Recently, more and more smartphones support the image format of "HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format, file extension .heic)". The first to bear the brunt is iPhone, which supports iOS11 in 2017, while the Android camp began with Android OS 9.0 (Pie) in 2018. Considering the time lag before the emergence of compatible terminals, it can be said that Android's HEIF support began in 2019.
The advantage of HEIF lies in its data compression ratio. Using "HEVC" with a high compression ratio as a codec (an encoding / decoding program to suppress the amount of data), the file size can be reduced by about half compared to JPEG, which is widely used to record / reproduce still images in the past. Because the same image quality can be maintained without changing the number of pixels, the advantage of using it is great.
HEIF is an international standard standardized by the Motion Picture expert Group (MPEG), similar to the "MPEG-2" adopted by DVD and digital television broadcasting. Not only smart phones, computers, televisions and other digital appliances are also constantly dealing with, the emergence of digital cameras recorded in HEIF is also a matter of time.
As for HEIF support for Android devices, as of September 2019, the function of the OS standard is "only display" status. The camera function of the Android is basically determined by the equipment vendor, so it is not surprising that the recordable devices in the HEIF are occupied only by the JPEG or the JPEG or RAW (DNG). Storage space can be saved by HEIF recording, so let's look forward to future devices.
