Android's gradient drawables: poor quality of screenshots in Eclipse

Question

I'm using drawables like the following one for backgrounds with a gradient:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:shape="rectangle">
    <gradient
        android:startColor="#ffffff"
        android:endColor="#cccccc"
        android:angle="-90"
        android:dither="true" />
</shape>

This results in a banded gradient on the emulator, and when I take a screenshot of the emulator (using Eclipse), the result is even poorer:

Why? And how to solve this problem? It is although I'm using android:dither="true" in the drawables' XML and setting this in the Activity's onCreate():

    getWindow().setFormat(PixelFormat.RGBA_8888);
    getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DITHER);

By the way, the blue part is the native action bar and the grey gradients are ListView rows with the background drawable.

Answer 1

Just to make sure everyone who reads this question sees the solution:

As davehale23 and Chris Stratton pointed out, the problem is not Eclipse or the app being "photographed". The problem is the Android emulator, which obviously uses a reduced bit depth.

So if one takes screenshots of an app, one should always use a real device.