Can Smartphones Save Photos Directly as AVIF?

While modern smartphone operating systems increasingly support the AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) format for viewing, web browsing, and editing, native camera apps that can capture and save still photos directly to AVIF remain extremely rare. Today's mobile industry overwhelmingly relies on HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) and standard JPEG as default capture formats, though a few notable exceptions exist on the Android platform.

Native Support on Android

Android introduced native decoding support for AVIF in Android 12, allowing devices to open and display these files system-wide. However, operating system support does not automatically translate into native camera capture capabilities.

Most major manufacturers choose different paths for their default camera apps:

• Sony: Sony is the primary pioneer of native AVIF capture. Selected flagship smartphones, such as the Xperia 1 IV, Xperia 1 V, and newer Xperia models, explicitly allow users to set AVIF as the still photo capture format directly inside the native Photography Pro app.
• Samsung: Samsung utilizes HEIC for high-efficiency capture. While Samsung devices running modern One UI versions can decode AVIF and convert formats in the Gallery app, the native camera app does not offer AVIF as a direct shooting format.
• Google Pixel: Google relies on standard JPEG, Ultra HDR (which embeds an HDR gainmap inside a standard JPEG container), and RAW (DNG). Pixel camera apps do not currently provide a toggle to save directly to AVIF.

Native Support on Apple iOS

Apple does not support native AVIF capture in the iOS Camera app. Since iOS 11, Apple has standardized on HEIC (utilizing the HEVC compression standard) alongside JPEG and Apple ProRAW. Although iOS 16 introduced the ability to view, decode, and save AVIF files from the web or third-party tools, the default iPhone Camera app captures photos exclusively in HEIC, JPEG, or ProRAW.

Why AVIF Capture Is Not Widely Adopted

The slow transition to direct AVIF capture comes down to two primary technical factors:

1. Hardware Acceleration: Smartphone System-on-Chips (SoCs) from Qualcomm, Apple, and MediaTek have featured dedicated hardware encoders for HEVC/H.265 for years, making HEIC capture instantaneous with minimal battery consumption. Dedicated hardware encoding for AV1 is much newer and still not universal across all mobile silicon.
2. Ecosystem Momentum: HEIC already solved the high-efficiency storage challenge for mobile devices nearly a decade ago, leaving little urgency for manufacturers to replace it with AVIF for local camera capture.

In summary, unless you are using specific flagship devices like recent Sony Xperia models, modern smartphones cannot natively save captured still photos directly as AVIF out of the box.