Tips and Tools

1. Android APP Performance
Tips and Tools
Saksham Keshri
Eng. Manager, Saavn
Twitter - sakshamkeshri

2. Agenda
Tips and Tools
Battery Consumption
App Launch Time
App Size
UI Rendering
Memory Usage
It’s an ongoing process, you need to keep track of things in each release.
Performance is a feature.

3. Battery Consumption
Tips
Optimizing User-Initiated Network Use
1. Pre-fetch Network Data
2. Do not attempt to make unnecessary n/w connections if the n/w connection state is already known.
3. Reduce the Number of Connections by reuse existing connections.
Optimizing App-Initiated Network Use
1. Batch and Schedule Network Requests by using Job schedulers - Firebase job dispatcher. Doze mode.
2. Optimizing Server-Initiated Network Use by using push technology to send server updates.
3. Optimizing General Network Use
a. If n/w is bad, do not refresh ad too often.
b. Compress Data
c. Cache Files Locally
d. Optimize Pre-Fetch Cache Size
Wake lock

4. Battery Consumption
Tools
1. Battery Historian
Host
docker run -p <port> gcr.io/android-battery-historian/stable:3.0 --port <port>
Reset
adb kill-server
adb shell dumpsys batterystats --enable full-wake-history
adb shell dumpsys batterystats --reset
Run Test Case, Analyze via Battery Historian
2. Android Monitor
3. Different HTTP Call tagging

5. Battery Historian
Bug report 1 - Caching Enabled.
Bug report 2 - Caching Disabled.

6. Battery Consumption
Battery Historian

7. Battery Consumption
Battery Historian
Battery Historian

8. Battery Consumption
Battery Historian
Battery Historian - APP Specific

9. Battery Consumption
Battery Historian
Battery Historian - Comparison

10. App Launch Time
Tips
Load with cached data and then refresh.
Light XML.
Delay time taking tasks.
Tools
i/activitymanager displayed
Activity.reportFullyDrawn()

11. App Size
Tips
Shrink Your Code and Resources
Use drawable objects, reuse resources, compress png/jpeg
Last choice : Build multiple APKs to support multiple screen densities or Application Binary Interfaces (ABIs)
Tools
APK Analyzer - Tool

12. App Size

13. App Size
APK Analyzer - Compare

14. Tips
Avoid nested hiererarcy
Avoid layout_weight parameter as each child needs to be measured twice.
Merge tag with Include to avoid one more level of hierarchy.
Viewstub to lazy load views.
Simple layout when when the layout is inflated repeatedly, such as when used in a ListView or GridView.
Use constraint layout over relativelayout.
Tools
Hierarchy Viewer
Lint tool
Profile GPU Rendering
Layout Inspector
UI Rendering

15. UI Rendering - Overdraw
Waste GPU Time to paint pixels which user don’t
see.
Removing unneeded backgrounds in layouts
Layout Inspector
Flattening view hierarchy
Reducing transparency

16. UI Rendering - Double Taxation
Layout Matters
Layout-and-measure iterations to measure the view’s finalize position.
First layout-and-measure pass to calculates each child object’s position and size
Uses this data, also taking object weights into account, to figure out the proper position of correlated views.
Finalize objects’ positions by performing a second layout pass
Layout-and-measure multiple passes can’t be completely avoided. But avoid in case of
1. Root element
2. Deep view hierarchy beneath it.
3. Inflating it several times as in case of list view.

17. UI Rendering - Use Merge Tag
<RelativeLayout><include
android:id="@+id/header_layout"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"la
yout="@layout/header_layout"/></Relati
veLayout>
<RelativeLayout
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Child1"
android:id="@+id/child1"/>
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_below="@+id/child1"
android:text="Child2"/>
</RelativeLayout>
<merge
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.
com/apk/res/android">
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content">
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:text="Child1"
android:id="@+id/child1"/>
<TextView
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_below="@+id/child1"
android:text="Child2"/>
</merge>

18. UI Rendering - Use ViewStub
ViewStub - lightweight view.
Each ViewStub simply needs to include the
android:layout attribute to specify the layout to
inflate.
Also, useful to have same generic xml and
inflate the part as per case.
findViewById(R.id.stub)).setVisibility(View.VISI
BLE);
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<FrameLayout
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
android:id="@+id/frame"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent">
<ProgressBar
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_centerInParent="true"
android:visibility="visible"
/>
<ViewStub
android:id="@+id/stub"
android:inflatedId="@+id/inflatedLayoutId"
android:layout="@layout/loaded_view"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
/>
<include layout="@layout/empty_view"
android:id="@+id/empty_view" android:visibility="gone" />
</FrameLayout>

19. UI Rendering
Hierarchy Viewer

20. Memory Usage
Tips
Use services sparingly
Big no to static activities/views
Non-static nested classes - Avoid unintentional reference to any object
Unregister listeners when not in use. - Instance will keep a reference around long after the referenced object has
been terminated. Worst case - Object is activity.
Tools
Leak canary from square.
The Memory Monitor - Heap updates.
HPROF Viewer and Analyzer
Eclipse MAT
The Allocation Tracker
Leads to memory out of exception or nasty Illegal state exception.

21. Memory Usage - Registering listeners
public class LeaksActivity extends Activity implements LocationListener {
private LocationManager locationManager;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_leaks);
locationManager = (LocationManager) getSystemService(LOCATION_SERVICE);
locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER,
TimeUnit.MINUTES.toMillis(5), 100, this);
}
}

22. Memory Usage - Registering listeners
public class LeaksActivity extends Activity implements LocationListener {
private LocationManager locationManager;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_leaks);
locationManager = (LocationManager) getSystemService(LOCATION_SERVICE);
locationManager.requestLocationUpdates(LocationManager.NETWORK_PROVIDER,
TimeUnit.MINUTES.toMillis(5), 100, this);
}
@Override
protected void onDestroy() {
locationManager.removeUpdates(this);
super.onDestroy();
}
}

23. Memory Usage - Inner Class and anonymous class
public class AsyncActivity extends Activity {
TextView textView;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_async);
textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView);
new BackgroundTask().execute();
}
private class BackgroundTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> {
@Override
protected String doInBackground(Void... params) {
// http call to get some string
return "some string";
}
@Override
protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
textView.setText(result);
}
}
}

24. Memory Usage - Inner Class and anonymous class
public class AsyncActivity extends Activity {
TextView textView;
AsyncTask task;
@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_async);
textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textView);
task = new BackgroundTask(textView).execute();
}
@Override
protected void onDestroy() {
task.cancel(true);
super.onDestroy();
}
private static class BackgroundTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> {
private final TextView resultTextView;
public BackgroundTask(TextView resultTextView) {
this.resultTextView = resultTextView;
}
@Override
protected String doInBackground(Void... params) {
// Do background work. Code omitted.
return "some string";
}
}
}

25. Memory Usage - Android Monitor
Image Credit : Credit I

26. Memory Usage
HPROF Analyzer
Image Credit : Credit II

27. Memory Usage
Eclipse MAT

28. Eclipse MAT

29. Sources
Official android performance
Battery Historian
https://medium.com/@elifbon/android-application-performance-step-4-battery-
b1f88d096b1e
Memory Leak, Credit I & II
https://medium.com/freenet-engineering/memory-leaks-in-android-identify-treat-
and-avoid-d0b1233acc8
Rendering-
https://medium.com/@elifbon/android-application-performance-step-1-rendering-
ba820653ad3

30. Thank You!
Questions?
Saksham Keshri
Eng. Manager, Saavn
Twitter - sakshamkeshri