Call it the state of the ART. With two Google Nexus 5 phones at PCMag, we were finally able to benchmark an Android 4.4 device with the older Dalvik runtime against Android 5.0 Lollipop's new ART runtime, and we found a bit of a difference.
Android 4.4 introduced ART, but it was hidden behind a panel of developer settings. Lollipop makes it mandatory. As Jason Snell (not that Jason Snell) recounts at New Relic, the ART runtime compiles applications when they're installed, as opposed to on each run. That makes execution dramatically faster. Snell found application performance sometimes tripled. We didn't find results that dramatic on our various benchmark tests, but we did see a bit of a performance boost:
Google has done a good job of filtering Material Design and new features down to Android 4.4; the new calendar, maps, and Chrome 39 are all available to earlier versions of Android. So browser improvements in Chrome 39, as you can see from the Browsermark score above, carry over to both 4.4 and 5.0 devices.
RAM, graphics, and database I/O scores all stayed almost exactly the same from Android 4.4 to Android 5.0. But apps will probably launch more quickly and run more smoothly because of that boosted compilation speed.
This all comes at a cost, though. Adobe confirmed that its Air software isn't yet compatible with Android 5.0, affecting a slew of third-party apps built with Air. The site AndroidPit has a list of other current Lollipop bugs.
We still think Lollipop is a huge step forward for Android users, and you should look forward to when it arrives on your device. Read our full review for more details.
