I'm not so sure about that. Most of the pain points in Android development have to do with the complexity of the API and state management. Clojure would cost you the tight tooling integration and not do much to help. You don't often encounter the kind of gnarly concurrent algorithm stuff where Clojure shines in mobile dev.

Kotlin, on the other hand, modernizes Java, but should fit the Android toolkit like a glove thanks to Jetbrains backing. Presumably they're also designing it with Dalvik in mind, unlike Scala and Clojure.

I could be wrong though. If some of the memory/efficiency issues get ironed out I'll certainly try it.

Clojure on Android offers the possibility someday of live debugging on a customer's phone, very similar to the way pg talked about fixing customers' bugs while they are on the phone with tech support by attaching to the server with a REPL and fixing it live. I can imagine a popup on a phone saying "This app is having problems. Press here to connect to our tech team for live repair."

> You don't often encounter the kind of gnarly concurrent algorithm stuff where Clojure shines in mobile dev.

Perhaps this is an issue specific to me. I've been working on algorithm development for an Android app, and being tethered to Java has been driving me up the wall.

Sounds like a good problem to have. Most mobile apps are just shunting images and text between social services these days it seems.