My experience experimenting with ART vs Dalvik on (and) my new S5 (review)

[mgfjd12]

I've found out the secret to optimum Galaxy s5 speed. If you root your phone, install greenify and titanium backup, then disable Touchwiz launcher and keyboard, your phone is almost nexus like. Also, installing ART helps out even more. Give it a try and see how it works for you!

The battery of the nexus is about half of the galaxy. No need to root or greenify. It works good the way it is. I have SwiftKey keyboard and actually like touchwiz. No issues with the phone at least with att and latest software.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[ABOSWORTH007]

I decided to give it another go last night so I switched to ART again. Ugh, horrible experience again. It just seems laggier all around. I told myself that I was going to give it a full day to test out but I couldn't make it that far and switched back to DAVLIK after about 20 minutes. I like what I'm reading about it and look forward to the finished product but as it stands, it's just not a good experience in its current state.

 

[mgfjd12]

I switched back to dalvik because I have some old apps not compatible yet. I don't have lagging issues with dalvik or art. I did notice battery it is better with dalvik than art

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Vanessa Altube]

Switched to ART to try and improve lag, now I cannot use my phone. Once it rebooted I get a pop up that says unfortunately Nfc has stopped working. It is incessant and I don't know what to do! It wont allow me to use the phone.

Anyone??:'(

 

[dohlo]

I'm still new to Android as I've just jumped ship over the weekend, but I've been toying with my phone a lot and did a pretty good amount of reading about the software and the S5 itself befor purchase. Every time I encountered something software-wise on an S5 in store, I googled it to see what was wrong and how to fix it. From day one I haven't noticed much lag on my device. But literally as soon as I walked out of the store I was already putting the phone into dev mode and speeding up animations and doing all the random tweaks I'd already read about. I've been on ART for about a day now and again while my use with the phone/software is limited, the battery does seem to last longer for sure. Left it unplugged while I slept (about 7.5-8 hours) and I only noticed a 2% drain on idle! while my old iPhone was 8% lower while idle/not charging.

I'm running Nova launcher, I tried Google and a couple other random ones but they felt clunky/looked awful and so far I really like Nova. Even in ART it seems very fluid and very fast. I turned all animations off but it made it feel a tad clunky, so I switched everything back to .5 scale and it's definitely smoother this way IMO, for many reasons I probably couldn't explain. I mostly use my phone for email, messaging, calls, browsing, and pictures but regardless of the apps I've ran while in ART I have noticed zero issues. The ONLY issue I had was after the switch the phone froze on the att logo while on startup, I wonder if this was due to the processor becoming too hot/working too hard while doing the switch? Pulled the battery and have had no issues at all. No crashed apps, no funk anywhere in the OS as is. But again it's only been a day, so maybe that will change.

I'm doing everything I can possibly find short of rooting the device to see if I like having it with me/interacting with it in my day-to-day life before the 14 days ends next weekend. So far I'm liking it, each day I find a tweak or UI customization/3rd party app that makes me appreciate it more. The screen alone makes me laugh at the fact that I've been stuck on a tiny iPhone for years on end

 

[anon(749368)]

Switched to ART to try and improve lag, now I cannot use my phone. Once it rebooted I get a pop up that says unfortunately Nfc has stopped working. It is incessant and I don't know what to do! It wont allow me to use the phone.

Anyone??:'(

Just switch back to Dalvik...

Posted via Android Central App

 

[jonebk12]

I actually switched to ART for a day or two to try it again and just switched back. While transitions seemed and felt somewhat smoother overall on ART, a number of apps were quite slow to open. Also battery life seemed to take a not insignificant hit, both while the phone was idle and in use. I'll wait until ART comes out officially in L.

 

[srayjacobs]

I also use Nova launcher. I switched from dalvik to art for about a week with no problems . I switched back to art after a couple days using delvik and can not tell much if any in speed. But the battery does seem better on art, but I loose some storage space. I have been using art as my runtime system.

Galaxy S5

 

[mgfjd12]

I've run ART on my Nexus 7 (2013) for over a year. I ran it on my S3 for over a year. It seemed faster and smoother than Dalvik. I use Nova instead of TouchWiz. I have not switched to ART on my new S5, but frankly I'm staying pretty conservative until the 14 day return period on the new phone is up. The S5 is probably the most unexciting handheld device I have bought in the past 15 years. The phrase "nothing to see here, move a long" keeps popping into my mind as I use this phone. And I don't think ART is going to cure that.

I have to return my nexus 7 2013 back to dalvik. My magazine apps performance were terrible and my battery was crazy sometimes. My phone and my nexus are snappy in dalvik so I won't mess with that until final release.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Dani Fonseca]

Vanessa, same problem here!!!

