Want to learn how to find and fix Android app performance bottlenecks accurately? Learn about utilizing profiling tools to find gridlocks and using recycling, object pooling, caching, and AsyncTask to fix them and maximize performance gain in your Android applications.

1. Chris Ripple | Program Manager
Performance & Profiling Tips

2. Session Overview
Profiling / Sampling
Method profiling
View Heap
Memory Allocations
Performance / Profiling Tools
Android SDK DDMS
Android Studio
History
Android
Best
Practices
Android
Java
Android
Layout
AsyncTask

3. About the App

4. Team Xuni
12 Developers in 6 Countries
Pittsburgh Shanghai

5. Sprint Planning App
2x sprints a day…
…in 30 mins…
…anywhere.
Slow scrolling
Slow animation
App crashes
GOALS: To plan… BUGS:

6. Performance & Profiling Tools
 First, identify the problem.

7. Profiling
 What is Profiling?
o Analyzing behavior in runtime
o CPU utilization
o Memory and I/O analysis
o Measurement of time and space
 Why do we need it?
o Avoid guesswork
o Quickly identify performance pitfalls

8. Android Profiling Tools
• Heap view
• Memory alloc
• Method profiling
• Logcat
• File explorer
• Examine threads
• Network traffic
• View hierarchy
• Emulate calls
• System info
• CPU
• GPU
• FPS
• Allocation Tracker
• Memory monitor
• Android Memory Viewer
• GPU monitor
• CPU monitor
• Network monitor
Android SDK
DDMS

9. Android Profiling Tools
• Method profiling
• Heap view
• Memory allocations
• Allocation Tracker
• Memory monitor
Android SDK
DDMS

10. DDMS Method profiling
 Sample-based profiling
o Interrupt VM at sampling frequency at collection call stacks
o Overhead proportional to frequency
 Trace-based profiling
o Trace entry and exit of every method
o High overhead
 Start Record, Perform Action, Stop Record
 Timeline vs Traceview panel views

11. DDMS – Memory tracking
 Total available heap space
 Total space allocated
 Total space free
 % Used
 Total # Objects
 Object allocation per size
 List of all allocations
 Allocation order
 Allocation size
 Class / Stacktrace
 Thread Id
 Allocated In
Heap View Allocation Tracker

12. Best Practices

13. Java Android Best Practices
 Recycling / Object Pooling Pattern ( Scrolling, Animation, Games)
 General Caching (Images / resources)
 Optimized Data Containers (SparseArray vs HashMap)
 Primitives (Integer vs Float 2x slower)
 Avoid enums
 Utilize static / final keywords (static 15%-20% faster)
 Avoid internal getters / setters (direct field access 3x faster)

14. Layout Best Practices
 RecyclerView (replaces ListView and GridView)
o setHasFixedSize
o Data updates (notifyDataSetChanged)
o Layout updates (notifyItemChanged / Inserted / Removed)
 <include> tag (easy code reuse of common layouts)
 <merge> tag (avoid extra ViewGroups on inflation)
 TextView Compound Drawables (add images to TextView)

15. AsyncTask: Why and What
Why use async?
 Avoid locking main UI Thread
o Lag
o App crash
What should be async?
 Network access
 Image loading
 Image resizing
 File access

16. AsyncTask: How
onPreExecute
doInBackground
onPostExecute
onProgressUpdate
UI Thread
UI Thread
UI Thread

17. Summary
Profiling / Sampling
Method profiling
View Heap
Memory Allocations
Performance / Profiling Tools
Android SDK DDMS
Android Studio
History
Android
Best
Practices
Android
Java
Android
Layout
AsyncTask

18. More Resources
Read Android SDK
developer.android.com
Follow Official Android Blog
android-developers.blogspot.com
Follow GrapeCity Xuni Blog
goxuni.com/blog

19. Questions?