A comparative analysis of Jetpack Compose and XML Views

This bachelor thesis presents a comparative analysis between XML Views (XML+Kotlin) and Jetpack Compose (Kotlin), focusing on picture-based applications across varying demand levels: low, medium, and high. Through the development and evaluation of three distinct applications for each toolkit, we used Macrobenchmark and Android Profiler to collect their performance in terms of startup time, frame timing metrics, and hardware resource utilization, including CPU, battery, and memory usage.  Our findings reveal that XML Views maintain certain advantages over Jetpack Compose, particularly in terms of startup time and frame timing metrics. However, our analysis also highlights notable benefits of Jetpack Compose, particularly in memory usage. Despite the overall advantage of XML Views, Jetpack Compose demonstrates the potential for optimization in specific resource-intensive scenarios.  This research contributes to the ongoing discourse surrounding the selection of a UI toolkit for Android application development, providing insights into the performance characteristics of XML Views and Jetpack Compose in picture-based applications across varying demand levels. Our findings offer practical guidance for developers in making informed decisions regarding UI toolkit selection, considering both performance and resource utilization considerations.