The ART of KitKat

[Vegastouch]

I enabled it and it works very well. The only thing is, it does break WhatsApp which i dont really care about but it keeps on popping it up that WhatsApp has an issue and i had to keep having to exit it out several times during the day. I would have to delete it to make it stop,.....which wouldnt be that big a deal really but ill wait a little while til another update which i read is coming with 4.4.1 real soon.

 

[kenypowa]

I enabled it and it works very well. The only thing is, it does break WhatsApp which i dont really care about but it keeps on popping it up that WhatsApp has an issue and i had to keep having to exit it out several times during the day. I would have to delete it to make it stop,.....which wouldnt be that big a deal really but ill wait a little while til another update which i read is coming with 4.4.1 real soon.

There is an easy fix for whatsapp in ART from xda.

 

[appleofmy"i"]

Love ART on my Moto X

 

[zbarvian]

From all the videos I've seen, it has next to no effect on the user experience. I'd have to try it in person, but what is there really to love? Seems like a very early prototype that'll only start to bear benefits in the future.

 

[gotluck]

From all the videos I've seen, it has next to no effect on the user experience. I'd have to try it in person, but what is there really to love? Seems like a very early prototype that'll only start to bear benefits in the future.

there appears to be a considerable effect on battery life

anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but chrome scrolling (really scrolling in general) feels more fluid imo, especially at higher speeds

3:45 and I'm sitting at 81% battery and we all know the GS4's battery life sucks

getting rid of dallvik is a big deal, while i dont fully understand it, dalvik is one of the main problems with android

 

[blackhand1001]

funny how i was ragging on Google for getting rid of dalvik earlier in the year. lo and behold they answer!

kitkat is already on par with iOS 7 overall except in pinch to zoom. This will make it even better.

The pinch to zoom thing is a chrome issue. Prior to 4.4 when the aosp browser had its own rendering engine and didn't use chromes pinching was butter smooth.

 

[JaySoul]

From all the videos I've seen, it has next to no effect on the user experience. I'd have to try it in person, but what is there really to love? Seems like a very early prototype that'll only start to bear benefits in the future.

Trust me on this - the videos don't do it justice.

I was using a Nexus 5 on Dalvik for a week, and it was really good - fast, buttery etc, but still not quite level with iOS for responsiveness, speed and touch.

Then, I switched ART on and the difference (in real life) was astonishing. In fact, I can't even speak about battery life, just the user experience:

- Apps loaded up astonishingly quickly
- Scrolling was practically flawless
- It was the smoothest Android experience I've ever seen

This is honestly not hyperbole and it was definitely quicker/faster/smoother than iOS. For me, having used iOS for 5 years, that's a first. No doubt.

The problem was that it broke WhatsApp so I only got to keep it on for a couple of hours. But seriously, this is a genuine game-changer.

 

[zbarvian]

Trust me on this - the videos don't do it justice.

I was using a Nexus 5 on Dalvik for a week, and it was really good - fast, buttery etc, but still not quite level with iOS for responsiveness, speed and touch.

Then, I switched ART on and the difference (in real life) was astonishing. In fact, I can't even speak about battery life, just the user experience:

- Apps loaded up astonishingly quickly
- Scrolling was practically flawless
- It was the smoothest Android experience I've ever seen

This is honestly not hyperbole and it was definitely quicker/faster/smoother than iOS. For me, having used iOS for 5 years, that's a first. No doubt.

The problem was that it broke WhatsApp so I only got to keep it on for a couple of hours. But seriously, this is a genuine game-changer.

I believe that scrolling and animations might be smoother, but it's been tested extensively and apps don't really launch any faster on it. Any progress is good progress, though, but I'm a little circumspect of the placebo effect.

 

[OhHaiThere]

I believe that scrolling and animations might be smoother, but it's been tested extensively and apps don't really launch any faster on it. Any progress is good progress, though, but I'm a little circumspect of the placebo effect.

Don't know where you got your information, but the opposite is true.

First of all, let's break it down a little and understand how Android works and compare it to iOS. When you build iOS application, you actually compile them on your build machine and send the binary (executable) to the device. The device executes the device-specific binary and all is well with the world.

Android, on the other hand, is abstracted from the hardware, as it can run on multiple devices and can enable/disable many options depending on what the underlying hardware supports. This abstract hardware environment is the run time (analogous to a virtual machine). So when you build software for Android, it's actually built into an intermediary language called bytecode. This isn't an executable that runs directly on the hardware (i.e. it doesn't access physical registers, physical memory and so on). Instead, it requires a runtime to launch it. This runtime is called Dalvik. Dalvik will JIT (just in time) compile the code and execute it.

