[android-developers] Fast displaying and filtering of installed apps

I'm trying to list all the installed apps on a device using
getInstalledPackages, and this gives returns me a List of all
packages, including system apps and non-launchable apps.

I have 3 questions:

1. getInstalledPackages seem to take quite a bit of time to detect and
display all apps(varies from 10s to more than half a minute for 200+
apps). Is it possible to make this faster? Titanium Backup seems to
list all apps instantaneously when I tap the "Backup/Restore" tab.
Android system's own "Manage Applications" also seems to be much
quicker at displaying the apps.

2. I would like to have a way to filter the list so that I can in
various tabs I can display apps based on their properties, e.g. system
vs user app, launchable vs non-launchable, etc. I know how to do this
via the applicationInfo.flags, but how do I do this without running
getInstalledPackages in the tab activity and incurring the detection
phase all over again? How can I pass the List from 1 tab to another
once it's been initially generated? Bundles seem to work only for
primitives. Should I use Parcelables?

3. Is there any way of saving the result so that when I come back to
the app after a while, and Android has removed my app from memory, I
don't need to regenerated? Perhaps using savedInstanceState or
something?

Thanks.

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