The SVG format still isn’t currently supported by Android (though read on below to learn of a workaround using Google’s Vector Asset Studio).Īlthough I wasn’t able to find official word from the Android team about the lack of support for SVG, it is fair to assume their reluctance to embrace the standard may be due, at least in part, to performance issues. SVG, the default vector image representation format for many platforms has been developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1999. No SVG For Youīefore Android API version 21 (Lollipop), vector image representation had to be done manually or through the use of various third party libraries working with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). This effect is amplified in creating animations instead of having multiple series of bitmap images for different display densities, you can use just your XML files. This not only saves file space, development time and effort, but it also simplifies your application’s maintenance. Vector drawables solve this problem as you only need to create your image once in an XML file and take advantage of its scalability across all display densities for different devices.

In Android Lollipop ( API level 21), Google finally included native support for vector image assets, allowing for images to be represented geometrically as a set of points, lines, and curves, as well as their associated color information. Unfortunately, this approach leads to additional time and effort to create the extra assets and more space taken up by your application’s apk file (and the device) to store the assets. In Android, the typical solution to this problem is to create multiple versions of your images with different dpi (dots per inch) values to support the different screen sizes and densities of the devices your application will run on. A bitmap image may look great on a smaller device screen but significantly lose its quality when scaled up for a larger device. While bitmaps offer better performance, due to the computational costs of building and rendering vector images, they also have a severe limitation in terms of image scalability. A bitmap represents images as a set of pixels in a grid. The de facto way to represent images in Android has been using a bitmap. Application developers must account for these differences to create a consistent user experience across all devices. When it was designed, Android designed to run across many devices with different screen sizes, display resolutions, and pixel densities. One of the things what confuse many new Android developers is how to support multiple screen sizes in their applications.

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