How to measure elapsed time

I have a 10 and 20 question game. I need to count how much time is passed when a user finishes the game.

Timer T=new Timer();
T.scheduleAtFixedRate(new TimerTask() {         
    @Override
    public void run() {
        runOnUiThread(new Runnable()
        {                
            public void run()
            {
                countdown.setText(""+count);
                count++;                
            }
        });
    }
}, 1000, 1000);

I use this to stop the counter:

T.cancel();

Now I need two things:

A way how to count the elapsed time and store it in a variable
I need the final value to be a double, for example final score is: 15.49 seconds.

When the game starts:

long tStart = System.currentTimeMillis();

When the game ends:

long tEnd = System.currentTimeMillis();
long tDelta = tEnd - tStart;
double elapsedSeconds = tDelta / 1000.0;

Per the Android docs SystemClock.elapsedRealtime() is the recommend basis for general purpose interval timing. This is because, per the documentation, elapsedRealtime() is guaranteed to be monotonic, [...], so is the recommend basis for general purpose interval timing.

The SystemClock documentation has a nice overview of the various time methods and the applicable use cases for them.

SystemClock.elapsedRealtime() and SystemClock.elapsedRealtimeNanos() are the best bet for calculating general purpose elapsed time.
SystemClock.uptimeMillis() and System.nanoTime() are another possibility, but unlike the recommended methods, they don't include time in deep sleep. If this is your desired behavior then they are fine to use. Otherwise stick with elapsedRealtime().
Stay away from System.currentTimeMillis() as this will return "wall" clock time. Which is unsuitable for calculating elapsed time as the wall clock time may jump forward or backwards. Many things like NTP clients can cause wall clock time to jump and skew. This will cause elapsed time calculations based on currentTimeMillis() to not always be accurate.

When the game starts:

long startTime = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();

When the game ends:

long endTime = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();
long elapsedMilliSeconds = endTime - startTime;
double elapsedSeconds = elapsedMilliSeconds / 1000.0;

Also, Timer() is a best effort timer and will not always be accurate. So there will be an accumulation of timing errors over the duration of the game. To more accurately display interim time, use periodic checks to System.currentTimeMillis() as the basis of the time sent to setText(...).

Also, instead of using Timer, you might want to look into using TimerTask, this class is designed for what you want to do. The only problem is that it counts down instead of up, but that can be solved with simple subtraction.

Even better!

long tStart = System.nanoTime();
long tEnd = System.nanoTime();
long tRes = tEnd - tStart; // time in nanoseconds

Read the documentation about nanoTime()!

There are many ways to achieve this, but the most important consideration to measure elapsed time is to use System.nanoTime() and TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS as the time unit. Why should I do this? Well, it is because System.nanoTime() method returns a high-resolution time source, in nanoseconds since some reference point (i.e. Java Virtual Machine's start up).

This method can only be used to measure elapsed time and is not related to any other notion of system or wall-clock time.

For the same reason, it is recommended to avoid the use of the System.currentTimeMillis() method for measuring elapsed time. This method returns the wall-clock time, which may change based on many factors. This will be negative for your measurements.

Note that while the unit of time of the return value is a millisecond, the granularity of the value depends on the underlying operating system and may be larger. For example, many operating systems measure time in units of tens of milliseconds.

So here you have one solution based on the System.nanoTime() method, another one using Guava, and the final one Apache Commons Lang

public class TimeBenchUtil
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException
    {
        stopWatch();
        stopWatchGuava();
        stopWatchApacheCommons();
    }

    public static void stopWatch() throws InterruptedException
    {
        long endTime, timeElapsed, startTime = System.nanoTime();

        /* ... the code being measured starts ... */

        // sleep for 5 seconds
        TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(5);

        /* ... the code being measured ends ... */

        endTime = System.nanoTime();

        // get difference of two nanoTime values
        timeElapsed = endTime - startTime;

        System.out.println("Execution time in nanoseconds   : " + timeElapsed);
    }

    public static void stopWatchGuava() throws InterruptedException
    {
        // Creates and starts a new stopwatch
        Stopwatch stopwatch = Stopwatch.createStarted();

        /* ... the code being measured starts ... */

        // sleep for 5 seconds
        TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(5);
        /* ... the code being measured ends ... */

        stopwatch.stop(); // optional

        // get elapsed time, expressed in milliseconds
        long timeElapsed = stopwatch.elapsed(TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS);

        System.out.println("Execution time in nanoseconds   : " + timeElapsed);
    }

    public static void stopWatchApacheCommons() throws InterruptedException
    {
        StopWatch stopwatch = new StopWatch();
        stopwatch.start();

        /* ... the code being measured starts ... */

        // sleep for 5 seconds
        TimeUnit.SECONDS.sleep(5);

        /* ... the code being measured ends ... */

        stopwatch.stop();    // Optional

        long timeElapsed = stopwatch.getNanoTime();

        System.out.println("Execution time in nanoseconds   : " + timeElapsed);
    }
}

How to measure elapsed time

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