Which takes longer time? Switching between the user & kernel modes or switching between two processes

As you can read on Wikipedia

With the advent of multi-core/hyperthreaded CPUs, systems with multiple CPUs, and "hibernating" operating systems, the TSC cannot be relied on to provide accurate results. The issue has two components: rate of tick and whether all cores (processors) have identical values in their time-keeping registers. There is no promise that the timestamp counters of multiple CPUs on a single motherboard will be synchronized. In such cases, programmers can only get reliable results by locking their code to a single CPU. Even then, the CPU speed may change due to power-saving measures taken by the OS or BIOS, or the system may be hibernated and later resumed (resetting the time stamp counter). Reliance on the time stamp counter also reduces portability, as other processors may not have a similar feature. Recent Intel processors include a constant rate TSC (identified by the constant_tsc flag in Linux's /proc/cpuinfo). With these processors the TSC reads at the processor's maximum rate regardless of the actual CPU running rate. While this makes time keeping more consistent, it can skew benchmarks, where a certain amount of spin-up time is spent at a lower clock rate before the OS switches the processor to the higher rate. This has the effect of making things seem like they require more processor cycles than they normally would.

One solution to this problem is to use the Handler.postDelayed() method. Some Google training materials suggest the same solution.

@Override
public void onClick(View v) {
    my_button.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.icon);

    Handler handler = new Handler(); 
    handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
         @Override 
         public void run() { 
              my_button.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.defaultcard); 
         } 
    }, 2000); 
}

However, some have pointed out that the solution above causes a memory leak because it uses a non-static inner and anonymous class which implicitly holds a reference to its outer class, the activity. This is a problem when the activity context is garbage collected.

A more complex solution that avoids the memory leak subclasses the Handler and Runnable with static inner classes inside the activity since static inner classes do not hold an implicit reference to their outer class:

private static class MyHandler extends Handler {}
private final MyHandler mHandler = new MyHandler();

public static class MyRunnable implements Runnable {
    private final WeakReference<Activity> mActivity;

    public MyRunnable(Activity activity) {
        mActivity = new WeakReference<>(activity);
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        Activity activity = mActivity.get();
        if (activity != null) {
            Button btn = (Button) activity.findViewById(R.id.button);
            btn.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.defaultcard);
        }
    }
}

private MyRunnable mRunnable = new MyRunnable(this);

public void onClick(View view) {
    my_button.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.icon);

    // Execute the Runnable in 2 seconds
    mHandler.postDelayed(mRunnable, 2000);
}

Note that the Runnable uses a WeakReference to the Activity, which is necessary in a static class that needs access to the UI.