The first time you launch an application, it has to be JIT compiled every time. This is fairly fast on Android, but it's noticeable. Once you launch that app it'll stay memory resident (and there's also cache to speed things up, but that's not important right now).

Now, what ART (Android Run Time) provides is AOT (Ahead of Time) compilation. That means that the apps are pre-compiled to your physical device right after they're downloaded from the play store. So you take the compilation hit once, store the binary locally and every time you use the phone everything just runs natively.

Hope you followed all of that. That's the reason your post can't be true. It's also not a placebo, there's a real difference, it may be minuscule or large depending on how one uses their devices, but there's a measurable difference.

Lastly, this whole process uses less CPU cycles and increases battery life.

EDIT: Quick analogy... this is similar to running Winows natively on your machine (Boot Camp) vs. running it in a virtual machine (Parallels). Hope that helps.

 

[thadoggfather]

Trying this out on my nexus 5

So far it seems to fly!

 

[kevinof]

Great explanation! Brings me back to my Javasoft days when Hotspot was being worked on. There was a lot of discussion around using this kind of approach to solve the performance issue. Nice to see it finally in action.

Don't know where you got your information, but the opposite is true.

First of all, let's break it down a little and understand how Android works and compare it to iOS. When you build iOS application, you actually compile them on your build machine and send the binary (executable) to the device. The device executes the device-specific binary and all is well with the world.

Android, on the other hand, is abstracted from the hardware, as it can run on multiple devices and can enable/disable many options depending on what the underlying hardware supports. This abstract hardware environment is the run time (analogous to a virtual machine). So when you build software for Android, it's actually built into an intermediary language called bytecode. This isn't an executable that runs directly on the hardware (i.e. it doesn't access physical registers, physical memory and so on). Instead, it requires a runtime to launch it. This runtime is called Dalvik. Dalvik will JIT (just in time) compile the code and execute it.

The first time you launch an application, it has to be JIT compiled every time. This is fairly fast on Android, but it's noticeable. Once you launch that app it'll stay memory resident (and there's also cache to speed things up, but that's not important right now).

Now, what ART (Android Run Time) provides is AOT (Ahead of Time) compilation. That means that the apps are pre-compiled to your physical device right after they're downloaded from the play store. So you take the compilation hit once, store the binary locally and every time you use the phone everything just runs natively.

Hope you followed all of that. That's the reason your post can't be true. It's also not a placebo, there's a real difference, it may be minuscule or large depending on how one uses their devices, but there's a measurable difference.

Lastly, this whole process uses less CPU cycles and increases battery life.

EDIT: Quick analogy... this is similar to running Winows natively on your machine (Boot Camp) vs. running it in a virtual machine (Parallels). Hope that helps.

 

[JaySoul]

I believe that scrolling and animations might be smoother, but it's been tested extensively and apps don't really launch any faster on it. Any progress is good progress, though, but I'm a little circumspect of the placebo effect.

Sorry but I'm telling you my real life experience of it, and you're arguing against it based on what??

What OhHaiThere said is spot on - explained beautifully. It's exactly that, the difference between running an app virtually, and launching it natively.

 

[zbarvian]

Don't know where you got your information, but the opposite is true.

First of all, let's break it down a little and understand how Android works and compare it to iOS. When you build iOS application, you actually compile them on your build machine and send the binary (executable) to the device. The device executes the device-specific binary and all is well with the world.

Android, on the other hand, is abstracted from the hardware, as it can run on multiple devices and can enable/disable many options depending on what the underlying hardware supports. This abstract hardware environment is the run time (analogous to a virtual machine). So when you build software for Android, it's actually built into an intermediary language called bytecode. This isn't an executable that runs directly on the hardware (i.e. it doesn't access physical registers, physical memory and so on). Instead, it requires a runtime to launch it. This runtime is called Dalvik. Dalvik will JIT (just in time) compile the code and execute it.

The first time you launch an application, it has to be JIT compiled every time. This is fairly fast on Android, but it's noticeable. Once you launch that app it'll stay memory resident (and there's also cache to speed things up, but that's not important right now).

Now, what ART (Android Run Time) provides is AOT (Ahead of Time) compilation. That means that the apps are pre-compiled to your physical device right after they're downloaded from the play store. So you take the compilation hit once, store the binary locally and every time you use the phone everything just runs natively.

