Android × Media
Android Media
We track 19 Android Media case studies from 13 engineering teams. Meta, Netflix and Badoo write about it most. Many posts also cover UI Performance and Animation. The posts run from 2017 to 2026. The newest is from January 2026.
Android Media articles 1–19 of 19
From PNGs to GIFs: Mastering Animated Images in Android with Coil
Pavithra Chamod J from PickMe Engineering tackles a common Android performance trap: GIFs that look great but silently drain memory and tank your UI responsiveness.
Reddit: Making Android Videos Super Fast
Reddit cut video loading time in half on Android. Here's how they did it with ExoPlayer optimization, player pooling, and smart prefetching strategies.
Cross-Platform TV Apps with React Native for tvOS, Android TV, and Tizen
Callstack just dropped their Ultimate Guide to React Native TV Development 2026. If you're building streaming apps, this changes the game for cross-platform TV.
Media3 1.8.0 Release: New Features and Improvements
Toni Heidenreich from Google just dropped Media3 1.8.0, and the scrubbing mode alone will change how your users interact with video playback. This release packs performance wins that directly impact user experi...
Bringing HDR photo support to Instagram and Threads
Meta serves trillions of image downloads daily. Now Instagram and Threads are pushing the boundaries of mobile photo quality with HDR support.
Media on Swiggy's Mobile Apps
Swiggy's mobile apps serve millions of users across wildly different devices and network conditions. How do you deliver high-quality images and videos without killing performance or burning through bandwidth co...
Bringing HDR video to Reels
Meta just solved a problem most users never notice: making HDR video look great on billions of devices with wildly different capabilities.
Why xHE-AAC is being embraced at Meta
Meta serves billions of users with wildly inconsistent audio uploads. Their solution? A codec that adapts audio quality in real time without burning in compression.
Lottie vs Rive: Optimizing Mobile App Animation
Animations can make or break your app's performance. Choosing between Lottie and Rive isn't just about features: it's about understanding the tradeoffs that impact your users' experience.
Improving the Player on Android
Pinterest's Android team faced a unique challenge: playing multiple videos simultaneously in a two-column grid without killing performance. Here's how they optimized ExoPlayer to handle it.
Image Loading and Optimization on Android
Arlind Hajredinaj from SoundCloud reveals how a beautiful UI redesign accidentally tanked their image loading performance. The fix? A deep dive into Android optimization that every mobile team should read.
Optimizing the Aural Experience on Android Devices with xHE-AAC
Phill Williams and Vijay Gondi from Netflix reveal how a codec upgrade is solving one of mobile streaming's most annoying problems: constantly adjusting your volume.
WebRTC on Android: Enabling Hardware Encoding Across Devices
Ivan Dyatlov from Bumble Tech discovered that WebRTC's H.264 hardware encoding failed on most Android 5.x devices despite official support claims. His deep dive into codec implementations reveals why video call...
Madman: An Open-Source Ads Framework for Android
Anirudh Ramanan from Flipkart reveals how Google's IMA library was causing 15% of users to bail before videos even started. Their solution? Build their own ads framework from scratch.
Bringing AV1 Streaming to Netflix Members’ TVs | by Netflix Technology Blog | Netflix TechBlog
Netflix just brought AV1 streaming to TVs, marking a major milestone for the royalty-free codec. The result? Measurably better streaming for millions of members.
Best Practices for Video Playback in Android
Saurabh Arora from Viki reveals the video playback mistakes that shock users and kill engagement. Most Android apps get at least 3 of these wrong.
Performance comparison of video coding standards: an adaptive streaming perspective
Joel Sole and the Netflix encoding team reveal why codec comparison studies often contradict each other—and how they're fixing the problem. Their findings challenge conventional wisdom about H.264, H.265, and V...
Reactive Camera Implementation with Camera2 API on Android - Part 1
Arkady Gamza from Bumble Tech tackles Android's notoriously complex Camera2 API by wrapping it in RxJava2 observables. The result? A reactive camera implementation that turns callback hell into elegant, readabl...
Motion Recognition for Fitness on Android Wear
Edward Dale from Freeletics shows how a simple peak detection algorithm can count pushup reps on Android Wear with surprising accuracy. The secret? Freeletics-style pushups include a hand lift that creates a pe...