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jai prakash sharma
jai prakash sharma

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Improving mobile performance, from slow screens to app start time

Based on extensive experience with mobile developer teams, Sentry developed a mobile monitoring maturity curve, emphasizing the progression from ensuring stability to optimizing performance. A recent survey revealed that 41% of developers are focused on ensuring stability, while 24% are optimizing performance.

Key Improvements for Mobile Developers
To help developers advance on the maturity curve, Sentry introduces four key components:

Optimize Slow Screens (TTID/TTFD):

TTID (Time to Initial Display): Time taken to display the first frame.
TTFD (Time to First Display): Time taken for meaningful content to display and become interactive.
Impact: Slow TTID or TTFD can lead to user drop-off before the app fully loads. Sentryโ€™s Screen Loads feature allows tracking of high-traffic screens and comparisons of TTID and TTFD across releases, helping identify performance bottlenecks.
Identify Root Causes of Slow App Starts:

App Launch Sequence: Analyzing cold and warm start times is crucial for user satisfaction and app visibility in app stores.
Monitoring Tool: Sentry allows monitoring of app start performance, comparing metrics across releases, and identifying regressions to determine the cause of slow starts.
Improve Application Responsiveness:

Metrics for Responsiveness:
Slow and frozen frames (frames taking too long to render).
Frame delays (perceived delays).
Scroll hitches (unexpected delay in frame appearance).
Goal: By surfacing these metrics, developers can investigate user interactions and diagnose issues affecting responsiveness.
Unified Mobile Service View:

Consolidated Metrics: A single view providing insights into application health (crashes, ANRs), performance (app starts, screen loads, responsiveness), and release health (adoption).
Future Enhancements: Potential to summarize performance metrics into a mobile performance score, guiding troubleshooting efforts.

Conclusion
Sentry aims to enhance mobile app performance by streamlining workflows, optimizing load times, and providing unified access to key metrics. Developers are encouraged to assess their position on the mobile maturity curve and engage with Sentry for more insights and best practices.

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