Android Vitals and Slow Rendering

Solar2D Android
#1

Google Play now tracks what they call Android Vitals and can use these to effect rankings and search placement.  One of the vitals is called Slow Rendering ( They specifically say that they don’t track this on apps built with OpenGL (hence, Corna). 

However, it does seem to track Slow Rendering if we use any native components in the apps, such as ads.  Since ads are normally pretty slow, and it can only track this data, Google skews the numbers badly and shows any apps with ads as having a very bad Slow Rendering metric.

Is Corona aware of this new vital, and have any plans to address it?  It will in effect make Corona built apps rank lower on Google Play.

#2

This is the first I’ve heard of this. I’ll ask the team.

Rob

#3

Reply from Google:  

You are correct that render time statistics are not collected from apps that use OpenGL (Corona), and Android Vitals only capture telemetry from the UI Toolkit.

https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/vitals/render.html

If your app does not use the UI Toolkit, as is the case for apps that are built with Vulkan, Unity, Unreal, or OpenGL, then render time statistics are not available in the Android Vitals dashboard.

I can see, using the Profile GPU rendering, that the frames rendered by the advertisements are the only frames that are getting tracked.

We are aware of such corner cases where only a small portion of the user interaction time is recorded, and are striving to provide better solutions. I have passed on your feedback to our engineers to have a look at your case, and will provide more updates when I get information from them.

 

I emphasized that the key issue for me is not to be penalized, not too concerned with the metric itself

#4

There would be little we could do about this anyway.

Rob

#5

Rob, I understand this is hard technically to fix from Corona’s end.  But do you have any contacts at Google Play who you can raise the issue with and work on an exemption for Corona users?  As Per mentions, the metric getting fixed isn’t the issue, it’s that we don’t want to be penalized for it.

Per, do you have a specific contact at Google you reached out to, or just to their normal support team?

#6

Google: We do take into account such corner (legitimate) cases and make sure that these metrics do not impact the ratings on Play Store.

To be absolutely certain, I have requested the engineers to have a look at your case particularly and check that your app doesn’t get penalized in any sense. I will provide an update as soon as I get any information from them.

…
Hopefully this is just a false alarm.

I contacted them via help feature in Dev console. Will update when I hear more

#7

Google: I just received a response from the Android Vitals Team, and they confirm that all these edge cases are taken into account. Please be assured that this will  NOT  impact your apps in any way.

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Can close this post

#8

Will there be any indication of this in the console? I mean how do we know if an ANR is an edge case or not?

#9

@Yoger,

From what I’m reading, there should be no ANR’s in your list.  They are ignoring Corona and they should be ignoring ads. 

So, if you have ANRs, they are not ignoring ads, in which case you have to take it up with them.  (PITA I know).

 OR…

maybe there will be ANRs listed, but they are ignored.  Now I get your concern.  You’re right.  They should badge the ones that have been ignored.

#10

This is the first I’ve heard of this. I’ll ask the team.

Rob

#11

Reply from Google:  

You are correct that render time statistics are not collected from apps that use OpenGL (Corona), and Android Vitals only capture telemetry from the UI Toolkit.

https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/vitals/render.html

If your app does not use the UI Toolkit, as is the case for apps that are built with Vulkan, Unity, Unreal, or OpenGL, then render time statistics are not available in the Android Vitals dashboard.

I can see, using the Profile GPU rendering, that the frames rendered by the advertisements are the only frames that are getting tracked.

We are aware of such corner cases where only a small portion of the user interaction time is recorded, and are striving to provide better solutions. I have passed on your feedback to our engineers to have a look at your case, and will provide more updates when I get information from them.

 

I emphasized that the key issue for me is not to be penalized, not too concerned with the metric itself

#12

There would be little we could do about this anyway.

Rob

#13

Rob, I understand this is hard technically to fix from Corona’s end.  But do you have any contacts at Google Play who you can raise the issue with and work on an exemption for Corona users?  As Per mentions, the metric getting fixed isn’t the issue, it’s that we don’t want to be penalized for it.

Per, do you have a specific contact at Google you reached out to, or just to their normal support team?

#14

Google: We do take into account such corner (legitimate) cases and make sure that these metrics do not impact the ratings on Play Store.

To be absolutely certain, I have requested the engineers to have a look at your case particularly and check that your app doesn’t get penalized in any sense. I will provide an update as soon as I get any information from them.

…
Hopefully this is just a false alarm.

I contacted them via help feature in Dev console. Will update when I hear more

#15

Google: I just received a response from the Android Vitals Team, and they confirm that all these edge cases are taken into account. Please be assured that this will  NOT  impact your apps in any way.

------ 

Can close this post

#16

Will there be any indication of this in the console? I mean how do we know if an ANR is an edge case or not?

#17

@Yoger,

From what I’m reading, there should be no ANR’s in your list.  They are ignoring Corona and they should be ignoring ads. 

So, if you have ANRs, they are not ignoring ads, in which case you have to take it up with them.  (PITA I know).

 OR…

maybe there will be ANRs listed, but they are ignored.  Now I get your concern.  You’re right.  They should badge the ones that have been ignored.