Quick Summary:

It’s true that Android devices have numerous cores, making it challenging to create slick Android apps. It’s not, in fact. The hardest part of using Android is deciding which choice is best because there are so many things you can do. You need to understand what’s going on in the background if you want to optimize the performance of an Android app. Fortunately, a variety of tools are available to assist you in identifying bottlenecks and demonstrating and measuring what’s happening.

Therefore it’s time to stop depending on intuition or hope for the best and learn how to make your Android app run better so that it will win over users through the means of Android app performance optimization.

The list of checkpoints we’ll pass through today is as follows:

Android performance improvement checklist

To speed up Android phone performance app, follow the Android Optimization Checklist as given below:

1. Reduce app size

• For android app performance optimization, reducing app size is significant.

• Smartphone GPUs are still not that strong.

• Now here’s a startling fact: The majority of the global Android market share is taken up by minimally equipped mobile devices.

• Users often avoid installing large apps, especially when they’re in a rush, even though some of them don’t support 2G/3G.

• The better it is for users, then, the less space it takes up on your phone.

Let’s look at some effective strategies to reduce the size of your Android app:

• Android App Bundles
  • The most recent upload type that includes all the materials and produced code is called an Android App Bundle. APK creation and Play Store signing are delayed. Due to the fact that software bundles produce APKs that are device-optimized, these characteristics make the process quite simple.
  • Although your app’s compressed download size must be 150 MB or less to be published in the Play Store, keeping the app size as little as possible will still greatly enhance your android app’s functionality.
  • The most recent upload type that includes all the materials and produced code is called an Android App Bundle. APK creation and Play Store signing are delayed. Due to the fact that software bundles produce APKs that are device-optimized, these characteristics make the process quite simple.
  • Although your app’s compressed download size must be 150 MB or less to be published in the Play Store, keeping the app size as little as possible will still greatly enhance your android app’s functionality.

• Android Size Analyzer
  
  • To speed up android phone performance app, Android Size Analyzer plays a crucial role. This is a powerful Android app performance tool that may assist you in selecting and putting many different methods to reduce the size of your app into practice. The Android Size Analyzer is available as a standalone JAR file and as a plugin for Android Studio (as a command line).
  • As a Plugin > Download and install the Android Size Analyzer from the plugin store in Android Studio. You may use it to analyse your Android app and get a tool window with all the recommendations for improving the performance of your app.
  • As a Command-Line> The most recent version of Android Size Analyzer is available on Github as a ZIP or TAR file. You may see the size of your files by extracting the ZIP file and running the size-analyzer script. The size analyzer.bat script (Windows) is also available to execute these two commands:

./analyzer check-bundle
./analyzer check project

2. Minimise Activity Leaks

• When talking about Android optimization, one of the major issues you need to address is memory or activity leaks. What causes them? You would actually preserve the entire activity’s layout, including its views if you kept the reference to an inactive activity in the code. You wouldn’t want to store the few pixels that are produced as they are little.

What you can do to stop memory leaks is as follows:

• Avoid using static references

• Deregister your events and listeners

• Attempt to recover your listeners from senders by using the event bus.

• Consider using static inner classes rather than non-static ones.

• Review and implement coding standards, as well as code quality. Reviewing your code, in my opinion, is by far the most efficient technique to prevent activity leaks.

• Create memory-saving codes.

• Know your architecture inside and out before you begin creating any codes.

• print logs when callback.

• Use practical tools such as LeakCanary, MAT, and Eclipse Analyzer

• Reduce the use of outside libraries.

3. App Launch Time

• One of the noticeable point in android app performance optimization is the app launch time. When using your application, one of the first things consumers will notice is how long it takes to launch. To prevent user annoyance, your software must launch and begin as rapidly as feasible. There are some guidelines to abide by that will hasten launch time and improve app performance:

On the user’s first screen, don’t instantiate too many views.

