There's a lot of new, behind-the-scenes goodness going on in Gingerbread, and not all of it was made with the end user in mind. One of the new APIs, "StrictMode," is built for Android application developers to use as a debugging tool. It monitors code as it's executed, detecting things that can slow an application down.
It specifically was designed to target disk reads and writes, and network activity, which as Android software engineer Brad Fitzpatrick points out can cause stuttering animation and UI elements that don't respond to input as fast as we would like. Having an easy to use tool like this means that developers can find spots in their code that might contribute to a bottleneck and take care of the issue before the app goes out for testing.
While the changes that come with Gingerbread don't appear very big on the surface, all these little things add up. We've went over all the "showcase" changes, but these smaller additions are just as important. Gingerbread is shaping up to have great potential, and I can't wait to get my hands greasy with it. [Android Developers Blog]