Dadathepanda who suggested moving back to Dalvik must have not believed when you wrote "I cannot use my phone" !

I also cannot use my phone!

I am now trying to start it in safe mode (hold down vol down when booting) but the problem is it is "optimising app X of 143." taking a long time and does that everytime I cold boot it.. what a mess!

Anyone have any ideas? I repeat, the phone gets stuck with the nfc message and is unusable if you let it boot "normally".

Thanks in advance,
Daniel Fonseca

 

[Dani Fonseca]

I did it!
I don't know which one did it, but here's all the story. Turned off the phone (battery removed).
Turned on and immediately kept the "volume down" button pressed until I was greeted with the (repeating) upgrading part (143 apps for me).
After that, I kept the button pressed again and indeed it started in safe mode (words "safe mode" clearly visible in the lower left corner of the screen).
Nfc kept crashing but what I did was (as seen somewhere online) try to turn on "Flight mode", which I eventually did after many many many "alternate finger stabs" at the screen! (of course I brought the necessary menu up by pressing the power button for a short period of time)
Finally got Flight mode!
Same method again to turn the phone gracefully off. Screen finger stabbing part II, took me about 2 minutes.
* Restart option would also be good but it is in a less accessible area of the screen...
Turned phone on, still in flight mode, no nfc crash! Turned off flight mode and for the time being it's ok. I'm guessing that should it reboot, it will crash again, the phone must be turned on in flight mode, only chance for the nfc startup process to _not run_.
Ugh!
Hope you can solve it too!

EDIT: follow-up: turned off NFC, of course, and the next reboot of the phone was ok, so I'm never touching NFC for the time being and other than that all is ok, phone became clearly faster starting apps, only downside is less free storage space, as expected, but well worth it.

 

[Ist Games]

I have a Nexus 5 4.4.4 work with Davlik more faster and economy batery than Art )

 

[herojay]

I had ART since I got my phone. Changed it as soon as I unboxed it. It worked fine minus a few hiccups with certain apps not working properly. After almost a year, however, I noticed that the phone was getting stuck at times. Although snappy others. Battery seemed better but not sure if that was more placebo effect. Had it rooted. Franco kernel. Then decided to go back to stock and remove root so I can access certain apps.
Same problems with lagging... Eventually I just went back to Dalvik. Seems less snappy but stable and fluid. I guess I'll wait a few more weeks for Lollipop.

 

[Rafael Bernardes]

I have switched to ART but the Samsung apps that I had previously disable were again enabled and I cannot anymore disable them.

I'm S5. Did it happen to someone else?

The apps that I cannot disable anymore are: S Planner, S Finder, Email (I only use gmail app), Weather, Samsung Calendar Sync app, Samsung Content Agent, Samsung SNote 3 Sync Adapter, Exchange Services, Samsung Keyboard (I use google), Quick Connect Intersection Service, PageBuddy NotSvc, Nearby Service, Child mode, Drive mode, Cry babe detector.


Flipboard and chat on, for instance, wasn't enable when I switched to ART.

 

[Rafael Bernardes]

About the ART, I fell that my phone is faster and I have not experienced, untill now (one day of use), any of the problems related here. Only one minor problem: from time to time the phone stop responding for 3 seconds. But it is very rare and I think it's better than having a "slow" OS all the time.

I made the test with Antutu Benchmark App and I got fewer points with Art than before, most notably in "response time" (But, as I said, I'm feeling it faster).

I have the tests' result screenshots, but I don't know how to put them here in the post.

 

[AZgl1500]

I have switched to ART but the Samsung apps that I had previously disable were again enabled and I cannot anymore disable them.

I'm S5. Did it happen to someone else?

The apps that I cannot disable anymore are: S Planner, S Finder, Email (I only use gmail app), Weather, Samsung Calendar Sync app, Samsung Content Agent, Samsung SNote 3 Sync Adapter, Exchange Services, Samsung Keyboard (I use google), Quick Connect Intersection Service, PageBuddy NotSvc, Nearby Service, Child mode, Drive mode, Cry babe detector.


Flipboard and chat on, for instance, wasn't enable when I switched to ART.

For me, when I switched to ART there wasn't any problem with apps that I had previously disabled.
they are still disabled.

I just looked at PageBuddy..... and note that I cannot disable it in ART.

I doubled checked that by running CleanMaster Apps Mgr and it came up with a warning that trying to disable this app will cause page instability problems.
I then clicked on Details and it took me to the Settings/App/App Mgr/Disable screen... but the Disable button is greyed out.

I'm not going to worry about it for now. But simply switching back to Darvik should allow you to disable what you want and then switch back to ART if you want to.