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Google claims coming Android upgrade makes apps start faster

by on22 August 2023


Need for speed

Google claims that the latest update to the Android Runtime (ART) has resulted in app startup time improvements of up to 30 per cent on some devices.

The search engine outfit said that while "ART is the same for all devices the APEX module is a complex piece of software with an order of magnitude more APIs than any other APEX module. It backs a quarter of the developer APIs available in the Android SDK.

ART has a compiler that aims to make the most of the underlying hardware by generating chipset-specific instructions, such as Arm SVE.

" The testing process for Android Runtime updates involves "compiling over 18 million APKs and running app compatibility tests, and startup, performance, and memory benchmarks on a variety of Android devices that replicate the diversity of our ecosystem as closely as possible,” Google said.

Google notes developer improvements with every update "like OpenJDK improvements and compiler optimizations that benefit both Java and Kotlin," with ART 13 resulting in the "fastest-ever adoption of a new OpenJDK [11] release on Android devices."

ART 14 is rolling out "in the coming months" with "new compiler and runtime optimisations that improve performance while reducing code size," as well as OpenJDK 17.

Last modified on 22 August 2023
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