Optimise Because Performance Matters
Article Summary
Saurabh Arora from Viki cut their Android app's memory footprint by 27% while preparing for the Next Billion Users. His team's optimization work landed them as an Android GO launch partner.
As Viki prepared their streaming platform for emerging markets and Android GO, they tackled three critical areas: memory consumption, data usage, and APK size. Using Android Studio 3.0's new profilers, they identified and eliminated performance bottlenecks across their entire app.
Key Takeaways
- Memory reduced 27% on low-end devices by optimizing bitmaps and placeholders
- APK size dropped 25% using TinyPNG compression and resConfig stripping
- Server-side image resizing with density buckets maintained CDN cache hits
- Storing only current language translations (not all 20+) freed significant memory
- ConstraintLayout flattened view hierarchies, reducing RecyclerView memory overhead
Critical Insight
Strategic optimization across images, translations, and view hierarchies delivered 18-27% memory reduction and 25% smaller APK size, earning Viki an Android GO launch partnership.
