- New efficiency upgrades are coming to Android
- Google promises faster speeds and longer battery life
- Updates are being tested for Android 15, 16 and 17
Good news if you have an Android phone: Google is pushing out a major optimization update that should mean your device runs faster and lasts longer between battery charges without you having to do anything.
According to the Android Developers Blog (via Android Authority ), the update provides “impressive improvements across key Android metrics” based on tests Google conducted on Pixel phones in its labs.
What Google is doing here is quite complex and technical, but luckily for the non-engineers among us, end users don’t need to know too much about the details. Simply put, a core part of Android software will now work based on your specific device and how you use it.
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Google says it saw a 2.1% increase in boot times and a 4.3% increase in app launch times in its testing, for example. The new optimizations are currently being tested for Android 15, Android 16 and Android 17 and should be rolled out soon.
Meet AutoFDO
At the heart of this upgrade is AutoFDO, which stands for Automatic Feedback-Directed Optimization. It works in a part of Android called the kernel, which acts as a headquarters for the software — about 40% of the processing a chipset does on an Android phone involves the kernel, Google says.
Every time code runs on a phone, there are thousands of small operations involved, and before now Android would use a general rulebook to determine how to perform them. With the AutoFDO update, the rulebook is adapted based on actual real-world patterns so that the code is processed in a more efficient manner.
More frequently used code can e.g. are identified and prioritized. That should mean “a faster interface, faster app switching, extended battery life, and an overall more responsive device for the end user,” according to Google.
It certainly sounds promising, though we’ll have to wait and see how it performs on actual devices. We may hear more about this feature, plus plenty of new features for the upcoming Android 17, at the Google I/O event in May.
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