Google’s FlexyCore purchase could mean a smoother Android for the future
We’re not sure what Google is supposed to be bringing us with Android 4.4 KitKat, but perhaps smoother operating system performance is something they’ve been working on. They’ve already moved the platform along with initiatives like Project Butter and TRIM in the latest Jelly Bean releases, and now it seems they’ve been looking at more ways they can increase performance.
French publication L’Express is reporting that Google has bought startup firm FlexyCore for $23 million, a company known for an app called DroidBooster that can noticeably improve software performance (even on phones with lesser hardware). In ARM’s words:
FlexyCore’s droidBooster is an Android accelerator that makes ten times faster the performance of an Android device. Its principle relies on improving the performance of an Android handset at build-time by generating highly optimized ARM binary from Dalvik code.
DroidBooster quite honestly sounds like one of those cheesy placebo apps which promise to speed your phone up at one click of a button, but if Google believes they’re worth $23 million they must be doing something significant. It’s reported that FlexyCore has already integrated with the Google team for quite some time, so we might see the fruits of this new marriage sooner than later.
Google’s original promise of making Android Kit Kat “an amazing Android experience available for everybody” could have hinted toward their desire to get smoother performance on even the weakest of devices. That said, we can’t be sure of what they truly meant until they make the details official. Let’s hope that happens at some point this week.
[via GigaOM]