopefully, Google will be able to keep improving.

Sony also posted a detailed breakdown of touch responsiveness on its developer website last year, and while it doesn't have a cool robot, we'd definitely suggest checking it out. The page explains in simple language what exactly happens when you touch the screen, and walks you through the process from the panel, to the touch driver, to Android event management, to the app you're using, to the Android graphics framework, to the display driver, to the actual change happening on the display.

It's a long and mildly technical read, but the language is quite simple, and it's really helpful if you want to know why your phone seems to slow down at times.