The AV1 codec currently used in Android systems is mainly the libgav1 codec developed by Google. If the hardware supports AV1 codec, hardware acceleration can be used to decode AV1 content, thereby improving performance and reducing power consumption. However, if used on hardware that does not support AV1, the performance of the libgav1 decoder is not very good, and the actual performance is not as good as the libdav1d codec developed by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia).
Most of the content of libdav1d is written based on the ARMv8 chip, and the calculation efficiency is very high, which can reduce a lot of performance overhead and play content more smoothly on low-end hardware.
In November 2023, the libdav1d codec was included in the AOSP project, and Google was testing the use of libdav1d instead of libgav1. Now it seems that Google's testing work has basically been completed.
According to news released by AndroidAuthority, two anonymous sources revealed that Google will replace the AV1 codec on the Android system with libdav1d through a Google Play system update. The specific update time will be around March 2024.
However, considering that Android 14 only requires OEMs to include the AV1 codec, it is not clear whether only Android 14 will update the codec in March or other versions such as Android 10 will also update.
Google has built the AV1 codec into AOSP since Android 10, but it was always optional at the time, and OEMs did not need to force support for the codec.