Does using final for variables in Java improve garbage collection?

Question

Today my colleagues and me have a discussion about the usage of the final keyword in Java to improve the garbage collection.

For example, if you write a

Answer 1

The only time I prefer declaring local variables as final is when:

• I have to make them final so that they can be shared with some anonymous class (for example: creating daemon thread and let it access some value from enclosing method)

• I want to make them final (for example: some value that shouldn't/doesn't get overridden by mistake)

Does they help in fast garbage collection?
AFAIK a object becomes a candidate of GC collection if it has zero strong references to it and in that case as well there is no guarantee that they will be immediately garbage collected . In general, a strong reference is said to die when it goes out of scope or user explicitly reassign it to null reference, thus, declaring them final means that reference will continue to exists till the method exists (unless its scope is explicitly narrowed down to a specific inner block {}) because you can't reassign final variables (i.e. can't reassign to null). So I think w.r.t Garbage Collection 'final' may introduce a unwanted possible delay so one must be little careful in defining there scope as that controls when they will become candidate for GC.