Android Startup Time

[Eric Levine]

I am very excited to start using Couchbase for my apps, but the time it takes to startup CouchDB is making me hesitate.  I setup a simple test app that just starts up CouchbaseMobile and I am finding that it takes about 10 seconds (running on a Samsung Captivate) between calling startCouchBase and the ICouchbaseDelegate.couchbaseStarted callback.  I am worried that this will be unacceptable to users, even if I am displaying a splash screen and/or progress bar.  I do understand that this will happen infrequently though.  

I am wondering what everyone's experience has been with the start up time.  How are you dealing with it?  Is it a significant impact or not to the usability of an application?

[Marty Schoch]

I'm unable to test it right at this moment but these numbers sound a
bit high to me.

I've been seeing about 3-4 seconds, but even the emulator was about
10-15 seconds if I recall correctly.

There is small additional overhead on first launch (1 second for me).
Can you confirm this time on a subsequent launch? Remember to force
stop the app to ensure it's actually launching.

Sent from my iPhone

[Eric Levine]

I've been consistently seeing ~17 seconds on the emulator.  After killing the app on the device, it took about 5 seconds to start which is definitely better.  Do you find that users are accepting of the 10 second delay upon the first start?

For completeness, I've posted the code for my Activity here: https://gist.github.com/1245475

[Matt Adams]

On 27/09/11 10:06 AM, Eric Levine wrote:

> I've been consistently seeing ~17 seconds on the emulator. After killing
> the app on the device, it took about 5 seconds to start which is
> definitely better. Do you find that users are accepting of the 10 second
> delay upon the first start?

I'd say "yes." Right now our app takes ~5 seconds to start if users are
running in offline mode and ~8 seconds if running in online mode.

Considering that it only happens the first time the app starts I'd say
it's acceptable. I've seen other networked apps (Android market I'm
looking at you) take as least as long if not more to get going the first
time.

Obviously this is something that I want to improve but it's not the end
of the world.

Hope this helps,

Matt
--
Matt Adams
Radical Dynamic
www.radicaldynamic.com

[Eric Levine]

That seems reasonable.  Thanks!