[tomp]

I wonder to what extent that's a consequence of Apple embracing reference counting (Swift/Objective C with ARC) while Google being stuck on GC (Java)?

I'm a huge fan of OCaml, Java and Python (RC but with cyclic garbage collection), and RC very likely incurs more developer headache and more bugs, but at the end of the day, that's just a question of upfront investment, and in the long run it seems to pay off - it's pretty hard for me to deny that pretty much all GC software is slow (or singlethreaded).

[willtim]

Java can be slow for many complex reasons, not just GC. Oracle are trying to address some of this with major proposals such as stack-allocated value types, sealed classes, vector intrinsics etc, but these are potentially years away and will likely never arrive for Android. However, a lot of Androids slowness is not due to Java but rather just bad/legacy architectural decisions. iOS is simply better engineered than Android and I say this as an Android user.

[jjoonathan]

Not to mention it took Android about a decade longer than iPhone to finally get their animations silky smooth. I don't know if the occasional hung frames were the results of GC, but I suspect it.