Book Image

Android High Performance Programming

By : Emil Atanasov, Enrique López Mañas, Diego Grancini
Book Image

Android High Performance Programming

By: Emil Atanasov, Enrique López Mañas, Diego Grancini

Overview of this book

Performant applications are one of the key drivers of success in the mobile world. Users may abandon an app if it runs slowly. Learning how to build applications that balance speed and performance with functionality and UX can be a challenge; however, it's now more important than ever to get that balance right. Android High Performance will start you thinking about how to wring the most from any hardware your app is installed on, so you can increase your reach and engagement. The book begins by providing an introduction to state–of-the-art Android techniques and the importance of performance in an Android application. Then, we will explain the Android SDK tools regularly used to debug and profile Android applications. We will also learn about some advanced topics such as building layouts, multithreading, networking, and security. Battery life is one of the biggest bottlenecks in applications; and this book will show typical examples of code that exhausts battery life, how to prevent this, and how to measure battery consumption from an application in every kind of situation to ensure your apps don’t drain more than they should. This book explains techniques for building optimized and efficient systems that do not drain the battery, cause memory leaks, or slow down with time.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Android High Performance Programming
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Android device debug options


When we are debugging an Android device, we need to activate developer mode. This mode is hidden by default, and we need to activate it manually if we need to connect the device to ADB or to use some of its options. Android's creators did a good job at hiding this option.

Let's see how we can activate this option to have a better understanding of Android debugging, and how can we play with the different debug configurations.

As mentioned, the developer options in the device are really hidden by default. The purpose for this is very likely to make it only available to advanced users and not to normal users. A casual person will not need to access the features in this section; doing so might options that could harm the device.

In standard ROMs we need to go to the About section, scroll down until we see the Build number entry, and then tap five times in quick succession. A small dialog will be displayed saying that we are now a developer:

Due to custom ROM customization...