Benefit of using Parcelable instead of serializing object
As I understand, Bundle and Parcelable belongs to the way Android performs serialization in. It is used for example in passing data between activities. But I wonder, if there are any benefits in using Parcelable instead of classic serialization in case of saving state of my business objects to the internal memory for example? Will it be simpler or faster than the classic way? Where should I use classic serialization and where better to use bundles?
Answer
From "Pro Android 2"
NOTE: Seeing Parcelable might have triggered the question, why is Android not using the built-in Java serialization mechanism? It turns out that the Android team came to the conclusion that the serialization in Java is far too slow to satisfy Android’s interprocess-communication requirements. So the team built the Parcelable solution. The Parcelable approach requires that you explicitly serialize the members of your class, but in the end, you get a much faster serialization of your objects.
Also realize that Android provides two mechanisms that allow you to pass data to another process. The first is to pass a bundle to an activity using an intent, and the second is to pass a Parcelable to a service. These two mechanisms are not interchangeable and should not be confused. That is, the Parcelable is not meant to be passed to an activity. If you want to start an activity and pass it some data, use a bundle. Parcelable is meant to be used only as part of an AIDL definition.