I ran this build once again now making sure nothing heavy was running in the background. It took 11 minutes and 5 seconds. The fans did audibly spin up and all CPU cores were 100% loaded (asitop output: https://i.imgur.com/OY36RVB.png). Here's the breakdown of how long each build step took: https://i.imgur.com/TcdfA4L.png
Do keep in mind though that the NDK (which takes like 90% of the build time) is still built for x86. So the 4x difference is mighty impressive when you consider that you're comparing an old x86 CPU running its native code to ARM emulating x86, even if doing so via translation.
Hm, no, android studio itself runs natively, and the JDK I'm using is native too, from adoptium.net. Most android build tools (d8, r8, etc) are written in java so they run natively. Building the java part in any project is really fast. Like, freakishly fast. 3 seconds to compile a thousand classes, WAT?!
Do keep in mind though that the NDK (which takes like 90% of the build time) is still built for x86. So the 4x difference is mighty impressive when you consider that you're comparing an old x86 CPU running its native code to ARM emulating x86, even if doing so via translation.