• Don’t bloat the Interface with features you don’t need when it first launches.

• Avoid using costly content decoding, such as bitmaps.

• To track and accelerate the launch of your app, use Android Vitals or Firebase Performance Monitoring.

• Keep your application object’s initialization light.

4. Optimize android encryption performance

• Data-in-transit encryption is possible with SSL/TLS communications. TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a protocol used by HTTPS to encrypt network data. It’s crucial to better Android app speed tuning. However, they can become an issue if they aren’t optimised. Here are a few of the major causes of the issues it creates:
  

• The process is slowed down by the requirement to perform a new handshake each time you establish a new connection.

Problems with client-side decoding and server-side encryption

• Use only a single handshake
  • By using a single handshake, the overhead for a programme can be decreased. Each connection will require a new handshake, which will slow down the process and cause Android to function slowly.
• Incorporate HTTP/2 and SPDY to reduce connection overhead
  • The primary objectives of HTTP/2 are to reduce protocol overhead by effectively compressing HTTP header fields, to improve latency by allowing full request and response multiplexing, and to add support for request prioritising and server push. These are the most important aspects that every Android app developer should be aware of and use in their apps. Other protocol changes, such as better flow control, error handling, and upgrade methods, are required to meet these criteria.
• Adopt additional strategies like session buffering, OpenSSL, Session Tickets, and so forth
  • An SSL session cache can reduce the amount of time, energy, and bandwidth used when reconnecting to the same server by going right to an encrypted stream. This is a persistent cache that can be used across numerous iterations of the programme.

5. Tools for performance monitoring

• When talking about Android optimization, we cannot forget about tools for performance monitoring.

• We classify an app as having poor performance if it responds slowly, has choppy animations, freezes, or uses excessive amounts of power.

• The first step in fixing performance issues is to locate the places in your software where resources are being used inefficiently, such as CPU, memory, graphics, network, and device battery utilisation.

• As not all users have +2GB of RAM and a strong CPU, you need also be aware of the range of devices you utilise when running testing.

• Developers frequently make the error of optimising their code for the wrong platform.

• Often, they have high-end devices at their disposal or emulators running on workstations that are set up with high-end capabilities.

• A solid rule of thumb is to improve your app’s performance across a range of devices.

• This variety can be found in the memory size, resolution, and Processor speed.

The following are some tools we can use to keep an eye on our app’s performance in order to address any issues with android app performance optimization:

1. Android Profiler

• A tool included in Android Studio is called Android Profiler. It is located in Android Studio’s lower left corner next to the logcat and terminal tabs. The profiler offers real-time information about how much CPU, Network, Battery, and Memory your programme is using.

The following are some tools we can use to keep an eye on our apps performance in order to address any issues with android app performance optimization:

• CPU profiler:
  • It aids in identifying issues with runtime performance which can have a big impact to speed up android phone performance app.
• Memory profiler:
  • With the aid of this tool, you may view the most recent memory allocations and memory leaks.
  • Also, you can use it to force Garbage Collector and view the objects that are allocated in real-time.
  • The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) mechanism known as Garbage Collector (GC) is in charge of locating useless objects and destroying them in order to free up memory. With that in mind, you can use this profiler to trigger these GC events.
  • It executes on its own whenever the JVM requires some space to allocate an object.
    
• Network Profiler:
  • With a network profiler, you may see the consumption of the incoming and outgoing traffic.
    
• Energy Profiler:
  • This programme monitors energy use. To understand how to measure and optimise performance, as well as some examples of how to apply these techniques to solve particular problems, see the Measuring performance page.

2. Firebase Performance Monitoring

• You may assess the efficiency of your iOS, Android, and web apps using Firebase Performance Monitoring, a free tool.

• It may be integrated with your apps so that performance data can be gathered, reviewed, and analysed via the Firebase console.

• With the help of this monitoring, you can see in real-time what areas of your application’s performance require work and how to address them.