Hope you followed all of that. That's the reason your post can't be true. It's also not a placebo, there's a real difference, it may be minuscule or large depending on how one uses their devices, but there's a measurable difference.

Lastly, this whole process uses less CPU cycles and increases battery life.

EDIT: Quick analogy... this is similar to running Winows natively on your machine (Boot Camp) vs. running it in a virtual machine (Parallels). Hope that helps.

I understand how it works. But side by side app launching doesn't appear any faster at all for nearly every app except Photoshop touch. Scrolling is likely smoother, as are animations, which is great. But there's no way this can have a huge impact on battery life or performance right now on a top-end phone like the Nexus 5, for example.

 

[gotluck]

I understand how it works. But side by side app launching doesn't appear any faster at all for nearly every app except Photoshop touch. Scrolling is likely smoother, as are animations, which is great. But there's no way this can have a huge impact on battery life or performance right now on a top-end phone like the Nexus 5, for example.

You can't tell that ios is smoother than android from videos either.

I don't see why a change from JIT to pre-compilation couldn't have an effect on battery. Sounds like less overall load on the processor to me.

 

[zbarvian]

You can't tell that ios is smoother than android from videos either.

Again, I'm not questioning the enhancements to fluidity. But you can certainly tell from the countless video comparisons than app launching really swings both ways. People are running wild with ART, when it's only a steady march toward a better Android. Knowing exactly what it is and how it works should temper some of these outrageous expectations. But, as I've said before, it is great that Google's doing it and refusing to keep Android at its current height. The Nexus 5 on Dalvik was super fast and smooth when I used it.

 

[jrswizzle]

Again, I'm not questioning the enhancements to fluidity. But you can certainly tell from the countless video comparisons than app launching really swings both ways. People are running wild with ART, when it's only a steady march toward a better Android. Knowing exactly what it is and how it works should temper some of these outrageous expectations. But, as I've said before, it is great that Google's doing it and refusing to keep Android at its current height. The Nexus 5 on Dalvik was super fast and smooth when I used it.

I haven't noticed any life changing smoothness increase.....the Nexus 5 was smooth before I switched, and its smooth now.

I'm not sure if it was the restore or the move to ART, but my battery life is MUCH better now. I'm sure both play some role. All-in-all very pleased with the Nexus 5 - I don't think I'll move away from a Nexus device as far as Android goes.

Though I'm still waiting on the "Note-like" iPhone with a stylus type pen and unique features to take advantage of the larger display. That would provide enough of a difference to go back to an all-Apple lineup (effectively relegating my Nexus 5 to "every once in a while" status). I'm just a sucker for a clean, single ecosystem.

 

[OhHaiThere]

I understand how it works. But side by side app launching doesn't appear any faster at all for nearly every app except Photoshop touch. Scrolling is likely smoother, as are animations, which is great. But there's no way this can have a huge impact on battery life or performance right now on a top-end phone like the Nexus 5, for example.

It may not appear faster to you, because you're running an extremely fast quad core processor which performs these operations quickly and caches them as not to redo the operation too many times. Android is already fast/optimized and the hardware these days can run a lot of executions per second simultaneously (i.e. fast enough to hide a lot of "sins"). But, no matter how you slice it, it's less CPU cycles.

Little marginal differences don't always show easily, but when repeated many times they add up.

 

[mib1800]

With today's high RAM phone imo it wouldn't have much impact as most of the apps we use frequently are mostly in the ram already. Maybe on first run you get some improvement. I look at the processes and I see many apps already cached in ram on boot up.

 

[Jschultz]

I switched to ART - everything seems just as fast, but the phone was ridiculously smooth anyways. I'm hoping to see a little battery improvement.

 

[haxrnick]

Haven't switched to ART just because I've heard of several apps not working.

 

[Vegastouch]

Haven't switched to ART just because I've heard of several apps not working.

Other than Whatsapp, I don't know of any others. That's the only one that didn't work for me.

 

[IFRIT]

And whatsapp can be fixed buy simply deleting some files.

 

[Vegastouch]

And whatsapp can be fixed buy simply deleting some files.

Which files to delete will make it work?

 

[oplix]

ART will speed up old devices. On new devices, ART won't give you a perceptual difference but battery life will be better. In my opinion, it's best to do a complete wipe of your device before enabling it to make sure it's fully optimized and nothing sneaks through the cracks.

 

[haxrnick]

I tried it last night and really didn't notice any sort of difference. Went back to dalvik so I could use exposed framework.