Hi all,

I'm referencing and using Ostermiller Utils and Joda Time in my project. After my app gets built and installed in the running emulator, it starts up, and as soon as I hit a class which I am using from a referenced library (this happens in the first activity), there is a 10-second pause while it tries to load that class. Every time after that, it loads quickly (until I reinstall again). Is this normal? Even though it's only the first time the app loads, I can't have the 10-second black screen (end users are anything but patient).

Cheers,
Rich

Do you get the same 10 second delay in a handset or only in the emulator? I ask this question, because as you probably know the emulator can be somewhat slow even on relatively powerful computers.

Yes, try to run it on an actual device. You will notice a much, much smaller delay!

Thanks for the replies.

On the ADP2 I still get a 1-2 second delay. Not nearly as bad as the simulator. Still a little troubling, but if that is common in Android apps, then I can live with it for now.

I think maybe the referenced libs was not my only problem (as you may have sensed). I was also doing a few other things in the UI thread which I should have been doing in a worker thread.

I have a pretty smooth loading app now, thanks primarily to three things:

1. Using a custom style/theme to set the background image of every activity so that the screen is not completely black while it's loading.
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/ ... speed.html

2. Do a few first-time heavy tasks (access referenced libs, copy a sqlite database into place, etc) in a worker thread using AsyncTask
http://www.screaming-penguin.com/node/7746

3. Showing a progress dialog while referenced libraries and database copying was happening only the first time you run the app. Hitting the referenced libraries for the first time still does take a few seconds, but now there is a "First Time Loading" dialog to let the user know there is not a problem.