Skip to main content

Mobile Performance - Why Measuring Network Is Not Enough

Amichai Nitsan

Why isn’t it enough to simply measure network performance? In this post, I will try to explain how UI response time is different than network performance.

Let's say you own a mobile application for hotel reservations. This is a highly competitive market, and you are trying to achieve the best user experience and make your application as fast as possible.

Processing Time

When a user enters their selection for hotel search, the application contacts the server and asks for the relevant search results. For efficiency, the server sends the results in a very efficient and compact format.
When the application receives the data, it has to process it.

First, it might need to decompress the data.

Secondly, the hotel’s list has to be sorted per user preferences. If hotel images are also displayed, the images must be opened and displayed. This processing takes time. And sometimes, it takes a lot of time.

The processing time also varies depending on the device. When the display is larger (as it is on tablets), your app needs to process more items because more items are visible. It also takes longer on weaker CPU devices. Each user experiences the performance differently, even if network time is the same.

Simply put, UI Response Time is the time elapsed from when the user clicks the hotel search button until the screen is loaded with the search results. No more, no less. This is the time you want to see in your monitoring tool.

Background Operations

Suppose your hotel search application has a great feature – once every ten minutes, it contacts a few external servers for price alerts. This is a background process – it will happen regardless of what the user is doing with the application.

Most importantly – these network operations don’t affect user experience at all! When you try to prioritize your work according to the monitoring results, it is very important to distinguish between these operations, and give them lower priority than operations that actually impact user experience.

Out-Of-Screen Content

Here’s another trick your developers are using to improve user experience: when a search request is sent, only part of the data is retrieved from the server. Usually it is just enough data to fully occupy the screen, and a little bit more (for scrolling).

But what about the rest of the data? In the old days of Web 1.0, a long list of results was divided into pages, with “next” and “previous” buttons to navigate between them. More modern applications are using a different approach – they will continue to fetch the rest of the search results in the background, allowing the user to interact with what they already see on the screen. This is probably one of the biggest benefits of Web 2.0.

Measuring the UI response times of such actions is very tricky. The reported time should be from the user’s perspective – meaning the report has to ignore network operations that don’t result directly in screen rendering. If the user selects one of the hotels for details, the results of those out-of-screen operations have no effect on the UI response time.

Look for a tool that will monitor your mobile application’s real user experience - and more specifically user-perceived UI response time.

Amichai Nitsan is a Senior Architect at HP Software.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Mobile Performance - Why Measuring Network Is Not Enough

Amichai Nitsan

Why isn’t it enough to simply measure network performance? In this post, I will try to explain how UI response time is different than network performance.

Let's say you own a mobile application for hotel reservations. This is a highly competitive market, and you are trying to achieve the best user experience and make your application as fast as possible.

Processing Time

When a user enters their selection for hotel search, the application contacts the server and asks for the relevant search results. For efficiency, the server sends the results in a very efficient and compact format.
When the application receives the data, it has to process it.

First, it might need to decompress the data.

Secondly, the hotel’s list has to be sorted per user preferences. If hotel images are also displayed, the images must be opened and displayed. This processing takes time. And sometimes, it takes a lot of time.

The processing time also varies depending on the device. When the display is larger (as it is on tablets), your app needs to process more items because more items are visible. It also takes longer on weaker CPU devices. Each user experiences the performance differently, even if network time is the same.

Simply put, UI Response Time is the time elapsed from when the user clicks the hotel search button until the screen is loaded with the search results. No more, no less. This is the time you want to see in your monitoring tool.

Background Operations

Suppose your hotel search application has a great feature – once every ten minutes, it contacts a few external servers for price alerts. This is a background process – it will happen regardless of what the user is doing with the application.

Most importantly – these network operations don’t affect user experience at all! When you try to prioritize your work according to the monitoring results, it is very important to distinguish between these operations, and give them lower priority than operations that actually impact user experience.

Out-Of-Screen Content

Here’s another trick your developers are using to improve user experience: when a search request is sent, only part of the data is retrieved from the server. Usually it is just enough data to fully occupy the screen, and a little bit more (for scrolling).

But what about the rest of the data? In the old days of Web 1.0, a long list of results was divided into pages, with “next” and “previous” buttons to navigate between them. More modern applications are using a different approach – they will continue to fetch the rest of the search results in the background, allowing the user to interact with what they already see on the screen. This is probably one of the biggest benefits of Web 2.0.

Measuring the UI response times of such actions is very tricky. The reported time should be from the user’s perspective – meaning the report has to ignore network operations that don’t result directly in screen rendering. If the user selects one of the hotels for details, the results of those out-of-screen operations have no effect on the UI response time.

Look for a tool that will monitor your mobile application’s real user experience - and more specifically user-perceived UI response time.

Amichai Nitsan is a Senior Architect at HP Software.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...