The AV1 video codec has already brought us significantly smaller files and better efficiency. However, the upcoming AV2 codec brings even better news for everyone who watches and records video content on mobile devices.
The current AV1 video codec has been around since 2018 and offers far better efficiency and higher image quality than its predecessors. Platforms YouTube and Netflix have long supported AV1, while Pixel 10 phones were the first to enable direct video recording in this format. However, the successor is now officially here and has just passed a key milestone on the way to our devices.ž
Organization Alliance for Open Media recently announced the final specifications of the AV2 codec, reports Neowin. This brings us one step closer to its commercial application.
What does AV2 bring compared to AV1
When it comes to the efficiency of the new codec, the data promises a serious jump:
- Official alliance tests record savings and efficiency gains of 28.6% to 32.6% depending on the metric
- Jean-Baptiste Kempf, head of the VLC project, states that AV2 brings an average improvement of around 25%, while some tests show significantly higher percentages.
In practice, this is great news for streaming video on compatible devices. This means you can expect exactly the same video quality with 25% to 32% less internet consumption compared to AV1. Or drastically better image quality if you use the same amount of data flow as before.
Huge hardware complexity
On the other hand, advanced technology takes its toll. Kempf reports that playback of AV2 video is approximately five times more complex than the AV1 format. This means that software running on today’s hardware will seriously struggle to decode AV2 video in real time, unless extremely careful optimization specific to the processor architecture itself is done.
Alliance for Open Media
Android AuthorityTo solve this problem, Kempf and his team are working hard on the dav2d software AV2 decoder. This is the direct successor of the famous dav1d AV1 decoder currently used in VLC player, Windows, Android and numerous other operating systems.
History teaches us that the transition to a new standard could take time. AV1 was launched in 2018 and YouTube shyly embraced it the same year. Netflix waited until 2020.
Hardware-wise, the 2019 MediaTek Dimensity 1000 was the first phone chipset with hardware support for AV1 decoding. Qualcomm introduced support only at the end of 2022 with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. For devices without an adequate chip, software decoding was used, which Google eventually made mandatory for Android 14.
It is interesting that only with the launch of the Pixel 10 series did we get the first smartphones that support AV1 encoding (the ability to record video in this format). Other manufacturers have not yet taken this route en masse. For example, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the vivo X300 Ultra implemented it instead APV codec. Unlike AV1 and AV2, APV is focused on professional video quality, not drastic file size reduction.
In any case, we are happy that AV2 is one step closer to commercial reality. It remains to be hoped that phone manufacturers will adopt it for video recording in the future. It is one of the best ways to save precious phone memory space, says Android Authority.