Why do apps open so slowly? (compared to iOS and Android)

[anon(5725119)]

I've had a Windows Phone since WP7.5 in 2012, and it has been the only OS I have used. At the moment I have a Lumia 930 and I really love it, but whenever I compare speeds to my friends' phones, it always seems to open apps noticeably slower, and this is meant to be the current Lumia flagship.

For example, I compared WhatsApp on my phone to my friend's HTC phone (I forget the exact model, but it wasn't a flagship, not the One line) and he opened all his apps faster than mine. Is it just the way Windows Phone is? I have no idea, someone help me out?

 

[Dusan Randj]

That's nust a way Windows phone is.
And badly optimized and underdeveloped apps on WP.

 

[Scouseman]

My friend's galaxy Avant tends to operate better than my 925 as well. I guess its just one of those things. As they say, some androids lag, while windows phone "load".

 

[noersetiawan]

That's the way windows phone is. Similar experience across different range of the devices means ur 930 is almost as slow as my 520 for basic task i.e. returning to start screen. The animation speed is too slow, and 3rd party app can't open as fast as built in app, not sure why maybe not having same privilege. MSFT gotta fix this.

 

[anon(5725119)]

That's the way windows phone is. Similar experience across different range of the devices means ur 930 is almost as slow as my 520 for basic task i.e. returning to start screen. The animation speed is too slow, and 3rd party app can't open as fast as built in app, not sure why maybe not having same privilege. MSFT gotta fix this.

I think the animation speeds aren't too bad, but the time it takes for the animations to actually even start is pretty bad.

 

[a5cent]

^ Animation speeds have absolutely nothing to do with it. Apps load simultaneously in the background, while the GPU renders the animation. The GPU would have absolutely nothing to do during that time, so having it render the animation doesn't impact load performance. If an app completes loading before the animation ends, then the animation is terminated prematurely to show the app. That just rarely happens.

There is no simple answer to the question. It's a lot of things, not all of which are always important. It depends on the app:

- The time it takes to tombstone an app before loading a new one
- The time it takes to load all the assemblies of an app
- The time it takes to initialize the .NET runtime
- The time it takes to parse the compiled binary XAML and build the UI, including data binding
- The time it takes to reload the app's previous app state

All of these things work differently than on Android and very differently than on iOS. They all exist for good reasons, but together they can degrade loading performance. That's your answer in a nutshell. Getting into the details quickly gets really technical and won't make sense to non-developers.

 

[anon(5725119)]

^ Animation speeds have absolutely nothing to do with it. Apps load simultaneously in the background, while the GPU renders the animation. The GPU would have absolutely nothing to do during that time, so having it render the animation doesn't impact load performance. If an app completes loading before the animation ends, then the animation is terminated prematurely to show the app. That just rarely happens.

There is no simple answer to the question. It's a lot of things, not all of which are always important. It depends on the app:

- The time it takes to tombstone an app before loading a new one
- The time it takes to load all the assemblies of an app
- The time it takes to initialize the .NET runtime
- The time it takes to parse the compiled binary XAML and build the UI, including data binding
- The time it takes to reload the app's previous app state

All of these things work differently than on Android and very differently than on iOS. They all exist for good reasons, but together they can degrade loading performance. That's your answer in a nutshell. Getting into the details quickly gets really technical and won't make sense to non-developers.

So, apps will, not necessarily, but be likely to always open slower on WP8.1 than iOS and Android?

 

[a5cent]

^ Something like that, yes.

For example, for games that don't use the .NET runtime and have no binary XAML to parse, loading performance could be similar if not identical to iOS and Android. However, even then there are caveats, like WP potentially tombstoning another app before loading the game, which iOS and Android might do at a later time (for example during gameplay, which can lead to stuttering and lag).

WP does things that Android and iOS do not, and that comes at a cost to load performance. No matter how much those additional computational processes are optimized, it can never be as fast as it would have been, if WP just skipped them. On the other hand, those things benefit software developer performance, and are also part of what keeps WP stutter/lag free on lowest-end devices. It's the typical software trade-off.

That's the theory. In practice, all of this would be half as bad if the apps in the store were built by more experienced developers who set themselves load performance goals from the outset. Unfortunately, that's something that is often hard to fix later on, if it's not considered as part of the initial app design.

