Gadgetory

what's up guys david here from film buff and one of the most exciting new features introduced with Android 4.4 is one that wasn't quietly working on for the past two years and it's also hidden deep down in kick-ass developer options and a brand new runtime called art which is short for Android runtime so what is art and what does it do well we'll get into that in a little bit but for right now all you need to know that is with art Google is looking to finally resolve one of the long lasting issues that has been plaguing Android since day one and that Android as a system is relatively slow in running applications now the key word there is relatively slow because when you pick up a phone like the Google Nexus 5 the word slow or laggy or anything of that sort pretty much a lot of things that come to mind but yet when you look at the app performance um even a speedster like the Nexus 5 relative to the app performance on a phone like the iPhone 5s which of course is running on an entirely different operating system in iOS 7 you'll notice that while the two phones are very close in terms of overall performance the Nexus 5 still Falls a little bit behind when running third-party apps which leads to a question that a lot of Android fans have which is how is it that only the iPhone 5s with a dual-core 1.3 bigger chip can outperform the Nexus 5 would take quad-core 2.3 bigger chip well there are a couple of potential explanations for this one of which is the sekki shouldn't judge a book by its cover you also shouldn't judge the iPhone 5s is a7 chip based solely on his clock spinning cores because it's actually a lot better of a chip than most people give you credit for another reason is that you have to consider the differences between things like screen resolution and also the different way each operating system handles multitasking both of which can easily affect performance and then finally the main one which is what we'll be focusing on in this video is the different levels of app optimizations that are present on ego so right now with Android the way most apps are run is through what is called the dalvik runtime which is the current runtime on pretty much every Android device out there that art have new runtime we were talking about earlier seeks to eventually replace now before I go on any further let me take a step back really quick and explain what dalvik is in why Android uses it in the first place so basically with the very very high chance that I'm oversimplifying this to a fault when the developer writes an app he does it in a programming language like Java that's easily readable by humans or at least humans other developers then before publishing the app to the Play Store he partially compiles it into what is called bytecode which is sort of a half way between human readable code that a developer could read and machine readable code that your phone CPU can read after you download the app onto your phone and launch it the dalvik virtual machine in which most apps run fixes halfway between bytecode and translates it or compiles it into full-on machine code that your phone's particular CPU can easily understand that Vic does this using what is called the just-in-time or JIT compiler where the compilation is done each and every time you run the app just when it needs to hence the name just in time now the advantage and handling apps like this is the developer doesn't have to worry about coding is that for each and every different type of processor out there which on Android would be very difficult to do giving you wide range of devices and also because these apps are running within a virtual machine they won't affect the rest of the operating system if something were to go terribly wrong like forest closes or malware so so far so good right but like I said in the beginning the problem is as a system Android is relatively slow in running applications and while there could be a bunch of different reasons for this if the problem is that your apps are running slow then you have to take a good hard look at the very thing that's running your apps and over the last two to three years that is exactly what Google has been doing and now with Android 4.4 KitKat Google has debuted their new runtime albeit experimentally in art now in some ways our is Ben similar talvik almost like a dalvik 2.0 people and that it's still a virtual machine which means they get to keep all the different architecture support and all that good stuff but one of the big areas in where it differs is instead of using these just-in-time compiler where the code was being compiled every single time you ran the app or it uses the much smarter ahead of time or a ot compiler where the app is compiled just once at the time of installation so what does this mean for Android well it means that with our apps will run more natively similar to how they do in the iPhone and iOS and that that we pre compiled before you ever launch them in turn there will be one less step for the processor to do when you launch the app which theoretically should result in faster app performance better resource management and as a byproduct of the lesser load on the CPU potentially better battery life as well all right so on paper all this sounds really good but how does that actually perform in the real world well I decided to put art to the test and the first thing I did was run a speed test with a series of apps like I always do with a nexus 5 using the current runtime and dalvik on your left and the Nexus 5 using art on your right and as you can see as I go through all these feet tests here there actually is a difference between the two now it's not a huge difference by any means which is partly because the Nexus 5 is just so damn fast with that Snapdragon 800 that just kind of flies through the process of compilation but it also may be due to the fact that art is still in beta and isn't fully optimized yet though even right now at this early stage of development it's looking pretty damn good but there are some downsides to using or over dalvik for one because the apps are being compiled ahead of time ie at the time of install apps do take quite a bit longer to install with art than they would with dalvik but it's usually only a difference of a couple of seconds so it's really not that big of a deal especially when you consider that it's only a one-time thing the second drawback which in my mind is way more significant is that these precompiled apps can take anywhere between 10 to 80 percent more storage space on my Nexus 5 with the apps that you saw in the speed test and all the stock apps that are included solution from dalvik to art took up four hundred and sixty megabytes of extra storage space which if you're already running low on memory could be a pretty big deal but at the same time our app sizes are very similar to the apps I just found on iOS which obviously hasn't been that big of an issue for iOS users so I can't really see it being a deal-breaker on Android ok now before I wrap up this video I know some of you guys are gonna go and try to switch to art so I must warn you that art is considered experimental right now which kind of explains why it's hidden deep down in the settings and some of your favorite apps may be incompatible I know for me our deal and whatsapp are no longer working in there are actually quite a few more which are actually detailed on a post on reddit which I'll be linking to right below that like button but other than that that is pretty much it for me in this video like I said in the beginning I think art is easily one of the most exciting new features in Android 4.4 not because it's ready to use right now which clearly it is and I mean it is experimental but it does give us a little glimpse into what Google has in store for the next version of Android whether that be 4.5 or 5.0 who really knows but either way I'm really looking forward to it if you guys liked the video or if you found it helpful please give it a thumbs up it really does help out the channel and speaking of which if you haven't subscribed to form up already I'd highly suggest doing so so you can be among the first to see more mobile technology videos just like this thank you for watching him I'll catch you guys in the next video you