Been noticing a lot of people complaining that iphone offers non linear animation whereas samsung OneUI is still using linear animations which is somehow bad. Can somebody explain what this means? Thank you.
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Linear is constant motion. Non-linear is where it can adjust speed, say scrolling and it slows down towards the end of the scroll.
These aren’t really “official” terms, and they don’t have anything to do with the hardware capabilities of the phone themselves. Nor are they unique to smartphones.
They’re just different styles of animation. If you are animating a square moving from one place in the screen to another, you can either have it move at exactly a constant rate (linear), or you can have it briefly pick up speed to start, then briefly slow down at the end (non-linear.)
Some smartphone OSs have picked non-linear animations as their preferred style for everything for a long time. Others stuck with linear. It’s just a design choice. But these days, most customers have decided non-linear looks nicer and higher quality.
When animating things, you can choose how you want to pace the motion. Linearity refers to the speed curve that controls said pace of motion. Any kind of easing in and out will mean the speed’s change over time was nonlinear (the curve had to bend).
Websites for example have full control over the curves they use, so it’s incorrect to say one platform only allows one kind of animation – you’ll see all kinds of them on all of these platforms.
I don’t know what animations you’re specifically referring to, but there’s no true “superior” style, it’s completely subjective and context dependent. Sometimes the best animation is none at all, even.
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