Android: video playback will soon be smoother for less powerful smartphones

Google is expected to adopt a new AV1 decoder for Android to optimize video playback on less powerful smartphones.

We've been talking to you about AV1 for years, this video codec that is gradually being installed in all our devices, whether our smartphones, computers, or televisions. More efficient, it requires much less bandwidth than the h.264, h.265, and VP9 codecs for identical and sometimes better image quality.

Adopted by YouTube, Netflix, and other services and manufacturers, AV1 however requires specific hardware to be advantageous. So, if the new smartphones and GPUs of the last two years hardware decode AV1 videos using dedicated chips, this is not the case with older devices which rely on more demanding software acceleration using the CPU.

We've been talking to you about AV1 for years, this video codec that is gradually being installed in all our devices, whether our smartphones, computers, or televisions. More efficient, it requires much less bandwidth than the h.264, h.265, and VP9 codecs for identical and sometimes better image quality.

Adopted by YouTube, Netflix, and other services and manufacturers, AV1 however requires specific hardware to be advantageous. So, if the new smartphones and GPUs of the last two years hardware decode AV1 videos using dedicated chips, this is not the case with older devices which rely on more demanding software acceleration using the CPU.

According to information from Mishaal Rahman, Google is in the process of replacing its codec with that of VideoLAN in a future update planned for March for Google Play. However, we do not know if this implementation only concerns Android 14 or also previous versions of the OS.