Is Jetpack Compose suitable for POS devices like t...

# compose

[Muhammad Junaid]

Is Jetpack Compose suitable for POS devices like the PAX A920 or A35? I developed an application that runs smoothly on my Android 10 phone, but when testing it on these devices A920 or A35 (which have only 1GB RAM), I encounter significant rendering issues, lag, and skipped frames. Has anyone else experienced similar problems on low-spec POS hardware? or i need to shipped to XML?

[jw]

Are you testing a release APK? Are you running R8?

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

have you profiled to find out if the long frames are due to your own code, if you're allocating too much, etc.?

[romainguy]

@Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD] Compose allocates too much 😝

[Muhammad Junaid]

@jw Yes , Same issue

[Muhammad Junaid]

@Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD] I’m not running any high-performance tasks—just testing with a bottom navigation bar and three simple screens with basic buttons. Despite that, it’s causing lag issues. I believe the main reason is that 1 GB of RAM isn’t sufficient for this setup. I might need to switch back to using XML instead.

[Muhammad Junaid]

@romainguy Yes, every simple composeable taking too much memory that an other logs that I can see.

[Muhammad Junaid]

Can any senior guide me this is POS app that need to deliver in next month, can I move to XML that may be right decision for me?

[romainguy]

The problem is not the ram. The A920 runs a Cortex A7. That's a 14 years old CPU, still 32 bits

[Muhammad Junaid]

Thanks for each information, could suggest me solution or better approach ?

[romainguy]

And the A35 uses a cluster of Cortex A53 CPUs, which are usually the "little" cores used for power savings in phones, not the main cores.

[romainguy]

So yeah in your case I'd stick to XML/Views

[Muhammad Junaid]

@romainguy Thanks again, I do prefer your approach to convert it into XML. ♥️

[Nitesh Singh]

You’ll likely get better performance and smoother rendering with traditional XML Views on such devices.

[Nitesh Singh]

With constraints layout

[Jachim]

I’ve been working with POS devices, and based on my experience, Jetpack Compose can be noticeably slow in debug mode, specially on lower-end hardware. I recommend testing it with a release build instead. the performance is significantly better and the rendering issues are often reduced

[Nitesh Singh]

yes you are right

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

That’s true for basically any device, debug builds of compose UI apps are almost always gonna be janky.

[Muhammad Junaid]

I also try on release mode.

[Muhammad Junaid]

I didn’t experience any lag or frame drops on the Samsung Note 9, whether in debug or release mode, as it has sufficient storage. The issues only occurred on Cortex-A7 devices, as @romainguy mentioned Sach informative info.

[Jonathan]

Why would XML perform better than Compose on lower end devices? I thought both use the same SKIA APIs to submit drawing commands to the GPU.

[Muhammad Junaid]

Cortex-A7 - CPU 32 bit has a limited cache and slower instruction processing, which means :
• Interpreting and executing Compose logic is slower than simple XML rendering
Most of this happens on the main thread, which causes frame drops and UI lag.
XML (View-based (imperative)) Renderding .
Compose (Declarative) required GPU also.

[romainguy]

@Jonathan It's not a GPU problem but a CPU one (although GPU could be an issue too on those devices, but I doubt it).

[Jonathan]

What makes Compose CPU heavy compared to XML?

[romainguy]

It's a question with a long answer, but basically the View system was written for low-powered devices and goes to great lengths to micro-optimize a lot of things (down to avoiding method calls, allocating as little as possible, avoiding abstractions, etc.)

[Jonathan]

Ahh, the age-old Android motto of not allocating during draw(Canvas) and the like..
Was/is this something the Compose team are working towards as well?

[romainguy]

A lot of optimizations went into Compose over the past couple of years, see:

[romainguy]

image.png

[romainguy]

from https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/05/whats-new-in-jetpack-compose.html