At the end of 2021, the five major domestic Android app stores jointly announced that they will promote the support of the domestic Android ecosystem for 64-bit applications. Judging from the joint initiatives released by these five major manufacturers, as long as the APP is uploaded or updated in OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Tencent Application Assistant, Baidu Mobile Assistant, it is necessary to upload 64-bit format before the end of December 21, and no longer accept 32-bit APK, and the latter cannot be directly run on supporting 64-bit systems in 2023.
Huawei, on the other hand, informed all developers via the Huawei Developer Alliance email that Huawei would phase out 32-bit applications and fully implement the 64-bit version:
Starting from February 1, 2022, new and upgraded games and applications on the Huawei app market must contain 64-bit versions, and the HUAWEI APP market will no longer accept only 32-bit versions of apps, and from September 1, huawei app marketplace will no longer accept apps that contain 32-bit versions.
Huawei developer email Image from the network
The main reason for the "imminent" promotion of 64-bit applications by mobile terminal manufacturers is the pressure from the upstream supply chain. For example, ARM announced that from 2022, the COrtex core of the CPU in its chip products will cancel the support for 32-bit, which is the upstream manufacturers "forcing" downstream manufacturers to fully support 64-bit applications.
The road to 64th place for Android is not smooth
Users who pay attention to mobile phone hardware should know that in fact, as early as the release of the Android 5.0 system, 64-bit applications were already supported, when the processor was Qualcomm Snapdragon 410, which was also Qualcomm's first processor to support 64-bit, which was 2013, and it was only "mandatory" to achieve 64-bit in 2022, which was delayed by Google in 2019 for 3 years.
Although google had already opened the APP directly by defaulting to 64-bit so files by integrating the latest development tool Android Studio, it wanted to constrain developers with this "mandatory" new regulation. But this does not seem to attract enough attention, developers can still modify the configuration file of Android Studio so that they can use 32-bit when packaging so files to "bypass", the international environment is so, the domestic Android ecosystem is different.
The Play Store and the app update are different
Not only do mobile phone manufacturers have their own official software stores, but there are also third-party markets such as Baidu Software Manager, Kuan, Tencent Mobile Assistant, and so on. If the official version of the non-mobile phone market is installed in the mobile phone, it may also "repeatedly jump" between versions of multiple stores, not to mention the 64-bit adaptation, and it is not easy to install a pure official application.
In short, official, unofficial, and firmware version confusion is a common problem in the installation software ecology.
In fact, by 2021, before the Qualcomm 8 Gen 1 and MediaTek 9000 processors come out, they lack a set of effective ways to solve this problem from the "root".
The only thing left is to eliminate this situation from the "bottom" and use the hardware ecology to "control". For example, Qualcomm and MediaTek released the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Tianji 9000 at the end of last year, in addition to having a very strong performance improvement, which the public can "perceive": the entire framework is upgraded to ARM's latest generation of Cortex-X2 super core, Cortex-A710 large core and Cortex-A510 small core architecture, the biggest change is a more low-level "upgrade", that is, the instruction set uses ARM V9.
Arm V9, like the previous generation V8, is a pure 64-bit instruction set, the Cortex-X2 super core and Cortex-A510 small core only support (backward compatible with V8) 64-bit, only the "medium core" Cortex-A710 large core is compatible with the 32-bit V7 instruction set.
In other words, if the software is still 32-bit, then running on the new architecture processor of the V9 instruction set such as Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Tianji 9000 can only be locked to run on the A710, so that whether the phone locks the screen or opens the "performance mode" to run, the application is always in the A710, which is less than the super large core performance, and the small core is not power-saving.
What's the improvement in 64 bits?
The most immediate advantage is that it can be directly seen from the numbers, that is, the performance of the 64-bit processor is stronger, vivo once said that "supporting 64-bit devices is the only way for Android applications to utilize more than 4GB of RAM address space, use wider registers and higher precision in data processing, and obtain enhanced security features." ”
At the same frequency, a 64-bit processor can process 8 bytes of data, while 32 bits can only process 4 bytes of data, processing data faster, in addition to a very large gap in the addressing space, such as 32-bit addressing space for 2 to the 32nd power, about 4GB support, while 64-bit is exponential growth, 2 to the 64th power, and supports dynamic memory allocation.
