6 replies to this topic

[psneddon]

Hi,

I have tested a few applications that I had written and tested using the emulator on a E200 and I am finding load times of between 5-10 seconds even on a simple app with only a few controls.

Can anyone confirm this behaviour or is it just my bad coding

Regards,
Paul Sneddon

[NeilC_MVP]

I've not got any metrics for this yet, but yes, there is a lag in loading apps. I'll do some perf testing in the near future.

[Peter Foot]

Theres an average of approx 4-5 seconds load time on a vanilla app - single form with a Quit option on a softkey - this is with no other applications running.
Based on the fact that Smartphone has less memory at its disposal than a Pocket PC and generally they run slower CPUs then I'm not surprised at this. A lot of applications will happily continue to sit dormant in the background when you switch to other tasks so you wont always notice the startup hit as on subsequent runs you'll just be switching back to the application which was still loaded in the background.

The Compact Framework doesn't cache its compiled code after jitting your .NETCF application so each time it has to build the native code from scratch.

To put this into perspective the Inbox application takes about 3 seconds to start and Media Player about 5 so the difference is not so pronounced between .NET Compact Framework apps and native ones.

A lot of the optimisation techniques discussed for Pocket PC still apply on the Smartphone platform as architecturally they are very similar. You could use a splash screen to inform the user while the app loads on a separate thread:-
http://msdn.microsof...tml/casoast.asp

And some tips in Neil's article which involve tweaking the designer generated code in the IntializeComponent method:-
http://msdn.microsof...ormloadperf.asp

HTH

Peter

[PaulOBrien]

I understand that SP2 should improve these times somewhat?

P

[NeilC_MVP]

SP2 is for everything under the sun, apart from Smartphone. Bummer.

[PaulOBrien]

Typical! ;-)

P

[komplex]

I am new to developing for the Smartphone but my experiences with PDA development utilising the CF certainly makes me comfortable as a early beta I used back in 2001/2 (with minimal debug code in) ran like a dog with a knackered set of balls. But the improvement has been noticeable on every release for the PDA’s and I assume Smartphone also.

Also, a point to note is that the e200 still uses the old 133MHz processor.  I wonder how the Motorola 200 MHz performs?

I am waiting for the day a 500MHz turns up.