Google will soon release version 14 of its Android RunTime (ART) engine. This version should bring even more speed to applications and devices. This is due to broader support for APIs.
Android RunTime will soon get version 14, Google indicates. ART is the engine under the Android mobile operating system and, among other things, takes care of compiling Java and Kotlin into bytecode and executing it.
Independently updateable
An important part of ART is its independence from the mobile OS for the update process. Since version 12, ART has been decoupled from the complete mobile OS and forms a separate (APEX) module. This allows the underlying engine to be updated via the Playstore, without the need for an entire system update.
The result of this decoupling is that applications, especially from ART version 13 onward, start up and run much faster.
ART 14
The now upcoming ART 14 version should only make this even better, is what the Android developer estimates. Among other things, this version should start supporting even more APIs, so that updating the engine separately will yield even faster apps. The boot time of devices should also get a lot faster.
Another new feature is support for the mobile OS going from OpenJDK 11 to OpenJDK 17. Furthermore, a new compiler and runtime optimizations have been added. This should improve performance and at the same time reduce code size.
One last important feature that ART 14 has is that this engine version is not limited to devices equipped with the latest complete Android version, Android 14. Most of the improvements made in ART 14 will soon be available for devices with older Android versions as well.
Google expects to start rolling out ART 14 via the Play Store soon.
Also read: Android 14 launch approaching with Beta 4