Talk:MediaTek/Archives/2015

Very long lists of utilizing devices in product list

The number of utilizing devices listed for some popular chips (e.g. MT6589 family and MT6592) is extremely long, and because of the small column size it impacts the readability of the product list table.

I am not completely against lists of end-products utilizing certain chips, but to improve readability it might be a good idea to either limit the list to the largest manufacturers or to split off device lists to another section. Any sugggestions? Calamites (talk) 23:20, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I have noticed user Datasupplier (talk) has fixed this issue by using a scrollable window for the device list. Thanks. Calamites (talk) 06:39, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

It appears that Charwinger21 User_talk:Charwinger21 has removed the recent improvement by Datasupplier to use scrollable table elements and instead replaced them with ugly barely functional collapsible lists. I don't think this is a good solution at all. The previous situation with the scrollable table fields was already a huge improvement over the previous situation (extremely high table rows), and seemed to look good.

Is there any pressing reason that make the scrollable device lists not acceptable in the article? Otherwise I would very much want a return of the scrollable device list as implemented recently. Calamites (talk) 14:24, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Hey, didn't realize that the scrollable lists were a recent development here. I've been trying to figure out how to solve the issue of overpopulated "Utilizing devices" columns interfering with the main data for a while over on the Qualcomm Snapdragon, Exynos, and Exmor pages. I considered scrollable lists at the time, but thought that they would be a bad option due to the problems that they cause for mobile users. They also were causing problems on this page for desktop users, taking up half the page and leaving very little room for the data in the tables (especially on lower resolution displays). Next I thought about setting the text size to small (which was also done here alongside the scrollable list), however WP:MoS states that font size changes should be avoided unless there are no other options, and that still leaves the same issue with the primary data being squished. Collapsible lists are the only solution that I have found which both maximizes the area available for the primary data, and doesn't cause compatibility issues for different screen sizes, zoom levels, and mobile devices. It may make sense to use a scrollable list within the collapsible table, however I personally believe that that solution would further overcomplicate the issue. If you have any suggestions about how to further improve the situation, I'm all ears. There are many articles that would benefit from an improved solution for this issue. Charwinger21 (talk) 06:19, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Before anyone asks, I feel I should clarify what I mean by "primary data/main data". If someone comes to this page, they are probably coming to look for data about a specific chipset, and how that compares to other chipsets. People who want to find out what chipset a specific device has are more likely to go to that device's page first and look there. The data about what devices utilize each chip should be available here, however it should be below the fold (e.g. the list should be in a collapsible list), as people on this page will tend to find the chip that they are looking for, and then look at which devices utilize it. This page about the chips should be focused on the chips themselves. Our primary concern should be to make the information about the chips be legible and understandable. Charwinger21 (talk) 06:19, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. As I made clear when I started this thread several months ago, I also had reservations about very long device lists making the tables hard to read. This was particularly true for the MediaTek article which has extremely long device lists. In that sense when the scrollable lists appeared a few days ago I thought it was a big improvement. However, I am not aware about the extent they can cause problems on mobile devices or other platforms.

I can think of a better alternative though: what about listing only the few most prominent devices that utilize the chip based on criteria such as volume shipments and prominence in media (not too hard not pick for most chips for a contributor that knows the subject) and then end with the text "(full list)" or something similar that brings up the full collapsible list. When I have some time I might experiment with that. When I contributed to device lists in the past I already tended to put the most prominent design wins at the front of the list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Calamites (talk • contribs) 14:37, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm worried about that solution as it would cause POV issues with selecting which devices are important enough to be found outside the collapsible list. Basing it on sales figures could theoretically work, however companies have a tendency to not publish those. Charwinger21 (talk) 00:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the collapsible lists, I don't think it is working as intended. On a PC with Firefox, the list is expands only when clicked, but on a mobile device (for which the issue is supposed to be most critical) with Android with a recent version of Chrome for Android the entire device lists show up all the time (the "list" link doesn't work), resulting in a very long and hard to read tables. This requires some more work. Calamites (talk) 18:45, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Not sure if that is by design on Wikipedia's part or an issue with how it was formatted. Charwinger21 (talk) 00:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Rather than User Charwinger21 systematically editing all SoC articles in sight to add collapsible lists to suit their own preference, would it not be a better idea to consult with other editors on respective talk pages rather than pushing out major changes which are frankly an ugly solution, break ctrl+f searching which many people use, and are immensely annoying to use if you have to expand multiple lists. I don't have time at the moment to revert such changes but have done so in the past for similar edits breaking functionality, and it makes it far easier to debate and revert if such changes are made in ONE edit rather than spamming edits for every list. N (talk) 11:04, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

