It will help, for example, to provide the most optimal graphics settings in games.
The Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) for Android 12 is now up-to-date and available to see what’s new in this latest version, including the definition of device performance.
With this Android update , which was launched at the beginning of October in its AOSP version, a smartphone or tablet that has this operating system can certify that it has “a set of capabilities that go beyond the basic requirements”, as indicated in the document presented by the company.
This means that as of Android 12 , Android cell phones will specify the level of performance they support and, even receiving a new version of said operating system, the performance level of its previous version can be maintained.
Although each version of Android includes news and technical improvements, the idea is to make it easier for developers to optimize their applications with a single command that does not depend on the version of Android available to the user.
How will it work?
This, for example, would show that a video game could downgrade the graphics for Android 12 cell phones that do not meet the requirements included in Google’s CDD , but could use better quality graphics on those that do have more advanced performance.
Based on the new performance class, called ‘Performance’ , performance classes are backward compatible. This means that a device that initially supports Android 12 can be updated with the next version, Android 13, but keep its CDD 12 if it does not meet the requirements of class 13.
The Android cell phone CDD will focus on three areas:
Media: Concurrent Codec Sessions, Latency from Codec Start, Missing Frames, Encoding Quality.
Camera: resolution, start and capture latency, video stabilization support, HDR photos.
Generic: Memory, write / read storage, screen resolution, screen density.
In short, the novelty holloween that Android 12 introduces is that it depends on the initial capacity to be able to join a better version with an extra power or keep the original. On the contrary, a lower performance class will never be able to offer a ‘premium’ experience of its apps for the user if it does not meet the requirements of the later version, since the performance level does not support it.