Understanding Your App’s Health With Core Mobile Vitals
Blog post from Honeycomb
Mobile app developers face unique challenges in ensuring their applications run smoothly on users' devices, as issues may not be immediately apparent without proper observability tools. Honeycomb has identified a set of Core Mobile Vitals, akin to Core Web Vitals for web applications, which include App Startup Time, Crash Rate, Hang Rate, and Slow Render Rate, to help developers monitor key performance metrics. These vitals are collected using Honeycomb's SDKs for iOS and Android, which leverage OpenTelemetry and MetricKit to automatically gather data and provide insights into app performance. Startup times are classified as good, medium, or bad, with various definitions for cold, warm, and hot startups, while crash diagnostics and hang events are tracked to improve user experience. Slow renders are identified when rendering takes longer than specific thresholds, and manual view instrumentation is offered for more detailed analysis. Honeycomb's approach aims to streamline the collection of performance data, allowing developers to focus on enhancing the unique aspects of their apps while preventing user frustration caused by unresponsiveness.