California: Technology giant Google recently rolled out an update to improve YouTube performance for Android users. However, users are facing severe battery issues with this update.
Performance improvements included improved playback performance at higher resolutions while lower power consumption on certain Android devices.
According to Forbes, some YouTube users have reported that their battery performance has deteriorated since Google enabled a software upgrade called dav1d in the YouTube app.
An update called dav1d was introduced in the March 2024 Google Play system update.
In a post on LinkedIn, Google software development manager Arif Dickey said that many devices using dav1d can decode 720p30.
Android devices eligible for the upgrade are those that do not have hardware support for the previously popular AV1 video format. Currently only newer devices have built-in support. And because of this, many older devices struggle to use YouTube without quickly draining the battery.
