Which "Runtime System" In Developer Options - Dalvik Or ART?

[PsychDoc]

Mine is set to Dalvik.

Can anyone explain how these two options are different and which would be the recommended setting.

I'm reluctant to screw too much with anything in this section of the phone as I suspect it's hidden initially for a reason...Samsung doesn't want us messing with a lot of these things without really understanding what we're doing. So before I even try to switch to see which offers the better mobile experience I thought I should know more than I do now (which is zero...lol)

 

[Jon Jackson]

I'd stick with Dalvik, I tried ART and it was glitchy for me. They are still developing it. It's going to be great though.

 

[PsychDoc]

I think I found my answer. For now it seems it would be wise for most of us to stick with Dalvik though it's equally clear that ART is the wave of the future and will probably be the default setting in Android 4.5.

Meet ART, Part 3: Battery Life Benchmarks - Not Good, But Not Too Bad

Conclusions
These results should hopefully give some context to the effect of ART on battery life. Even though the outcomes don't explicitly favor ART, they also don't really contradict any one story on the Internet. If anything, this just proves that there are situations where both runtimes can shine. Additionally, there are many other optimizations that can’t be accurately measured, none of which are represented here and could be responsible for more significant experiences.
I expect the majority of the people claiming wildly better battery life are experiencing a placebo effect. After all, every test I ran demonstrated no more than about 2%-4% difference after burning through nearly 50% of the battery.
Still, I'm fairly certain early adopters won’t be swayed to return to Dalvik, and I'm not really sure they should be. If you’re on the fence about switching, I would still advise sticking to Dalvik, at least until the next version of Android. Aside from smoother animations and scrolling, this version certainly doesn’t offer any profound increase in performance or battery life, and it’s still prone to occasional bugs. At this stage, it’s still something best left to developers and some enthusiasts.
It’s important to remember that these underwhelming results are coming from a preview version of software the Android Team did not intend for regular users to even start using yet. The code isn’t optimized to the extent that we know it can be, and there are surely several safety checks to guard against bugs, all of which are adding overhead that will eventually become unnecessary. Of course, nobody wants ART to land in the crosshairs of an upcoming Bug Watch (wink), so let’s not be too hasty about stripping out those safety measures. Nonetheless, the current incarnation is simply about getting everything working and introducing a new runtime to the world. We should be looking forward to future versions for more tangible improvements.
I’m pretty sure I’ll be hammering out an even more thorough set of benchmarks when Android 4.5 (or 5.0, or whatever) launches in a few months. In the meantime, Part 4 is coming up really soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

 

[Lynx]

Ran ART for about 5 days and forgot I switched it. Had AWFUL performance issues, the black screen of death constantly yesterday, lots of freezes and crashes etc etc.

Switched back to Dalvik last night and today has been smooth sailing.

 

[Kwesi Yasay]

Me too i dont like the ART. A bit slow

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[rustum]

I did not notice anything different. It actually felt little faster. But I received update from ATT today. It could be this.

 

[Arcadias1795]

I switched to ART last night and ever since have had some issues. My device status is "custom" and some services keep crashing on boot-up. I also cannot sync Facebook events to my Google Calendar anymore...

 

[Greg C]

I used ART on my Nexus 4. It made all my apps open up a lot quicker. It also increases the size of the apps considerably. I will stick with Dalvik for my S5. When using ART you will be unable to download system updates.