Difference between SurfaceView and View?

Views are all drawn on the same GUI thread which is also used for all user interaction.

So if you need to update GUI rapidly or if the rendering takes too much time and affects user experience then use SurfaceView.

A few things I've noted:

• SurfaceViews contain a nice rendering mechanism that allows threads to update the surface's content without using a handler (good for animation).
• Surfaceviews cannot be transparent, they can only appear behind other elements in the view hierarchy.
• I've found that they are much faster for animation than rendering onto a View.

For more information (and a great usage example) refer to the LunarLander project in the SDK 's examples section.

The main difference is that SurfaceView can be drawn on by background theads but Views can't. SurfaceViews use more resources though so you don't want to use them unless you have to.

Why use SurfaceView and not the classic View class...

One main reason is that SurfaceView can rapidly render the screen.

In simple words a SV is more capable of managing the timing and render animations.

To have a better understanding what is a SurfaceView we must compare it with the View class.

What is the difference... check this simple explanation in the video

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=eltlqsHSG30

Well with the View we have one major problem....the timing of rendering animations.

Normally the onDraw() is called from the Android run-time system.

So, when Android run-time system calls onDraw() then the application cant control

the timing of display, and this is important for animation. We have a gap of timing

between the application (our game) and the Android run-time system.

The SV it can call the onDraw() by a dedicated Thread.

Thus: the application controls the timing. So we can display the next bitmap image of the animation.