Speed in running apps on a real phone vs in emulator

[keram]

Hi,

I'd like to know if there is a substantial difference in sped when running the apps (opening, navigating from card to card etc.) in the emulator vs real phone.
I have an app that I can only test now on a fast tablet with quad core 1.2 GHz and the app is quite fast. But in the emulator with Android 2.3.3 it takes 30 sec. to just open the card with the data grid and view about 600 records. Right now I don't have any older phone to test it on.
Is the emulator faster or slower to run the apps on?

keram

[sefrojones]

Keram,

In my experience an old "OG Droid" will run apps faster than the emulator. If you would like to attach a copy of your .apk, I will gladly test it on this relatively ancient device.


--Sefro

[keram]

Hi Sefro,

Thanks for your response and willingness to test my app. The app is too big to attach here so I uploaded it to Dropbox and sent the link in PM to you.
It's created for Android minimum v.2.3.3

Please do the following test:
1. When you open the app tap on "Select All' button.
2. Tap on 'See the text' button and check how long time it takes to open the card with 1-line view of the text (10 secs on emulator).
3. Tap on 'See all lines of your selection' button on that card and check how long time it takes to open the data grid view (25 secs on emulator!)
4. On that card with DG check if the swipe scrolling of DG is decent and responsive.
5. Tap on 'g' button and check how long time it takes to open the card with Tab Menu (4 tabs; it takes 20 secs (!) on emulator which is VERY strange since it's just opening a simple card, but maybe Tab Menu makes it slow?)
6. Tap on 'about' button and check how long time it takes to open another card with Tab Menu - this time 3 tabs and it takes 15 secs on emulator!

What Android version you have on that old device?

I'm looking forward to see your results.

keram

[keram]

Hi Sefro,

It does not look like my PM to you was sent - it is still in Outbox...
So here are the links for the file.

The browser link for the file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lx9mnyrspa8ydro/tl1.12all.zip

and direct download link:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lx9 ... _-T6Au762A

Thanks a lot!

keram

[sefrojones]

Hey Keram, I replied to your PM. Unfortunately this "OG droid" is so old, that it is running 2.2.3 and I get a parser error when trying to install. I will test on a different device as soon as i'm able.

[keram]

Hi Sefro,

Thanks for trying. I created that app with min. v. 2.3.3 assuming that almost no one is using the older versions. But for the sake of testing I created now another version that should run on min. 2.2 Froyo.

The links are:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qe6wn0daerh7t ... 2all-2.zip
and
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/qe6 ... BZtQEWijmQ

Running it on emulator with v. 2.2 it's slightly faster than the previous version, but still very slow.

Please do the following test:
1. When you open the app tap on "Select All' button.
2. Tap on 'See the text' button and check how long time it takes to open the card with 1-line view of the text (7 secs on emulator).
3. Tap on 'See all lines of your selection' button on that card and check how long time it takes to open the data grid view (20 secs on emulator!)
4. On that card with DG check if the swipe scrolling of DG is decent and responsive.
5. Tap on 'g' button and check how long time it takes to open the card with Tab Menu (4 tabs; it takes 17 secs (!) on emulator which is VERY strange since it's just opening a simple card, but maybe Tab Menu makes it slow?)
6. Tap on 'about' button and check how long time it takes to open another card with Tab Menu - this time 3 tabs and it takes 12 secs on emulator!
even just opening the 'About us' card (different from 'about') with just one text field takes 4 secs on emulator!

I'm really curious about your results.

keram

[sefrojones]

Hey Keram,

I'm still getting "There is a problem parsing the packsge" not sure what's going on.

--sefro

[keram]

Hi Sefro,

I'm not sure either. The settings that I use are like this:

I also have extra fonts in Copy Files. Should I exclude them?

keram

[keram]

Sefro,

Now I excluded all the extra font files. The app is smaller but the timing in emulator is the same.
Perhaps now you'll be able to install it?

Links are:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyb6qd84tghsz ... 2all-3.zip
and
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lyb ... dp6RcZHhyQ

Thanks.

[sefrojones]

okay I got it to open. (I was trying to use package installer, verify and install worked fine.)



1.'see the text' took about 3 seconds to see the text
2.'see all lines in your selection took about 7 seconds to load
3. Scrolling data grid is very responsive
4. Tapping 'g' took about 7 seconds to load as well
5. tapping 'about' took about 5 seconds to load

Keep in mind this phone is an antique at this point, all in all i'd say it's working pretty good.

--Sefro

[keram]

all in all i'd say it's working pretty good.

You mean that the app is working quite OK? So on newer phones it should be little bit faster.

Opening the data grid card takes some time, that's understandable. Do you have any ideas how to speed up the data grid display?

But opening the cards with just 3-4 text fields should be almost immediate and it still took 5-7 secs. That's a puzzle for me.

Thanks a lot for your help!

keram

[sefrojones]

Yes, I'd say it's running pretty good as far as everything seems to look and work the way it was meant to. As far as the datagrid question, I am probably not the best to answer as I'm not very familiar with the ins and out of datagrids. The app is a bit sluggish (on this ancient phone) when loading the cards with just a few fields, maybe there is something in your script that could be optimized? i'm not sure. I'd be glad to test any newer version out when you have one ready to test.

Good Luck!

--sefro

[jacque]

In my experience an old "OG Droid" will run apps faster than the emulator.

In my experience, anything runs faster than the emulator. Molasses in January runs faster than the emulator. Snails run faster than the emulator.

EDIT: this reminds me of an old joke:

Q - What did the snail say while riding on the back of a tortoise?





A - "Wheeee!"

[keram]

In my experience, anything runs faster than the emulator.

OK, that's good to know.

But I'm surprised about the fact that opening a card with just 3 text fields on it (no code in the card nor text fields) is 3 times slower (12 secs) than opening a card with just 1 text field (4 secs) - this is in the above app running on emulator, but also is noticeable on a real device.

keram