That's fair. I was trying to WP:Be Bold and make a change that I thought would help improve UX. I however have to debate the usefulness of CTRL+F searching by device, and question whether or not that is more important than actually being able to read the SoC information. It seems to me that it would be a very odd workflow to go to each SoC page hoping to find the device that you are looking for. Would not looking up the device itself make more sense and be substantially easier? Also, I am curious as to what use case calls for expanding multiple of those lists at the same time? Charwinger21 (talk) 00:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

I apologise for my tone in my previous comment (and sorry for delay in replying). I agree the current system is imperfect, but consider the ability to search to be very useful, and having to manually expand potentially dozens of lists mustn't be the best solution. I'm admittedly not terribly experienced with formatting in Wiki, but perhaps there's something like an option to expand all lists with a single click? The lists on some pages are worse than others; e.g. some of the lists in Mediatek are monstrously long. This is even more evident on mobile devices but the collapsible lists don't function correctly on the mobile version anyway. The list-for-every-row seems like quite an inelegant solution to the problem, and in some cases the 'show' text overlaps with other content for instance. It just seems that the importance of content hidden in separate collapsible lists is barely above not being present at all, if that makes sense?Nathen_1 (talk) 00:31, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I see what you're getting at. Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the problem is that we shouldn't be trying to shoehorn this information into this page. Maybe it needs its own page instead. A List of Devices Using Mediatek SoCs page, or something like that (with a link to the appropriate spot on the page from this page for each chip). Give me a couple minutes. I'll try to put something together. Charwinger21 (talk) 18:53, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

I got a version up and running on List of Devices Using Mediatek SoCs, but it still needs work. Tell me what you think. How can it be improved? Charwinger21 (talk) 00:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

That's a good way of doing it in my opinion; keeping the clutter of device lists out of the way on the original page while allowing easy access to the full list if necessary. The layout is also far more friendly rather than huge lists ending up crammed into the rightmost column. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nathen 1 (talk • contribs) 18:44, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Collapsible lists begin to make sense for the huge device lists present on some MediaTek parts for instance, but it's still a trade-off of preventing clutter vs above issues. Putting *everything* into collapsible lists makes no sense to me though.N (talk) 11:04, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, there is the consistency factor. Having all of the device lists in collapsible lists instead of only having some of them creates a more uniform UX across the page. Charwinger21 (talk) 00:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

As the separate List of Devices Using Mediatek SoCs page seems to be working well so far, I'm going to go ahead and fully move the device data over from this page to that page. It'll shrink this page a little bit (making it load faster and getting it closer to the recommended WP:Article size), remove the issues relating to collapsible lists, and make the page much more readable on mobile. It will also help prevent the pages from becoming out of sync (which has already started to become a bit of an issue). Charwinger21 (talk) 09:22, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

The devices in the tablet processor section (chip number MT8xxx] seem to have been deleted entirely. There are absent from the List of Devices Using Mediatek SoCs page. Calamites (talk) 21:31, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Not sure how to add the devices to the list. Should we separate them out due to the differences in power usage, or should we just merge them in? Charwinger21 (talk) 02:42, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Temporarily moved the application/tablet processor devices list to a separate page at List of devices using Mediatek tablet processors. Might make more sense for them to be merged into the SoC page (albeit it might need to be renamed then). Charwinger21 (talk) 02:56, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Future release or not?

I saw processors that "was released" in Q2 2015. Are those future release or Q1 release? If future release, please put there future release. LR Guanzon (talk) 09:11, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Deca-Cores?

The headlines implies MediaTek has (some kind of) deca (ten) core devices. These are never mentioned in the articles. Thus I am assuming these are just for eye-catching. This kind of marketing stunt should have no place in the Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.56.179.139 (talk) 14:29, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I think I found it - the X20 is supposed to be the deca-core, very hard to identify in how the article is structured. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.56.179.139 (talk) 14:32, 24 May 2015 (UTC)