The Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro are the first phones to ship with Android 14. Besides the Pixel devices, the OnePlus 11 and the Nothing Phone users are able to test out the Android 14 beta.
Historically, when new OS updates roll out, they’d normally break something, and with customer feedback, developers would fix the OS to run smoothly. However, with Android 14, Google is focusing more on refinement than new features, which are unlikely to break existing functionality.
Here are four ways that Android 14 improves on performance and memory efficiency:
1) Freezing cached applications
Android 14 freezes cached apps after a "short period of time", giving them 0 CPU time. During the Android 14 Beta, Google saw cached processes consume "up to 50%… pic.twitter.com/vKW50wY5L1
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) October 11, 2023
According to Mishaal Rahman, the new OS freezes cached applications after a “short period of time.” This essentially frees up CPU resources. Cached processes consume “up to 50 precent less CPU cycles as compared to Android 13 public devices.”
Further, to ensure frozen apps stay frozen, Android 14 adjusts how apps receive context-registered broadcasts post entering a cached state. “These broadcasts may be queued, and certain repeating ones (like BATTERY_CHANGED) may be merged into one broadcast,” wrote Rahman.
With the above-mentioned optimizations, Android 14 is able to launch apps faster. According to Google, Android 14 is able to increase long-standing limits on the maximum number of cached applications, which leads to a reduction in cold app starts, which are CPU-intensive.
According to Rahman, “On devices with 8GB RAM, the beta group “saw 20% fewer cold app starts”. On devices with 12GB RAM, “it was over 30% fewer.”
Lastly, the new OS’ Android Runtime, ART 14, has been optimized to reduce code size by an average of 9.3 percent without impacting performance. The smaller the code, the less time ART 14 has to spend in interpreting it, making it memory and storage efficient.
These optimizations don’t add anything drastically new to the OS, but rather, improve upon the fundamental aspects of Google’s OS.
Source: Mishaal Rahman Via: AndroidPolice
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