Top 6 Optimization Tips for Android Developers

Since Android devices have so many cores, writing smooth apps should be easy for everyone, right? That’s incorrect. Since anything on Android can be achieved in various ways, deciding on a suitable alternative can be difficult.

You must understand what is going on under the hood if you want to use the most effective process. Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on your intuition or sense of smell to locate bottlenecks.

There are several instruments available that can assist you in locating bottlenecks by calculating and describing what’s going on. Well-optimized and run smoothly run apps increase the user interface while still consuming less energy.

The OS offers developers a lot of flexibility and the software owner access to an ever-growing consumer base to develop an android app. However, there are several Android app creation difficulties that the developers must overcome throughout the process.

There are several Android OS versions that developers find challenging to keep up with growth.

Since there are currently 170 devices running Android, this becomes a significant obstacle in software growth. Each interface has unique characteristics such as screen size, camera buttons, keyboard layouts, and so on, rendering construction a nightmare.

A higher user rating and improved scores, purchases, and retention would result from higher-quality Android applications. On the Google Play store, the chances for high-quality Android applications are quickly publicized.

As an app optimization tip, the consistency of the apps must be taken into account both before and after the device is launched. It’s impossible and expensive to reclaim missing users after a poor-quality app is published. A high-quality app, on the other side, is comparatively simple to maintain.

Several variables determine the performance or loss of Android applications. Battery consumption, results, Google Play Store feedback, and even the time it takes to load the content are considered. The user interface and the consistency of the mobile app must be continually improved.

The Importance of Optimization

Many of the challenges that software developers encounter while creating an Android app are performance-related. The speed at which the software launches and the time it takes for the app to obtain the data it requires are two common problems.

One of the elements Android app developers must consider to fix these problem areas is rendering since it is one of the more frequent problems, often resulting in dropped frames.

An app’s data calls can be completed in 16 milliseconds or less, but if it takes longer, there’s an issue. However, app creators have a few resources at their side to assist them in troubleshooting. The Hierarchy Viewer, a built-in feature inside the Android Device Monitor, is one of them.

Another consideration is Profile GPU Rendering, which displays a graphic representation of how long it takes an app to hit 16 milliseconds. A green line shows vertical bars. The app will look faulty to a customer as broken pictures if the picture crosses the green line more than once.

Time to Launch Your App

There are two stages of Android app development known as cold start and warm start, which consumers sometimes feel without understanding. The first time you open an application, it’s known as a cold launch. The term “warm launch” refers to an app that has already been opened and is stored in memory.

If the code is poorly designed, an app can run slowly while still requiring a large amount of memory to perform, resulting in a battery drain. Many consumers would uninstall the program rather than continuing to use it if this is the case. This is one of the situations in which one requires android app optimization.

App Quality and Testing

App developers should use a series of core checks to customize an Android app to its total capacity, ensuring that it runs and works at the same standard as an iOS-based edition. These checks go beyond determining whether or not the software can operate on different Android devices. Apps that pass these checks will operate on an iPhone much like an iOS app:

Some parameters are Visual design and user interaction; functionality; compatibility, efficiency, and stability; security; and Google Play availability.

Any developers might wonder why Google Play is so important. This is where one can download the software, and most people will believe that an app in this condition is the most advanced. If the app isn’t robust enough, it shouldn’t be advertised as ready to use to the general public.

Apps accessible on Google Play must also react correctly while the Android OS performs its software optimization.

Android app optimization is a challenging task indeed. Even on the increasingly streamlined iPhones, applications will work differently on older smartphones than they do on Apple’s most recent smartphone. Android adds to the confusion by supporting over 170 different smartphones.

While Apple’s Swift has leveled the playing field for manufacturers, the Android software developer’s task isn’t made any simpler because new smartphones are released every three to six months.

The current and potential task for all smartphone software developers would be to bring their applications to balance the strength of the platforms they operate on.

[ Also read : Android 12 — Things You Need To Know About It ]

Top 6 Android App Optimization Tips

Here are some handy android app optimization tips:

Tip #1 Disable Or Minimize Debugging And Diagnostics Before Publication

If you’ve spent more than a few minutes developing your Android app, you have likely used some logging and debugging code. Efficiency is sacrificed when writing to logs and other forms of output. Prior to release, make sure these features are minimized or entirely disabled.

Tip #2 Begin With Sound Coding Principles

Using common sense, well-established algorithms, and basic architecture patterns to be a successful steward. If you open it, close it in terms of resources. These tried-and-true coding principles extend to Android apps, mainly if they use underlying device services.

Let’s presume you have to develop an android app that depends on location-based resources. Don’t sign up for location alerts until you have to, then make sure you unsubscribe as soon as you no longer need the details.

This would prevent you from prematurely draining the device’s battery or hogging the machine. One of the most essential app optimization tips!

Tip #3 Battery Usage Reduction

It is important to focus on battery usage since many users delete or uninstall the app merely because it drains too much power.

Practice reducing network calls and perform batch scheduling. One must also be careful while using GPS, alarm manager, and wake lock since they consume a lot of power.

Tip #4 Use The Most Recent Versions of The Android SDK, APIs, And Best Practices

Maintain the applications by leveraging the most recent updates that the Android platform provides to hold them up to date. The Android platform is getting better as time goes by. Any functions could be phased out or substituted with better alternatives.

Bug patches and consistency enhancements are made to the core APIs. Developers will now use new APIs, including loaders, to create more reliable and responsive apps.

Did you realize that the Android 3.0 applications can use hardware acceleration? Let it happen! Recognize the better strategies evolve over time. Competent developers keep up on what’s fresh in the platform and what’s no longer supported.

Tip #5 Make Use of Cache Memory

The cache feature helps you to use pricey objects without having to recreate them. We will save things like images that we can’t afford to load repeatedly. We can save it in Cache memory and load it from there. For example, Android has the LRUCache Class, which will perform these tasks for us.

There is a storage limit for each class. When a class reaches its cap, the least utilized item in the cache is immediately removed. On the other side, we will use a third-party library to cache the memory to stop having to load it repeatedly. Glide and Picasso are two libraries that will help you with that.

Tip #6 Take a look at Strict Mode

StrictMode is an Android API that can be used to track down breaches of many good coding standards. StrictMode can help you determine whether or not your program is leaking memory, as well as whether or not it is attempting to execute lengthy blocking operations that should be offloaded to threads.

The StrictMode class (android.os.StrictMode) was an addition to Android 2.3.

Final Words

The Android software, which millions of product production companies prefer, is the best framework for app development. The desire to discover the right approach and software for Android app development is the most significant impediment on the road to Android app creation.

Bytes Technolab Inc. is a comprehensive web app development firm based in the United States and has branches in other countries as well. Since its conception, Bytes has shown exceptional craftsmanship in creative web creation, eCommerce solutions, and mobile device development services.