 

[Olander418]

Another thing that could significantly add loading time is loading of graphics. The de-encoding of png and jpg are quite resource intensive and tend to take a while. To get past this problem some games use a different packaging method. XNA uses xnb file format, which is basically uncompressed data(atleast this is what I think).

 

[a5cent]

^ except that is no different from iOS and Android, which also make use of compressed image formats. This thread is not about what lengthens load times, but what specifically lengthens them on WP in comparison to iOS and Android.

 

[tgp]

Similar experience across different range of the devices means ur 930 is almost as slow as my 520 for basic task i.e. returning to start screen.

I'm still trying to decide if this is an advantage or a disadvantage! I've had both high end and low end WPs, and the speed at which they load apps is negligible. Whatever the reason, the end result is relatively good performance on a low end device, but not good for high end. Maybe this is at least part of the reason for Microsoft's decision to not provide a flagship; there's not much of an advantage.

 

[D M C]

because apps aren't optimized properly for WP.

and the reason it's aren't optimized because Devs like don't spend much effort on WP.

and why devs do that because of WP market share which is stuck at 3% from last 5 years.

So, the market share and type of users affect the apps quality.

 

[a5cent]

^ Nope, not even close.

I'd love to hear even one approach developers take to optimize load performance for Android which they omit for WP.

 

[Nogitsune Micah]

My friend's galaxy Avant tends to operate better than my 925 as well. I guess its just one of those things. As they say, some androids lag, while windows phone "load".

There is a difference in apps not being quick to load on windows phone vs my phone randomly just lagging doing something as simple as swiping on android.

 

[Protocol Rahul]

some androids lag, while windows phone "load"

I think that is how android operates, I see often even with 2gb of ram, in idle case, android is consuming 1.6gb, whilst If I compare my phone using the Microsoft tools it shows around 60% amount of ram available.Yes it depend on the various backhand processes but visually that is what I can observe.

Windows 10 for phones is getting there I guess, It already opens some apps faster compared to win8.1, resuming/loading is gone.
Had compared whatsapp on a similarly spec android device with my 1020(win8.1), the android was significantly faster, now I did the same test with windows 10 for phones, it is now matching it, ignoring the animation and al
Conclusion anyone?

 

[gpobernardo]

because apps aren't optimized properly for WP.

and the reason it's aren't optimized because Devs like don't spend much effort on WP.

and why devs do that because of WP market share which is stuck at 3% from last 5 years.

So, the market share and type of users affect the apps quality.

"Performance improvements" is commonly encountered as an update in Windows Phone apps.
Most developers, if not all, who I contacted were working on improving the speed, the launch times and reliability of their apps.

These are counter examples to your argument.

 

[Nogitsune Micah]

I guess I don't really see anything wrong with the windows phone version compared to android or IOS.

 

[AkArora]

Other than launching times, if "Resuming" time is also considered on similar powered devices, the Android device will chew and throw the Windows Phone one, which will be stuck at "Resuming" screen by then. And I considering Native Android app vs Native .NET app.
(Not talking about performance of devices otherwise, in which Windows Phone might be snappier)

 

[tgp]

I think that is how android operates, I see often even with 2gb of ram, in idle case, android is consuming 1.6gb, whilst If I compare my phone using the Microsoft tools it shows around 60% amount of ram available.Yes it depend on the various backhand processes but visually that is what I can observe.

You have the Windows mindset. rly: Android inherently uses RAM differently. Android pretty much always uses all available RAM.

In Windows, we are conditioned to believe that the more RAM available, the better. Android operates under the premise that unused RAM is wasted RAM. Apps remain in the RAM until they are pushed out to make room for something else. Since they remain in the RAM, they will reopen faster.

That's the theory anyway.

 

[Protocol Rahul]

You have the Windows mindset

I didn't criticize android for that, I was simply stating my observations on how android operates and you explained the rest. Having a windows mindset doesn't change my opinion towards android(seeing how is windows desktop compared with chrome OS). My point was android handling things differently makes it work faster, whilst the windows phone doesn't do that, hence is slower(agreeing with your explanation).
All things aside, windows for phones are improving with 10 doing good job so far in the performance department.