w850i Frame Rate Profile and the '2 Button Phenomena'

The next phone we have the privilege to look at is the SE 850i. Special thanks goes out to lithium3r for providing the test results and generously using his phone to run the tests. This is the first 240 x 320 SE phone we've taken a look at. For more specifications on this phone, take a look here.

This is a particularly interesting SE phone to look at, as lithium3r has discovered something very interesting. The w850i runs swf files extremely slowly, but once 2 buttons on the keypad is pressed, the performance of the swf increases drastically!

I have one flash lite standby and it runs much faster when it's set to standby than just running it through that browser. So I think that when you press 2 keys down it shows the real speed. I don't know that is this some kind bug in the firmware [R1ED001] because i have the release firmware on my phone [CID49].

That being said, lithium3r proceeded to run the frame rate profile on his phones once using normal methods, and once pressed down 2 buttons on his phone. The results will surprise you. We start with the theoretical vs actual graphs:

The above graph shows the test being run in 'normal mode'. As you can see, the time it takes to run the swf is very long (~22 s) and seems to be constant regardless of what frame rate you're running at. Here is the same graph using data obtained using the '2 button mode':

Here we see the more familiar shape as seen with other SE phones we've looked at. The times are reduced to around 8 seconds (achieved at fps 30-40), and comparable to results seen with the w300i frame rate profile. How can 2 buttons make your swf run twice as fast?

Now we can compare the time ratios from these two different modes:

Regardless of what you're doing to the phone, both display a linear relationship. The 2 button pressed mode of course shows a much lower time ratio (preferable). The apparent FPS graph follows:

Again, the normal mode only shows a mere 8 fps, while the 2 button pressing mode shows a nice fps of 23. Also, the 2 button pressed mode seems to have an optimal frame rate (35) while the normal mode remains indifferent to frame rate.

What conclusions can we make from this? I'm afraid not much. Although pressing 2 buttons drastically improve performance, it is unrealistic to mash buttons whenever a swf is on your screen. The frame rate profile of the SE w850i under normal conditions is not impressive at all, showing no preference to any frame rate at all.

This makes me strongly feel that there must be some firmware (R1ED001) bug associated with this phone that causes a bottleneck effect on swf performance, that is somehow alleviated when 2 buttons are pressed. I need to get a hold of another phone (preferably with different firmware version) to draw some conclusions.

Please keep in mind that this test has only been completed on lithium3r's w850i. If you would like to contribute to this test using your 850i, please don't hesitate to contact me: phirewerkz [at] gmail [dot] com.