New Way of Compiling In Android Lollipop Explained!

     Hello to everyone reading this post!  Android M is just around the corner which will bring improvements to a major background change that happened in Android Lollipop.  Several changes happened during the Lollipop update but one was kind of glazed over that I think deserves some attention.  With Lollipop, Android changed the way it compiles and runs apps.  For those reading this that may not know what compiling is here is a short description.

Compiling
     Compiling is a programming term.  They way we program today is far from the language that your phones, tablets, and computers actually understand.  In order for computers to be able to run the program that a developer has written is must be translated into code that a computer can understand.  This is called compiling.  This is something that a development program called a compiler does before a developer can test their program and distribute it to the public.  After compiling the program the computer can understand the program because now it sees a whole bunch of 1s and 0s, aka computer language.  Ok now that you have a brief understanding of what compiling is, lets get back to Android.

Back To It
     Android changed how it complies apps with Lollipop in a major way.  Before Lollipop, Android compiled apps at the time that you opened the app.  That is every time you opened the app.  Not just the first time.  This worked just fine and had a major benefit that earlier Android devices needed.  This let apps use up less space on your storage.  These days though storage is not as much of an issue.  Most phones have 16GB or 32GB these days with some even pushing 64GB.  Storage is no longer and issue, but battery life is.  Screens and processors have only gotten bigger and badder.  Batteries haven't really scaled with this however and this has lead to shorter battery life.  So compiling an app every time is runs leads to battery draining.  So how does Lollipop fix this?

The New Way
     Lollipop introduced a new way of compiling apps to Android.  Now apps are compiled when you download and install them.  This takes up a little more storage space but gives huge gains in battery life.  In Lollipop this process isn't very optimized.  You will see a noticeable gain in battery life but only just.  In Android M Google is promising optimizations to this new way of compiling which should see bigger battery gains.  Lollipop laid the foundation, M will bring the skyscraper.

Wrap Up
     Android is changing.  In the foreground we can see and in the background where we can't.  Both equally as important but the background may be more exciting.  This one change I have been talking about could change the way we think or even use our Android devices.  Better battery life is everything these days and Android is doing what is can to give it to us.  I hope this helped you to understand this small change to Android.  If you liked this write up then please share with your friends across all of social media.

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