Top 7 Tricks And Tips To Improve Android App Performance

The number of users who are using Android apps is increasing rapidly. Users wanted to access the content on the go, no matter which device or where the information came from. Research studies from Bankmycell say that With a total global population of 8.088 billion people worldwide in 2024, 3.9 billion or 48.22%, are Android smartphone users.

If your app takes too much time to load, users uninstall it. So, you should never let users do this. Instead, optimize your app code and improve your app’s performance. Take advantage of delivering content to the user as fast as possible, so you will never regret losing your customer.   

Let’s dive right into the article to see how you can improve Android app performance.

Causes Of Poor Android Performance

If your app is laggy, it will deliver bad experiences to the users because nothing in this world is better than a laggy app. If your app loads slowly, then every extra second that the user needs to wait for results in dissatisfaction them, and eventually, they keep on uninstalling the app. 

Research studies from the report say that the conversion rate of businesses is reduced by 7% for every extra second your app uses. Reports from AppDynamics suggest that 86% percent of users end up uninstalling apps simply because the app offers poor performance to the users.   

Therefore, developers should put extra focus on optimizing Android apps because the performance of an app determines the success or failure of an app.   

Reasons Behind The Poor Android App Performance  

• When developers interact with cloud services, they often assume that users have a seamless experience with the app. For example, if an API call is not handled correctly, it can cause the app to hang temporarily. Users may not be aware that the application is experiencing delays because certain processes are running in the background and impacting the UI or main thread.  
• Developers should strive to offload more tasks from the main thread to prevent sluggishness in the app. When code execution takes longer, users are likely to experience lags in the application.

However, it’s difficult to identify such issues with the naked eye. Developers can use static code analyzers and profilers for it. The profilers’ prime motto is to evaluate an application’s performance and assess the poor sections of code.   

If you cannot figure out why users are experiencing slow load times, then profiling can help you identify the exact line of code affecting an application’s performance.   

Profiling is especially used to identify performance issues such as slow apps, UI Jank, poor scroll performance, frame drops, excessive battery drains, etc. Therefore, it’s a best practice to optimize the performance of an app to provide the best user experience.  

When measuring an Android app’s performance, use Android profiling tools to identify the performance bottlenecks in your code. Android profiler is a powerful tool for analyzing the performance of an app.   

The Android profiler tool offers developers real-time insights into an app’s utilization of CPU, memory, network, and battery resources, enabling a comprehensive understanding of its resource consumption.

Tips To Improve Android App Performance

 Here are the 7 tips to improve Android App Performance-

1. Network Performance   

Improving network performance plays a significant role in improving the performance of an app. It is something that an app owner can’t control. Mobile apps depend highly on network performance to deliver a seamless user experience.   

• Optimize network calls by using caching and reducing the number of requests. Use libraries like OkHttp, KTOR & Retrofit for efficient network calls. Developers can optimize the network performance of an application to provide best in class user experience by Minimizing the data transfer between the mobile app and server, optimizing the data structure, compressing the data, and minimizing unnecessary requests. A well-performing network ensures faster data transfer between mobile apps and backend servers.
•  Having a high-performance network facilitates faster content delivery.  

For Instance – if your app comprises large files such as images, videos, or documents, network performance becomes an important concern. A high-quality network delivers the content faster, reducing the time it takes to download large files.   

2. Memory Footprint (Garbage Collection)  

There might be possibilities when there are often memory leaks, and your Android app can be hacked. So, for reverse engineering and performance, the garbage collection technique is used. Garbage collection is responsible for keeping track of memory allocation.   

So, what does garbage collection do? Garbage collection primarily considers that if the application no longer uses a certain piece of memory, then it frees up the space in the heap.   

Moreover, garbage collection relieves developers from manually managing the program’s memory. Memory leaks occur when the garbage collection cannot take out the trash. Memory leaks can have adverse consequences on the performance of an app –  

• Frame drops or Lags in the app
• The application is not responding   

For Instance – A developer forgot to free up the memory space after the program no longer needs it, which would lead to memory leaks that consume RAM.   

To provide a seamless user experience, you must manage the memory utilization aspect. When your Android app creates many objects, it will trigger a garbage collection. Garbage collection is responsible for removing unused objects from the memory.   

3. Caching   

The cache is the temporary storage location, allowing quicker access to frequently used data and improving app performance. Not only that, but caching also reduces network traffic, which reduces network load.   

Caching helps to avoid unoptimized downloads. It substantially reduces the number of downloads, which means downloading only when the user needs it. When an app needs to retrieve data, and if it is present in the cache, it will retrieve the data from the cache.   

4. Database Optimization (Offline Storage)  

Database optimization can improve the performance of an app by using various practices:  

• Consider using bulk operations instead of individual transactions. Performing bulk queries improves the performance of an Android application.
• Index the database tables to improve query performance, reducing the time required to locate and retrieve data.
• Use ROM DB instead of SQL lite to improve the app’s performance.   

