Why don't we use nodpi for all drawables?

Question

I'm not talking about the resource files like .9.png or .xml, but rather image files for icons and backgrounds. Isn't it much easier or more reliable to create a high definition image, put it inside of the nodpi folder, and then use properties like fitXY to fit the image inside a given space? Why go through all the trouble of creating a scaled version for mdpi, hdpi, xdpi, etc?

Answer 1

Scaling down a large image to a smaller one before using it as an ImageView's source is more computationally expensive than being able to pull a properly sized one from a proper DPI bucket.

While it may be easier to slap your resources into a single drawable folder and call it good, it will cause performance issues when rendering assets on lower DPI devices, which tend to have less powerful CPUs anyway.