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Android stores two versions of contact images. The contact photo and the contact thumbnail. While both are downscaled appropriately from the original image, the two are very different in size. Contact photos clock in at around 720×720 pixels or so depending on the original image. Contact thumbnails are a measly 96×96 pixels. Contact photos are used in places where contact imagery is going to be distinctively large like the KitKat/Lollipop Phone app. Or when you receive an incoming call. Thumbnails are used for notifications, messaging applications, and other roles which the full contact photo is unnecessarily big. Unfortunately, as screen PPIs have skyrocketed since the 96×96 limit was put in place, contact thumbnails are now too small for their original purpose. Regardless, most applications continue to use contact thumbnails.



Clarity forces Android to use a user-defined size (defaulting to 256×256) when adding contact thumbnails to the database. While these new images are larger and look much better they will load slightly slower and increase memory requirements. For newer devices this should not be a problem. For reference, I have not witnessed any side effects on my Galaxy S4 using the default 256×256 setting. Since the size can be adjusted you can optimize it for your device.



In the name of simplicity, Clarity does not change the method Android uses to downscale contact thumbnails, just the final dimensions. However since Clarity allows you to increase the size of the thumbnail and consequently decrease the magnitude of the downscale, there will be noticeably fewer artifacts in your new thumbnails.



The Xposed module does not magically increase the quality of thumbnails already added in the database. It only affects newly added/updated contacts and images. To upgrade your entire contacts database either use the Database Processor detailed below or re-import the contacts. Re-importing may require you to deconnect/desync the account the contacts are associated with and then reconnect/resync the account. Some sync applications may have a force refresh option and that should work nicely. For instance, HaxSync has a Force redownload option under its contact settings.



When the Xposed module is activated, Clarity will also up the size of locally stored album art (for instance, MP3s on the external storage). Just like the contact thumbnail part of the module, existing album art is unaffected. To get Android to reprocess all the album art on your device you must delete all the files found in the albumthumbs directory. This is usually found somewhere on your external storage. Popular paths are /storage/emulated/legacy/Android/data/com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs and /storage/sdcard0/Android/data/com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs . Different devices and ROMs can have different paths but the last /Android/data/com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs bit should stay the same. Once that directory has been cleared out, higher quality album art will be regenerated by Android on demand (as they are needed). See Android issue 73635 for more information about the album art problem.