5. Use Lazy Loading  

Lazy loading is a technique that focuses on improving the performance of Android apps by loading those resources or data needed. It enables the efficient utilization of resources, thus improving response time and minimizing the impact on CPU, memory, and network usage.   

Lazy loading delays the initialization of an object until it is needed, which can improve performance.  

6. Reduce Dependencies  

Minimize dependencies on external libraries and frameworks, as they can add additional overhead and slow down the app. Using too many dependencies often increases the size of an application hence reducing the amount of time an app takes to start.  

Adding many dependencies to an application adds more initialization and configuration expenses. Moreover, reducing dependencies can improve the security and stability of apps.  

7. Test App Performance  

Regular testing of an Android app is necessary to identify performance issues and deliver a seamless user experience. Use tools like Firebase Test Lab and TestFairy for testing app performance.   

What are some tips for optimizing Android app code?

 You can optimize the Android app code using the following ways –  
Minimize object creation on your Android app because excessive resource creation can impact an app’s performance and consume more memory.
Remove unused code from your application. Often developers install third-party libraries to add more features to an Android app which takes up unnecessary space.   
Use profiling tools such as static code analyzers and profilers to identify the bottlenecks in your code.

How do I make the Android app successful?

Here are the 4 strategies to make your Android app successful –  

• Understand the core purpose behind developing an app. You can decide the app’s purpose by considering 3 factors: your app’s target audience, the problems an app will solve, and the core value of your business.   
• Understand what value your app provides to the users. For Instance – Candy Crush provides some sort of relief to the users and provides them pleasure.
• Don’t think of adding bells and whistles to your app. Keep minimal features that keep your customers happy and help them to perform the desired action  
• Create a well-designed UI/UX so users can stick with the app until the end.

End Notes…

You know the golden rules for making your Android app better than competitors. Stop wasting any more time; adopt these practices to make an app better now; otherwise, you may end up with the guilt of losing a massive user base.   

Have any questions?   

Head over to the contact us section to connect with our experts now. You can consult our app developers, who can do a quick walkthrough of how you can improve Android app performance. We will start by providing an audit session for you to identify the loopholes and fix the bugs.  

BigOhTech, the leading Android app development agency, develops custom Android apps that can get millions of users. We offer audit plans for our customers on a fixed cost, time, and money. Our plans start at $150 for 40 hrs.

FAQs  

Q1. What are some common causes of poor Android performance?  

Here are some causes of poor Android performance, which are given below –  

• When developers are doing too much on the main thread, then the application loads slowly as the code takes more time to process
• If the Android app is flooded with much data such as text, music, video, HTML, etc., it starts loading slowly. Hence, the developer must keep the file size minimum so that app runs smoothly   
• Inefficient code affects the performance of an application. So, the developer should use the optimum code level to speed up the execution level of the application.   
• If the network of an application is slow, then it could affect the performance of an application.

Q2. What are some tips for improving network performance in Android apps?

The network performance of an application can be improved in the following ways –  

• Reduce the unnecessary number of network requests. It’s highly recommended that the developer use Okhttp and Retrofit for network calls. These libraries are an effective way to handle low-level network tasks efficiently.   
• Use background thread for network operations to keep the UI of the mobile app responsive.  
• Use the caching mechanism to store and access the data locally.   
• Compress the size of images by using various image optimization techniques such as lazy loading, image caching, etc.   
• Test the app’s performance using various tools like the Android network profiler.   

Q3. Why improve app performance in Android?

Here are the 2 must-have reasons why a developer can’t compromise app performance –   

• Research studies suggest that 70% of users stop using apps if it takes hours to load. Users intend to use mobile apps that offer a quick response, load quickly, and provide a seamless experience to them.    
• If the performance of an app is not up to the mark, then users would simply uninstall the app.

Q4. How can app developers reduce memory usage in their apps?

 Android app developers can reduce memory usage in their apps using the following things –  
Release cache memory to keep the background processing running over the time   
Keep a check on how much memory your app consumes. You can do so using the Memory Profiler, which shows a real-time graph of how much memory your app allocated over the period.   
Using an efficient data structure that consumes less memory   
Optimize libraries and dependencies to reduce memory usage in the app.

Q5. What are some other practices to improve Android app performance?

The performance of an Android app can be improved by reducing app size. The larger the size of an application, the more space it will take up in the user’s phone.
An Android application size can be reduced using Android app bundles or an Android size analyzer. These tools suggest various ways for developers to shrink the size of an Android application.  
Do the image and video optimization in your Android applications so that it won’t affect the loading speed of an application   
Improve memory usage by avoiding memory leaks in your application.
Optimized the Android layout performance as it directly affects the design of an app, thereby causing the app to load slowly