Xposed Framework creator weighs in on Lollipop, ART

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Zorachus

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http://www.androidauthority.com/xposed-framework-lollipop-540928/

Good article there.

I am a big fan of Xposed and really use a few modules religiously on every phone; YouTubeAdAway, Greenify, GravityBox. Plus they offer awesome mods for Samsung phones and HTC phones, which allow major tweaks and customization without the need for custom Recovery + ROM.

But with Android 5.0 Lollipop moving to 'Art' full time now, that breaks Xposed and doesn't work. So it needs to be totally redone, which is not an easy task.
 
I'm pretty dependent on Xposed for a lot of additional functionality, mods, and ad blocking. I have 16 modules on my M8 and I would notice pretty quickly if I lost any of them. I'm fine sticking to Dalvik on my M8 for a few months anyways until HTC updates it to 5.0, I'm just hoping by then Xposed will support ART, because I've been pretty anxious to switch over to ART while on 4.4 just to see the benefits of it for myself.
 
The Xposed dev was resistant towards ART from the start. I understand that its a lot of work, but why not stay prepared for the incoming big change from Google? I guess I'm just being a confused end-user though. :(

Also, it appears that he feels that the ART code was a moving target, but I don't think he ever came up with any forked builds for testing to begin with.
 
Xposed is great, but I'll take ART over it a thousand times. Lower latencies on my phone is FAR more important to me than extra customization. I have never used a phone that I would call latency-free (i.e. with unnoticeable latency) and I will take every improvement I can get. And ART has been a pretty good improvement.
 
dandragonrage said:
Xposed is great, but I'll take ART over it a thousand times. Lower latencies on my phone is FAR more important to me than extra customization. I have never used a phone that I would call latency-free (i.e. with unnoticeable latency) and I will take every improvement I can get. And ART has been a pretty good improvement.
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:cool:
 
dandragonrage said:
Xposed is great, but I'll take ART over it a thousand times. Lower latencies on my phone is FAR more important to me than extra customization. I have never used a phone that I would call latency-free (i.e. with unnoticeable latency) and I will take every improvement I can get. And ART has been a pretty good improvement.
Click to expand...

Not sure what phone you have, but my M8 is pretty damn fast/responsive already on Dalvic. From the vids I've seen comparing ART to Dalvic, the differences can be negligible depending on the phone. There was a Youtube vid showing the difference in performance between the two on a GS5 and it was non-existent.
 
T4rd said:
Not sure what phone you have, but my M8 is pretty damn fast/responsive already on Dalvic. From the vids I've seen comparing ART to Dalvic, the differences can be negligible depending on the phone. There was a Youtube vid showing the difference in performance between the two on a GS5 and it was non-existent.
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But current androids are not as optimized for ART as android 5.0 would be. ART still beat out davlik very slightly on almost every benchmark thrown at it despite its lack of readiness on current android.

I suppose I need to clarify that current android is 4.4.4 as 5 hasn't actually been delivered on any devices yet.
 
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CHANG3D said:
But current androids are not as promised for ART as android 5.0 would be. ART still beat out davlik very slightly on almost every benchmark thrown at it despite its lack of readiness on current android.

I suppose I need to clarify that current android is 4.4.4 as 5 hasn't actually been delivered on any devices yet.
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I was just comparing ART and Dalvic on 4.4.x, since you can toggle between the runtimes in the dev options of any phone on Kitkat. From what this Xposed dev says though, ART may have changed a lot in how it works since Kitkat, so I'm not sure comparisons between the two Android revisions will be equal even if both are running ART.
 
ART isn't out yet. The one in KitKat is a very early preview that can in no way be compared to the version in the L preview, which itself isn't final.

I have no doubt Xposed is dead in L. Google doesn't even want you to have root, there will be way too many obstacles to allow full scale hijacking and tampering that Xposed allows.

If you think about it, Xposed is very much a security threat, anyone can write a module to intercept/overwrite anything in system, which is just not acceptable.
 
FWIW, I've also noticed absolutely zero day-to-day performance benefit from enabling ART in 4.4. I've tried it multiple times, including right after a clean install. Nada. Not saying that experience is representative of the version in 5.0; it is what it is.

As for Xposed: I've tinkered with it on my cheap tablet, but have never wanted it on my daily driver phone. I'm militantly in favor of unlocked bootloaders and root, but Xposed is kind of a last resort that I'd hope to avoid by using the ROM/launcher/etc. of my choice. So I'm not devastated if this is the end of the road for it.
 
brettjrob said:
FWIW, I've also noticed absolutely zero day-to-day performance benefit from enabling ART in 4.4. I've tried it multiple times, including right after a clean install. Nada.
Click to expand...

That has to be the biggest joke i ever read.
 
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