Android Performance and Monitoring - Meetup 3 25-14

Bay Area Android MeetupHow to Achieve

Mobile App Performance

and Monitoring to Ensure Great

User Experiences

6:30pm: Food & Drinks7:00pm: Performance Monitoring – Alex Gaber7:40pm: Test Automation and CI – Melvin Laguren

Bay Area Android MeetupHow to Achieve Mobile App

Performance and Monitoring to Ensure Great

User Experiences

Crittercism 3-25-2014

Agenda

• Why Does Android Performance Matter?• Snappy UI for UX Performance• UI Thread vs. Worker Thread• Android OS Install Base Fragmentation• Mashed Up Mobile Apps – 3rd Party APIs• Mobile Ad SDK performance• Security SDKs performance• MBaaS performance• Testing vs. Monitoring for Performance• Implementing Android App Monitoring

How Users React to Poor App Performance

Source: Crittercism end-user survey Q4’2013

Did not do anything

Shared the experience via social media

Left a negative review on the app store

Contacted support or told the vendor

Told a friend in person

Uninstalled the app

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

26%

9%

10%

21%

26%

65%

What Do Users Do When the App is Slow?

Personal Experience – Uninstalled Android Apps

Lots of apps in the Google Play Store……..

..….. and lots of uninstalls, 1 stars, bugs?

HELP !!!

Agenda


Snappy UI Equals Great UX

Linear Layout • Similar to nested tables in HTML• Great for quick and simple UI designs• Performance degrades as complexity increases

Linear Layout

Snappy UI Equals Great UX

Relative Layout• Eliminates Nested view groups• Keeps layout hierarchy flat• Much better performance for complex layouts

Relative Layout Example – activity_main.xml

Relative Layout“button2” is

below “button1”

Agenda


ANR – Application Not Responding

What causes an “Application Not Responding” (ANR) error?

• No response to an input event (such as key press or screen touch events) within 5 seconds (5,000 ms)

• A BroadcastReceiver hasn't finished executing within 10 seconds (10,000 ms)

Main Threads vs Worker Threads

Main Thread (UI Thread)

• Main Thread is also called the “UI Thread”

• All Android activities operate in the Main Thread by default

• You can easily overload the Main Thread– Doing network operations on Main

Thread– Slow disk operations (un-optimized SQL)


TIPS• Worker Threads are “background threads”• Handle all network calls w/ Worker Threads• Decouple the UI Thread from potential

blockers

Sample Worker Thread


Set Thread Priority: Example

Agenda


Android OS Install Base Fragmentation

Over 20% of Android devices are still running an OS version below 4.0

Data collected during a 7-day period ending on March 3, 2014

(developer.android.com)

Agenda


Average Mobile App Consumes Five 3rd Party APIs

• The average mobile app is using between 5-6 APIs / web services

• API Monitoring from web server to web server does not tell the full story

Average Mobile App Consumes Five 3rd Party APIs

Agenda


3rd Party SDK Overhead and Performance Latency

• Mobile Ads SDKs

Agenda



• Security SDKs


What is that SDK adding to your app?

• What is the performance overhead for this service? • What if they start to lag or get slow? • How can I monitor that this SDK isn’t making my app have

performance issues?

Agenda


MBaaS Powering your Android App

Agenda


Testing Does Not Ensure Performance: Trust But Verify

• Agile Mobile App Development methodology– Leaves little time for testing


• Agile Mobile App Development methodology– Leaves little time for testing

Agenda


Implementing Performance Monitoring for Android

Failure of shopping cart check-outs, referrals, etc. Transaction Errors

HTTP Errors like 404’s, Errors accessing Cloud ServicesAPI & Network Errors

Slow performance, High latenciesUnresponsive Apps

Downtime due to app crashesApps Crashes &

Exceptions

Performance issues due to geography Location

What cannot be tested prior to launch?

Implementing Performance Monitoring for Android

DEMO


Thank You!www.crittercism.com

@crittercism

http://www.crittercism.com/

Business

Android Performance and Monitoring - Meetup 3 25-14