15 Jan 4 Tips an Android App Developer Should Use to Optimize Performance for Users
When developing an app on Android, the first step is to create an idea and strategize how to bring it to fruition. Although this is obviously a key part of the process. How the app performs for the user is equally important to the idea behind the app itself.
Therefore, an app developer should always make sure that every aspect of their mobile app is optimized for the user. Both from a performance and design perspective. There are a lot of factors to consider when improving the functionality of your product. And it can be difficult to focus on the most important of the bunch.
Looking for some Android app ideas to help you optimize the presentation and execution of your app? Here are the most paramount things to look at and keep in mind, when enhancing your app to improve the user experience.
Topics Covered
Layouts:
The implementation of layouts can have a grave impact on the performance of your app. A poor layout can create an app that drains memory and has a slow user interface. It takes a lot of attention to detail when adding a layout or widget to your app. And each one requires proper initialization and drawing. Thankfully, there are a few tricks you can use to ensure that your layout is optimizing for user performance.
One aspect to consider is utilizing basic layout structures whenever possible. As they are the most efficient and place less strain upon the user’s Android device. Reusing layouts is also a wise way to optimizing your app. By doing so, an Android app developer is able to create reusable complex layouts equipped with features like custom bars or a yes/no button panel.
On top of that, common elements that are integrated within multiple layouts of your app can be extracted, individually managed. And then included in each layout. If your app does require a complex layout view, such as item details or progress indicators. Then there are still ways to reduce memory usage and improve rendering. For instance, you can program your app to only load these views when they are needed, which will heavily reduce the load that your layouts inflict on a user.
Battery Usage:
If you want to optimize your app to retain as many users as possible, it’s crucial that you ensure battery usage is not too high. Let’s face it, nobody likes an app that drains their precious battery life. There are a few ways to keep your app from mobile device vampire, such as reducing network calls, avoiding wake lock, utilizing GPS cautiously and only when necessary, and also by performing batch scheduling.
Improve Rendering:
Perhaps the most common issue that most Android app developers have with the performance of their product is slow rendering speeds. For optimal execution, you should strive to have an app that constantly runs at around 60 FPS without any delayed or dropped frames. There are a few good practices that can help you achieve this consistency with rendering.
For starters, you can enable profile GPU rendering by going into Developer Options in your settings and select on screen as bars within the Profile GPU rendering option. This will display vertical bars that showcase the frames being rendering in real-time. You can tell when your app is optimized when the green line marks the 16-millisecond target. If a frame crosses over that green line, your app is missing a frame and could impact what the user sees (or rather, doesn’t see).
There are also tools like Hierarchy Viewer, which is built into Android Device Monitor, that will allow you to observe the layout speed and properties for every view in your layout hierarchy.
Get Rid of Unnecessary Objects:
This tip might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many Android app developers accidentally leave unnecessary objects in their app, which can easily end up have a negative effect on user performance. No matter which way you slice it, object creation while requiring a certain amount of memory allocation. And too much of this will lead to periodic garbage collection that will cause issues with the user experience. Not only are you creating more work for yourself by implementing unnecessary objects. But you’re also creating more strain on the user’s device. Which will ultimately reduce the performance of your app?
Conclusion,
We’ve covered some of the most important considerations to remember when optimizing your app to improve the user’s experience. However, there are always more potential issues to look out for when developing an Android app. To ensure that every base is covered, you can utilize dynamic optimization tools like Android Monitor, GPU Overdraw and Rendering, Hierarchy Viewer and many others.
Guest Post by Michael Kordvani,
Michael Kordvani is the Chief SEO at mobile app development company- Fueled.
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