Is there any real benefit using crosswalk for Android 4.4 & above?

Question

Crosswalk plugin is very important in bringing huge performance improvement for hybrid app. But the problem is, once it is added, the APK is becoming HUGE, adding about 15-18MB of size to the installer.

So, is there any real benefit (especially in performance) for adding the crosswalk into the installer for Android 4.4 & above?

Answer 1

I recently done some performance tests of angularJS cordova app on android 4.4+ devices. I prepered short stories and tested cordova app vs cordova + crosswalk app using browser-perf utility (https://github.com/axemclion/browser-perf). The only performance boost I saw was painting (aprox. 4 times faster in comparison with 'clean' cordova). All other metrics were worse, some even much worse (rendering: aprox 1.5 times slower). Summarizing times, my cordova+crosswalk app was 9% slower than cordova. Also crosswalk added 21MB to my apk size and 60MB(!) to app size after installation. In case of my project, using crosswalk was pointless because of weight and speed. App used to tests was really rich angular SPA project, maybe simple apps can achieve some boost from crosswalk.