What is distributed tracing in OpenTelemetry?

It's timing and linking requests across services — spans chain via headers, collected in Tempo for visualization.

How do you instrument Android for tracing?

Manual via OkHttp/Retrofit interceptors; add attributes like userId, propagate trace headers — no auto-agent.

Does Grafana Tempo replace Jaeger or Zipkin?

Kinda — similar collector, but Grafana-native for Loki/Prom links. Cheaper at scale if you buy in.

1.91 Seconds: The Hidden Delays Killing Your Full-Stack App, Exposed by Tracing

Your Android app's API call drags for 1.91 seconds across services. Distributed tracing finally shows why, but is Grafana's stack the profit-chasing savior it claims?

theAIcatchup Apr 08, 2026 3 min read

Visual trace diagram showing 1.91s span chain from Android app to Spring Boot backend and database queries

⚡ Key Takeaways

Distributed tracing reveals hidden delays like 1.91s API chains from Android to DB. 𝕏
Grafana Tempo + OpenTelemetry glues traces, logs, metrics—but watch for enterprise upsells. 𝕏
Android needs manual instrumentation; tag user/device for real debugging power. 𝕏

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theAIcatchup

Community-driven. Code-first.

#OpenTelemetry #distributed tracing #full-stack observability #grafana tempo #observability

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Originally reported by Dev.to

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