UPDATE: After the Galaxy S III upgraded to Android 4.1.1, the glFlush can’t work any more!

In a recent OpenGL project, I found everything brilliant, until I tested the app on a Galaxy S III. In the Galaxy S III with a stock 4.0.4 ROM, the surface will be updated by a few frames, then stuck there, nothing continues, I can’t even stop it.

I enabled and disabled several OpenGL/EGL related invocations, then had a conclusion that all methods which may update the surface buffer can freeze or block the rendering, glClear, glDrawArrays, glDrawElements and eglSwapBuffers included in these methods.

After been racking my brain all night over this problem, I found some Android issues which may cause the EGL freezing, such as Android issue#6478. This issue is not quite the same as mine, and only reported to occur in Android versions prior to ICS.

But I still wanted to take a chance, so I added glFinish just before eglSwapBuffers, everything worked!

glFinish();
eglSwapBuffers(display, surface);

However, I got a great performance reduction, the FPS is only half of that when glFinish removed. More strange, the Galaxy S has the same performance with or without glFinish call.

I Think it’s a Galaxy S III bug, or why it’s slower than the Galaxy S?