Stadia apk Findings 4.16: 1440p and AV1

Stadia Controller and App

Over the last couple months, we at StadiaDosage have been doing our own Stadia apk findings for the Stadia Android app to discover potential upcoming features in the app.

In an attempt to be responsible human beings, we’d like to note that everything on this list should be taken with a grain of salt as it is subject to a lot of speculation/interpretation and may reflect behind the scenes features or features that never end up getting released. In addition, this list certainly does not represent everything Google is working on for the app. We don’t have access to Google’s private repositories where most development is surely taking place.

Because of the use of flutter/dart these apk breakdowns are a little more complicated than most (involving lots of shell commands and string processing). So, you should consider these particularly imprecise.

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With all those caveats said, here we go!


Stadia apk 4.16 (May 17, 2022)

This apk is pretty hot on the heels of the 4.13 update from just a few weeks ago. But, we do see a few new goodies in tow.

We see more strings around touch gamepad custimization:

  • enableTouchGamepadCustomizationMenu

It looks like there will be some tweaks for contacting Stadia from the app:

  • onContactStadiaClicked
  • get:onContactStadiaClicked
  • buildContactStadiaLink
  • enableGoogleHelpFlag
  • helpWithFeedbackAndroid

It also looks like there could be some new UI styling used somewhere in the app in the form of “Hero Cards”:

  • HeroCard.PlayerAvatar
  • HeroCard.CardContent
  • HeroCard.GameThumbnail
  • HeroCard_CardText
  • HeroCard

We’re not sure what these will be used for, but if they are like hero cards in Microsoft’s world, they could look like this.

Next, in addition to strings like MEDIASAMPLE_H264_* and MEDIASAMPLE_VP9_*, we now see strings with AV1:

  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_1080P_HDR
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_2K_HDR
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_ULTRALOW
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_1080P_MQ
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_HIGH8
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_HIGH_HDR
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_4K
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_720P_HDR
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_MED
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_720P8
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_LOW
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_1080P
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_4K_HDR
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_LOW_HDR
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_ULTRALOW_HDR8
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_720P_MQ
  • MEDIASAMPLE_AV1_MED_HDR

These probably don’t relate directly to Stadia, but rather indicate AV1 support being built up in some of the underlying libraries. It would definitely be exciting to see AV1 codec support hit the platform, but we wouldn’t yet consider the above as strong evidence for this being imminent.

There is also another new string which adds a new data rate

  • Data usage may reach 14.4 GB/hr

This could be related to higher quality AV1 stream or could be related to higher resolution – 1440p strings been mentioned in the app for awhile now. 14.4 GB/hr is higher than the 12.6 GB/hr listed currently for 1080p.

Finally there is a new layout for a preferences dialog.

See all of our Stadia apk findings articles here.

Jack Deslippe

Jack Deslippe is an HPC professional with a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley. As a hobby, he is passionate about consumer technology and Cloud Gaming in particular. He volunteers as an editor for Cloud Dosage in his spare time. See the games Jack is Playing at ExoPhase. Like his content? You can follow Jack on Threads: @jackdeslippe and Buy Jack a Beer.

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