Samsung devices rendering problems when changing text size

Question

After changing a TextView font size multiple times on some Samsung devices (with API >= 21), the font is rendered as rectangles.

The problem happens when the GPU unit is causing this exception:

10-23 14:14:36.590 1184-1243/com.android.testrendering E/Adreno-ES20: <TexSubImageLoad:405>: Texture miplevel doesn't exist. Returning GL_INVALID_OPERATION!
10-23 14:14:36.590 1184-1243/com.android.testrendering E/OpenGLRenderer: GL error:  GL_INVALID_OPERATION

Code to replicate the behavior (source here ):

MainActivity.java

private int textSize = 50;
private int delta = 1;
private Runnable changeFontSize;

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

    final TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.text);
    textView.setText("qwertyuioplk,mjhnbgfvcdsxza1234567890");

    final Handler mHandler = new Handler();

    changeFontSize = new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            textView.setTextSize(textSize);
            textSize += delta;
            if (textSize > 200) {
                delta = -1;
            }
            if (textSize < 50) {
                delta = 1;
            }
            mHandler.postDelayed(changeFontSize, 25);
        }
   };
   changeFontSize.run();
}

activity_main.xml

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"

xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent"
android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
tools:context=".MainActivity">

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/text"
    android:text="@string/hello_world"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

</RelativeLayout>

Any other solution than the one found by me?

Answer 1

If you experience this problem, then the solution I found was to temporarily change the hardware acceleration to software acceleration for the TextView.

textView.setLayerType(View.LAYER_TYPE_SOFTWARE, null);

or

android:layerType="software"

This solution solves the square rendering problem, however depending on your animation you will notice a slowing down behavior and depending on the text size also a lose of pixels.