Despite the onset of updated software and powerful hardware, one of the major issues faced by Android users is the UI being laggy as people continue to complain of their smartphone's screen stuttering.
Google, however, has the answer to your prayers so that you do not experience any more lag on your android smartphone. Meet Chrome TouchBot.
For those wondering what the Chrome TouchBot is, it is a machine made by Finland-based OptoFidelity, which is capable of assessing any lag on the Android and Chrome OS-based device's touchscreen. This machine is capable of spotting even the nano second delay between a user's finger input and the resulting action on the device's touchscreen as it measures the touchscreen latency.
Basically, as Googler François Beaufort revealed in a Google Plus post:
"The Chrome OS team uses a cool robot built by the Finnish company OptoFidelity to measure end-to-end latency of Android and Chrome OS devices."
Beaufort also shared the link to a video taken by a high speed camera, which shows how when one draws a line on the screen it is "actually drawn in segments that fade in slowly."
The video in question shows the robot tapping the screen of the Android smartphone incessantly to measure the response of the display. The Chrome TouchBot also runs a battery of web-based tests parallely, which are meant to assess the phone display's latency.
The Chrome TouchBot's artificial swipes, prods and pokes help identify the problems that exist in the hardware as well as the code.
If the Chrome TouchBot notices any problems during this process or if the latency is not at par with Google's expectations, then possibly Google goes back to the basics to figure out how to address the issue.
While the Chrome TouchBot is not the only machine which monitors lag for Google, it plays a pertinent role considering the dependency of the Android software on touch.
One can check out the latency tests for themselves at https://crostouchlatency.appspot.com. The TouchBot source code is open source and is available online.
Check out the Chrome TouchBot from OptoFidelity in the video below.
