Android Lollipop - My Review

[Bouncer]

My Review:

Installed it today. Despite reading the reviews.. I didn't actually realize how different it would be. It really is like a completely new OS. Very cool in that it's like a new toy to play with. Bit annoying in that I have to relearn where everything is and how it works. It's familiar yet unfamiliar if that makes sense. It's a blend of Android, IOS, and Windows. Once you get used to it, it all makes sense but there is a bit of a learning curve. I have a feeling anyone transitioning from Apple will have an easier time getting used to Android then they may have before.

Few growing pains. A few older apps don't work seamlessly with the new notifications features. I'm sure this will be fixed with a simple update from the apps maker. The biggest offense by far though is that you can no longer put your phone on silent simply by pressing the down volume button. You can change the ringer volume and set it to vibrate but you cannot set it to be completely silent. You have to go into settings for that. Whoever made that choice should be smacked. I'm sure this will be fixed in a (hopefully soon) update.

All things considered, it's a big step up. It's more efficient and easy to use. Things just work. Lollipop puts the info you need right in front of and gets out of the way exactly as a good OS should.

[Bouncer]

After a heavy days use I can report that the battery is slightly improved. Nothing ground breaking but its improved none the less.

I was also under the impression that lollipop would run a bit slower than kit Kat simply because its more graphic intense etc.. Happy to report that it runs blazing fast on the Nexus 5 with no dip in speed loading apps etc compared to kit kat. They optimized it very well.

[chuckz28]

I read that they switched from dalvik to ART (Android run time) which is supposed to allow not only the applications to run faster but also improve battery life quite a bit. Only downside is larger and longer installs for the apps themselves. Worthy tradeoff IMO. I look forward to when I get to play with lollipop myself.

[Bouncer]

I read that they switched from dalvik to ART (Android run time) which is supposed to allow not only the applications to run faster but also improve battery life quite a bit. Only downside is larger and longer installs for the apps themselves. Worthy tradeoff IMO. I look forward to when I get to play with lollipop myself.

Had no idea what you were talking about it so I did a bit of reading. Pretty interesting actually.



ART—better performance, automatically, for free

It's not just the user-facing stuff that has gotten a revamp in Android 5.0. The under-the-hood components have seen an overhaul, too. While many parts of Android have changed over the years, one component from Android 1.0 that has survived to this day is Dalvik, the runtime that powers Android apps. Dalvik is a big part of what makes Android what it is. When you see projects that get Android apps running on another platform, like BlackBerry 10 or Windows, those platforms are (mostly) implementing Dalvik.

Dalvik was originally designed for single-core, low-performance devices where fitting everything into small memory and storage pools was the primary concern. Over the years, Google has bolted on more and more upgrades to Dalvik, like JIT support, concurrent garbage collection, and multi-process support. Today's multi-core phones offer a 50x performance boost over the G1, though, and upgrades can only take you so far.

With Lollipop, Dalvik is dead. It's been replaced with a completely new runtime called "ART," the "Android RunTime." ART debuted in KitKat as an experimental option, but now in Lollipop it's the only option.

ART is written from the ground up to take advantage of modern smartphone hardware and provide smoother animations and longer battery life. Because the runtime is such a base component, ART offers an across-the-board performance improvement to Java apps without requiring the developer to do anything.

Dalvik used just-in-time (JIT) compilation, which compiled an app every time it was run. This is more portable than the alternative (ahead-of-time, or AOT, compilation), since JIT compilation has access to information about the hardware it is running on, it can be more aggressively optimized than traditional AOT compilation.

ART switches to AOT compilation, but rather than ship code that was compiled on the developer's computer, the Play Store ships uncompiled APKs, which are then compiled on the device at install time. This gives Android the best properties of JIT and AOT compiling. Since compilation happens on the device, ART gets the device-specific optimizations of JIT compiling, but since compilation only happens once, it gets the lower CPU usage of AOT compiling. The only downside is a longer install time for apps, since compilation has to happen before the app is installed. This only happens once, though, (and for each update install) so it's a very minor downside.

ART also brings lower memory usage and better multitasking on low-memory devices. Since Dalvik only compiled at runtime, the compiled code was never written to disk. It had to be kept in memory. In a low-memory situation, the process had to be killed and the compiled code was lost. If the user restarted the process, it needed to be recompiled again. This would lead to a lot of disk thrashing on low-memory devices, so much so that Google's recommendation for low memory devices was to disable JIT entirely.

