I've been working with Jetpack Compose for about 6-8 months but I've never checked a performance difference between both technologies, I only heard from Google that Compose is much better than XML View.
So, I decided to test a performance between RecyclerView and LazyColumn.
About an app
The app solve a typical test task "List and details" :) The app was made in 2 variants (Compose and XML View) with the same UI. And we got a list of users from GitHub REST API, and click by some user, and get details of user... as usual...
I don't use any optimization such as DiffUtil for RecyclerView or derivedStateOf for LazyColumn, I wanna see the difference as is.
Let me don't upload screenshots of app, it's too boring. You may get the app from GitHub Repository
For testing I use macrobenchmark library, device - Samsung Galaxy A04s (SM-A047F-14).
Short results
| test | parameter | XML View | Jetpack Compose |
|---|---|---|---|
startup() |
timeToInitialDisplay (median) | 769.5ms | 1048.0ms |
scrollReposList() |
frameDurationCpu (P99) | 23.2ms | 22.9ms |
| frameOverrun (P99) | 19.8ms | 23.6ms | |
clickOnExpandedButton() |
frameDurationCpu (P99) | 67,7ms | 61.4ms |
| frameOverrun (P99) | 72.8ms | ||
clickToDetails() |
frameDurationCpu (P99) | 57,8ms | 33.2ms |
| frameOverrun (P99) | 94.5ms |
OK, you may see that not all results are relevant. Something went wrong...
1st mistake in clickOnExpandedButton() I make by myself inside the RecyclerView.Adapter class. Sorry guys, I've just forgotten how to make a beautiful expanded action with RecyclerView.
2nd mistake in clickToDetails()... I don't know and we will just ignore this.
Let's see:
-
startup(): cold boot by Compose is much worse than by XML - over than 20% -
scrollReposList(): frame durations are the same (difference is lesser than 10%); frame overrun - both values are positive and Compose is 20% worse. It means that Compose creates frame a little bit more faster but shows it on a screen more later. Strange result. Needs to investigate... maybe later... maybe never :)
Let's look a little deeper at frame rendering. And for compare I'll get the same moment from clickToDetails(). The moment when rendering list with repositories on the Details screen.
Rendering frame with Compose
Rendering frame with XML View
As we can see Compose shows UI more slower. A repos list - 91.27 ms of Compose against 71.95 ms of XML View. But there is an animation (15.38 ms) inside a Choreographer's synch in Compose.
Conclusions
- There is a big difference in a cold boot. But it can be fixed with Baseline Profiles.
- We don't have a super, wow, amazing performance, but overall our app is a little bit more faster and smoothly with Compose.
- Too much depends directly on a developer and how he can optimize views or composable functions.
- Instrumented tests of XML View is really painful vs Compose.
What do I want to say at the and? I want to use Compose so I never have to write instrumented tests for XML.
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