Some Android users have experienced excessive battery drain since a recent update
Google recently issued a significant video streaming performance upgrade for Android devices. Still, several YouTube users are far from happy about it.
The change comes in the form of a switch to a new, highly-optimized video codec called dav1d, which dramatically improves playback performance and lowers power consumption on Android devices that don’t have built-in hardware support for the increasingly popular AV1 video format—which, currently, very few do. Unfortunately, some YouTube users report vastly reduced battery performance since Google enabled dav1d in the Android app.
Dav1d Offers Huge Performance Gains
Google software development manager Arif Dikici says, “Most devices can decode 720p30 in software using dav1d. Apps need to opt into dav1d to benefit for now yet soon it will become the default av1 software decoder.”
I explained some of the dav1d's potential performance improvements in an earlier article. In short, it allows compatible devices to handle AV1 video at higher resolutions and frame rates than the previous “libgav1” codec without stuttering.
YouTube Negatively Impacted
Since the dav1d codec arrived in the March 2024 Google Play System Update, Google has decided to make the YouTube Android app use AV1 mode by default, even for devices that don’t support hardware-accelerated decoding of this format.
This change has caused problems for Android users with less powerful devices that can struggle to decode AV1 video, especially if they don’t have the dav1d update installed.
As reported in this Reddit thread, some are now reporting vastly increased battery usage and dropped frames when viewing YouTube content in the app. However, others have reported that YouTube has since stopped using AV1 format unless hardware decoding support is present.
Support for AV1 video will become increasingly important over time. While dav1d allows more devices to handle the format at higher quality levels, software-based decoding still negatively impacts a device's processor and battery. Hence, the recent introduction of hardware AV1 decoders in chipsets such as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Apple’s A17 Pro.
According to dav1d creators, VideoLAN, future updates to the codec will deliver up to 12% better performance. However, this is unlikely enough to fully alleviate issues faced by less-powerful devices when decoding high-resolution YouTube video in AV1 format.
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