Build trie faster

Just build a large String[] and sort it. Then you can use binary search to find the location of a String. You can also do a query based on prefixes without too much work.

Prefix look-up example:

Compare method:

private static int compare(String string, String prefix) {
    if (prefix.length()>string.length()) return Integer.MIN_VALUE;

    for (int i=0; i<prefix.length(); i++) {
        char s = string.charAt(i);
        char p = prefix.charAt(i);
        if (s!=p) {
            if (p<s) {
                // prefix is before string
                return -1;
            }
            // prefix is after string
            return 1;
        }
    }
    return 0;
}

Finds an occurrence of the prefix in the array and returns it's location (MIN or MAX are mean not found)

private static int recursiveFind(String[] strings, String prefix, int start, int end) {
    if (start == end) {
        String lastValue = strings[start]; // start==end
        if (compare(lastValue,prefix)==0)
            return start; // start==end
        return Integer.MAX_VALUE;
    }

    int low = start;
    int high = end + 1; // zero indexed, so add one.
    int middle = low + ((high - low) / 2);

    String middleValue = strings[middle];
    int comp = compare(middleValue,prefix);
    if (comp == Integer.MIN_VALUE) return comp;
    if (comp==0)
        return middle;
    if (comp>0)
        return recursiveFind(strings, prefix, middle + 1, end);
    return recursiveFind(strings, prefix, start, middle - 1);
}

Gets a String array and prefix, prints out occurrences of prefix in array

private static boolean testPrefix(String[] strings, String prefix) {
    int i = recursiveFind(strings, prefix, 0, strings.length-1);
    if (i==Integer.MAX_VALUE || i==Integer.MIN_VALUE) {
        // not found
        return false;
    }
    // Found an occurrence, now search up and down for other occurrences
    int up = i+1;
    int down = i;
    while (down>=0) {
        String string = strings[down];
        if (compare(string,prefix)==0) {
            System.out.println(string);
        } else {
            break;
        }
        down--;
    }
    while (up<strings.length) {
        String string = strings[up];
        if (compare(string,prefix)==0) {
            System.out.println(string);
        } else {
            break;
        }
        up++;
    }
    return true;
}

Double-Array tries are very fast to save/load because all data is stored in linear arrays. They are also very fast to lookup, but the insertions can be costly. I bet there is a Java implementation somewhere.

Also, if your data is static (i.e. you don't update it on phone) consider DAFSA for your task. It is one of the most efficient data structures for storing words (must be better than "standard" tries and radix tries both for size and for speed, better than succinct tries for speed, often better than succinct tries for size). There is a good C++ implementation: dawgdic - you can use it to build DAFSA from command line and then use a Java reader for the resulting data structure (example implementation is here).

You could store your trie as an array of nodes, with references to child nodes replaced with array indices. Your root node would be the first element. That way, you could easily store/load your trie from simple binary or text format.

public class SimpleTrie {
    public class TrieNode {
        boolean valid;
        int[] children;
    }
    private TrieNode[] nodes;
    private int numberOfNodes;

    private TrieNode getNode() {
        TrieNode t = nodes[++numberOnNodes];
        return t;
    }
}