If you were one of the few who managed to get their hands on the Google Nexus 5 during the initial ordering rush, you’ve had some time to poke around and find some of the fun new things going on in Android 4.4. If you’ve been poking around in the developer console, you may have even seen a curious new runtime option. It may not mean a whole lot yet, but ART — the Android RunTime — is going to be the future of Android.
Most people with Android phones have no idea what Dalvik is, aside from maybe a distant cousin to a classic Doctor Who villain. The truth is Dalvik is what powers every Android phone on the planet. It’s a runtime environment that Android exists on top of, and it’s responsible for everything that is great and terrible about Android. For the last couple of years, Google has worked hard to optimize Android to be more efficient by adding things like a Just-In-Time compiler back in Android 2.2.
As fast as Android has become over the last few years, it is still bottlenecked in a few ways by Dalvik. Google plans to resolve this in future versions of Android with a new runtime environment specifically for Android.
The Android RunTime will operate in a totally different way from Dalvik, as it will be using an Ahead-Of-Time compiler. The primary difference here is how the code for the apps you want to run are compiled, which directly affects how they perform when launching apps or returning to apps that you’ve recently opened or are running in the background. This increased performance is expected to have a positive effect all across the OS, meaning better battery life and smoother app launches. It’s an all around positive thing, but it’s not quite ready for prime time yet.
Google included ART in the developer tools of Android 4.4 in order to prepare developers for what is coming to Android. As a user, you can switch to ART right now but it is unlikely that you’ll see any real difference in your day to day use. This mostly has to do with the absolutely screaming fast processor in the Nexus 5, coupled with the battery and network management hardware deployed on that phone. As Android 4.4 is rolled out to other devices that may change.
Eventually, Google will release a phone with ART running by default. Until that happens, it’s up to the brave few willing to poke around on their phones regardless of any instability or potential harm to the life of the device. If you happen to be one of those people, sound off with your thoughts on ART in the comments.
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