All in all, the performance of 64-bit processors, supporting 64-bit application systems, and 64-bit applications working together, the performance of this software "three carriages" go hand in hand, so that operational efficiency can be improved.
If 64-bit applications can bring performance gains, why is it so laborious to popularize?
In addition to the previously mentioned software version, download channel confusion, a big reason is that Android is very compatible with "old devices", for example, although Google has taken various measures to let developers launch 64-bit applications, it still retains compatibility with 32-bit applications, and even provides 32-bit options on the download page of its own Chrome browser.
In addition, for developers, maintenance and operating costs are also a "stumbling block" to the popularity of 64-bit, for example, if developers only develop 32-bit applications, it can run on 64-bit processors, but they cannot run in the best state.
However, if only 64-bit applications are developed, they will not be able to run at all for some older devices, and there is a risk of losing users. 32-bit and 64-bit development testing needs to be carried out independently, which is also a burden on subsequent maintenance costs.
In addition, it is also important that developers developIng Android applications will not simply use pure Java layer development, but using Android NDK to combine Java with C++, and in C++ it is basically a team operation, which is a problem for small team developers, maintenance and subsequent security are problems.
In 2022, how are Android's 64-bit devices and apps developing?
Now that the joint initiative has been announced, how are Android mobile phone manufacturers doing?
According to the data of Youmeng + U-APM, as of December 2021, the proportion of 64-bit and 32-bit devices on the market is 65% and 35%, and according to the mobile application performance monitoring platform of Youmeng + U-APM, the application crash phenomenon of 32-bit devices is 4.8 times that of 64-bit devices, whether it is the proportion of devices or stability, 64-bit applications are the trend.
As far as the official application store built into the mobile terminal device is concerned, the third-party application market, Huawei, OPPO application store will not directly identify whether the upgraded application is 64-bit, only Xiaomi will clearly identify which software is 64-bit when upgrading in the app store.
On the left is the vivo app store On the right side is the Huawei app store, which is not marked with 64-bit apps
For example, the Huawei mobile phone I use needs to use the third-party program LibChecker to query in-flight applications, the current number of in-flight applications is 312, about 66% of the applications are 64-bit, 29% of the applications are 32-bit.
LibChecker query 64-bit software is basically Google system and international APP 32-bit is the majority of domestic software Mobile phone for Mate 40 Pro EMUI 11 version
But after the Android application is upgraded to 64-bit, it does not mean that it will be easier to use than 32-bit, it is known that netizens are gold-loving sniping reaction, although QQ in the Play Store is a 64-bit version, but there are serious bugs that cannot be used, there is no night mode, there is no concise mode.
The picture comes from the gold-loving water sniper of Zhihu netizens
The old version of QQ Music in the Play Store is 64-bit, and the new version is updated back to 32-bit.
The Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro Baidu map on the left is 64-bit and the right is 32-bit The opening speed has not changed significantly
Android's open software ecosystem has directly led to the fragmentation of the software part, and it is not easy to unify.
In addition, from the perspective of the current Android software, the current installation package is getting larger and larger, which directly leads to the memory consumed during installation, the system resources occupied by the runtime and the performance requirements for the system are also getting higher and higher. The use of 64-bit system allows single-thread processing of more than 4GB of running memory, which can be more fully mobilized for processing some super-large games, high-bitrate and high-specification video files, so that the hardware in the machine can be fully utilized.
This can explain why smartphones are running more and more memory, often as high as 12, 16GB, processor frequency is also getting higher and higher. All of this ensures that 64-bit software can run smoothly, but this also brings some negative factors, such as power consumption problems and the heat caused by the supercore processing of large software.
In short, 2022 may become the "first year" of Android's large-scale popularization of 64-bit applications, and hardware forcing software upgrades will be the norm, but in the final analysis, it still needs effective and one-size-fits-all measures to make the Android ecosystem healthy and healthy.