Video Playback

Technically, some mobile phones have had video capabilities previous to 2004. In reality, though, video on mobile phones didn't really take off in the US until the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Since then, every smartphone worth its name has supported video playback, if not video capture. As we'll explore throughout this chapter, Android is no exception.

Supported Formats

Before we get into the specific mechanics of how to play video, we should look at the types of video that we can play. Although Android supports playing back a variety of video formats and the types it can play back is slowly increasing, it certainly doesn't cover the wide range of video formats available.

In general Android's support is consistent with ...

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