Since ART is already compiled, the compiled code can be paged out to disk in a low-memory situation. This allows the OS to juggle apps in and out of memory without as much of a penalty as Dalvik.

Only one compilation per app should lead to better battery life with ART too, since you're not wasting CPU cycles repeating compilation work every time a program is run. The overall faster performance from ART will help with battery life, since faster code means less time feeding power to the processor and more time idling in a low-power mode.

ART is also better at memory allocation, which reduces the frequency of "jank"—animation stutters—compared to Dalvik. Android occasionally has to do "garbage collection"—basically cleaning and rearranging memory when something needs to load—and everything needs to come to a screeching halt while this is happening. ART has an entirely new garbage collector. It aims to make pauses shorter and less frequent, which should result in fewer dropped animation frames.

While ART does boost performance for most apps, it won't work for everything. There are two different ways to write Android apps: Developers can use the SDK, which will result in an app that runs on Android's runtime—first Dalvik and now ART—and uses Java code. There's also the NDK, which allows developers to write high-performance apps using less portable native code such as C and C++.

ART will only improve apps written in Java. Most benchmark apps are designed to test the hardware of a device, so they are written in native code and will mostly be unaffected by ART's performance boost. The same goes for 3D games and the rendering code of a browser. What ART can help are all the other apps on Android, including core stuff like the home screen, notification panel, Gmail, Maps, and the Play Store (really, any 2D app). Google estimates this to be 85 percent of apps on the Play Store.

With ART also comes the switch from 32 to 64-bit, which, in addition to more addressable memory, brings better performance from the 64-bit instruction set, particularly in media and cryptography apps. The best part is app support. While 32-bit apps will still run just fine, ART's on-device compiler can detect a 64-bit-capable device and compile apps for 64-bit, which, again, means instant improvements for 85% of apps with no developer work required. The remaining 15% of native apps will need to be recompiled by the developer to get these 64-bit improvements.

There are some concerns about compatibility, but considering that ART has been an option for a year now in KitKat and Android L preview builds have been shipping since June, most developers have fixed any problems their apps have with the new runtime.

ART represents one of the biggest core changes in Android's history. The engine that apps run on has been ripped out and replaced with a faster version. This will, for free, speed up the majority of Android apps. ART is finally ready for prime time and is the default runtime in Lollipop, but that doesn't mean Google is finished with performance improvements. In a Google I/O talk about the new runtime, Google called it "a solid foundation for the future." Hopefully we can expect more improvements down the line.

[Bouncer]

I'm loving Inbox. If anyone wants an invite let me know.

The Email that works for you: http://youtu.be/bzNTjpUMOp4

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhue...il-for-mobile/

[Bouncer]

The biggest offense by far though is that you can no longer put your phone on silent simply by pressing the down volume button. You can change the ringer volume and set it to vibrate but you cannot set it to be completely silent. You have to go into settings for that. Whoever made that choice should be smacked. I'm sure this will be fixed in a (hopefully soon) update.

Spoke to soon. They simply changed its function and allowed more settings. When you hit volume down button it brings up a small do not disturb screen where you can set it for indefinitely or an hour etc.. Pretty cool.

[Bouncer]

Battery use is inconsistent. Today its draining at a faster rate than yesterday. No doubt the OS still needs tweaking.

Unless Mr I is right about the battery thing, fuck! I'll never hear the end of it.

[Mr I]

Lol i pop

[Bouncer]

Interesting fact dealing with the encryption option that comes with lollipop.

Nexus 6 comes with it on by default and its performing slower in some tests against the unencrypted Nexus 5.

I want to turn encryption on but I'll wait till they tweek it.

[Scrumhalf]

Bouncer, does Lollipop have native visual voice mail? I haven't set up Google Voice on my Moto X yet and I don't want to install the AT&T visual VM app. I'll wait if Lollipop has this built in natively.

[Bouncer]

I don't think so. I purposely don't set up voicemail because I don't want people leaving messages. Lol.

[Turbo3000]

Bouncer, does Lollipop have native visual voice mail? I haven't set up Google Voice on my Moto X yet and I don't want to install the AT&T visual VM app. I'll wait if Lollipop has this built in natively.

I don't think that VVM is baked in, could be wrong.

There are a lot of good VVM apps in the play store.

[blm]

Lollipop rollout...

http://www.androidorigin.com/lollipo...g-htc-lg-moto/

[Scrumhalf]

Finally got Lollipop 5.0.2 pushed to my phone. It's about time - :fight:

Looking good so far!

[Scrumhalf]

My Lollipop screen... :)