An Android application should be fast. Well, it's probably more accurate to
say that it should be efficient. That is, it should execute as
efficiently as possible in the mobile device environment, with its limited
computing power and data storage, smaller screen, and constrained battery life.
As you develop your application, keep in mind that, while the application may
perform well enough in your emulator, running on your dual-core development
computer, it will not perform that well when run a mobile device — even
the most powerful mobile device can't match the capabilities of a typical
desktop system. For that reason, you should strive to write efficient code, to
ensure the best possible performance on a variety of mobile devices.
Generally speaking, writing fast or efficient code means keeping memory
allocations to a minimum, writing tight code, and avoiding certain language and
programming idioms that can subtly cripple performance. In object-oriented
terms, most of this work takes place at the method level, on the order of
actual lines of code, loops, and so on.
This document covers these topics:
