Lollipop’s Encryption Takes a Hefty Toll

The new full-disk encryption feature that's enabled by default in Android 5.0 Lollipop comes at a hefty price in terms of performance, according to a recent benchmark report.

In fact, when full-disk encryption is enabled, random read performance drops by 62.9 percent, while random write performance falls by 50.5 percent, AnandTech reported late last week. Sequential read performance, meanwhile, drops by a whopping 80.7 percent.

The bottom line is "serious negative implications for device performance in any situation where applications are reading or writing to disk," the report concludes.

With full-disk encryption, all information is encrypted before it's written to disk. Accessing the information requires decryption, which is protected by the device's lockscreen passcode.

A Nexus 6 was the device evaluated in this latest benchmark report. Normally it's not available without full-disk encryption, but Motorola reportedly provided a build with the feature disabled for the purpose of comparison testing.

Instructions for disabling Lollipop's encryption feature on the Nexus 6 are now available on the XDA developers' forum.

"There's a cost that comes with encrypting and decrypting stuff," said Ronald Gruia, director of emerging telecoms at Frost & Sullivan.

In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks and "rampant security breaches" throughout the year, Apple took the lead and closed the "final back door" in its platform with iOS 8, he told TechNewsWorld.

Then, "Google had to match that," Gruia said. "It had offered full-disk encryption since version 3.0 'Honeycomb,' but only now is it on by default."

In general, the idea is to improve privacy by making snooping more and more difficult -- including even for law enforcement, Gruia noted.

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Lollipop's Encryption Takes a Hefty Toll