3. Android Vitals

• Google developed Android Vitals to improve the reliability and efficiency of Android devices. Android devices keep track of a user’s app activity, including render times, battery life, startup times, and permission denials. Google Play Console then compiles the data and displays it in the related dashboard.

• The dashboard shows parameters like crash rate, ANR rate, wakeups, background WiFi scans, app launch time, and much more, which is cool because it allows the developer to focus on these metrics and enhance app performance.

6. Work efficiently with threads

• When you want to improve app performance, the way you interact with an Android app’s threads is one of the keys to optimising it. Your developers can simply design a reliable and high-performing programme with the majority of performance concerns handled if they know how to work with threads effectively.

• Prior to that, you should be aware that an Android app uses two different types of threads: the primary thread (also known as the user interface thread) and the secondary (sometimes known as the background) thread.

• The main thread will be impeded if you alter the UI thread in any way.

• Moreover, you cannot use the FIFO technique to delegate the continuing work to another call or procedure until it has been completed.

In summary, you shouldn’t engage in the following activities on a UI thread:

• Placing API calls

• Access a local or remote server

• Add streams or pictures.

• Make calls to databases

• Analyze a JSON

7. Optimize offline mode

• If your network connectivity is poor, try to display all the information you can while retrieving the needed information.

• Considering performance and usability, I would strongly advise you to display information in offline mode.

• Let me tell you what issues you could encounter if you don’t employ caching: a terrible user experience since data retrieval takes a long time owing to a bad network.

Here’s what you can do to improve the overall performance of Android apps and provide users a better experience.

• Data Synchronisation:
  • Improve app performance by syncing data between your Android app and a web server, you may create a lot more interesting and practical app.
  • You could, for instance, send information to a web server that will act as a useful backup.
  • Even if the device is not in use, you can transfer data from a server so that it is readily available to your users.
• Sensitive Data Management:
  • When defining access to private information, use caution.
  • Your software has customization and privacy setting options, ensuring secure access to confidential information.
  • You may grant access to limited information (such as bank statements, contact details, system condition, etc.)
  • or restricted action (including taking screenshots, connecting to a Bluetooth device, recording audio, etc.)
• Manage Shared Data:
  • It will negatively affect the usability of your app’s overall Android app performance if it asks users for a complex password repeatedly. Gain control over your data and share it with other app modules as an authentication token.

8. Use String buffer Instead Of String

• Let’s say you already have a String and for whatever reason you wish to add 5,000 more Strings to it. The code can resemble something like this:

String string = "hi";
for (int i = 0; i < 5000; i++)
{
string += " everyone";
}

• String concatenation necessitates numerous trash collection procedures, which makes this code potentially inefficient. On a respectable smartphone, it takes about 5 seconds to run. But why does string splicing take so long? because strings are immutable and cannot be changed. Hence, if you want to modify the value of a String, all you have to do is create a new String with the new value.

• But now for the major disadvantage: up to garbage collection, the old String’s value survives without a reference.
  

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("hi");
for (int i = 0; i < 5000; i++)
{
sb.append(" everyone");
}
String string = sb.toString();

• The execution time of this code is about 3 ms. The CPU and RAM graphs in Android Studio Monitor show that it is essentially flat. But, you can create such a representation by appending 5,000 Strings, which is something you normally wouldn’t do. Here is what you could do as a result:

String string = "hi" + "everyone";

• After being internally transformed into a StringBuilder, this code will function perfectly.

Conclusion

• This article examined and outlined methods for enhancing the functionality of Android applications. When these strategies are used together, the work that a CPU must do and the amount of memory that an application uses can both be greatly decreased.

• Be sure to adhere to these best practices as you work on your app development services. This could be the secret to retaining and gaining users, which could eventually result in benchmarking and breaking programmes.

• For further information, please get in touch with us as Tagline is an experienced company to provide you with application modernization services. Hire Android Developers and get your project done.

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