Crosswalk's performance

1

Hey guys,

I actually tried crosswalk a couple of times (a couple of months ago on my own, and now with ionic-cli) in multiple apps. Does it actually run faster for you? [honestly]

I tried crosswalk 8, 9, 10 and a couple of android devices with 4.1-4.3 version and usually the crosswalk’s version works even slower than the normal cordova one.

Yes, it has better support for html5 & css elements, and maybe sometimes the complex views are rendered more quickly, but in most cases, switching routes, views and clicking on the elements tends to be slower and more ‘glitchy’ than on normal cordova setup.

2

If you build two apps one with crosswalk and one without i will gladly test on few devices and report, as i would also like to know that.

3

for me i can feel very promising performance gain using the crosswalk.
before i felt like the app was very laggy
not its like butter smooth after building with crosswalk
but the splash screen is not working now :frowning:

4

I have the same question. I’ve been searching in vain for one week for blog posts, benchmarks, tests.

5

Sure you can test it, if you want to :wink:

Here’s the link to the recent application I created (about music festivals, artists etc):

When you run it, simply register with normal credentials/facebook.
In search view, simply search for some fest , f.e. ‘future music festival’ and click ‘Set as current fest’.

IMHO, the ‘without crosswalk’ version works better, but I have tested it only on two Android 4.3 devices so far.

6

from my expirience of Android ionic development:
With crosswalk its works much better and faster if your native browser not chromium. (Android less than 4.0.3 i guess)

7

So only on Android below 4.0.3 it’s better?
Did you try it on 4.1-4.3 devices?

8

I’m testing my app on three devices:

iPhone 4S, iOS 7.2 --> Performs fine with/without crosswalk.
Motorola RAZR i, Android 4.1.2 --> Better performance without crosswalk.
Sony xperia x10 mini pro, Android 4.0.4 --> Can’t confirm. Strangely, Cordova Network plugin not working at all without crosswalk so I can’t test without it (as my app uses it), but I can say that transitions have very poor performance using crooswalk.

EDIT:
Sony xperia x10 mini pro, Android 4.0.4 --> Solved cordova problem. Transitions perform better without crosswalk.

9

I’m trying to justify using Crosswalk to a client. According to the blog post about Crosswalk coming to Ionic we should see about a 10x increase in performance on older devices. Are there any numbers to back up this claim? I need quantifiable results in performance to justify the huge increase in app size.

I’m having a hard time finding any benchmarking tools what so ever so any direction there would be much appreciated. Unfortunately for us, “it feels faster” just doesn’t cut it. :smile:

10

The app im currently developing runs way better with Crosswalk on Android 4.1 - 4.3
With “runs way better” i mean primarily stuff like scrolling huge views with many images or view rendering in general.

No changes (as expected) for Android > 4.4, except:
input type file isnt supported on android 4.4, with crosswalk it is. Since there are only incomplete or buggy filepicker plugins for cordova available, this is a huge pro for crosswalk at least for me.

Another pro: many css flaws i had on Android 4.1 - 4.3 are gone. For example i always had issues with flex boxes on older devices.

Tested on about 11-13 different Android devices from Android 4.1 to 5.0 (LG, Samsung, Huawei, HTC, Sony, Archos…)
iOS is unaffected, obviously.

11

I haven’t tried the crosswalk version of your app, but the “native” app went quite smoothly compared to my sluggish app lol, maybe I was trying to add too much fancy UI and animation for the laggish android webview (<4.4)