A bunch of methods in ApiCompatibilityUtils have equivalents in Support Library. Migration to AppCompat methods is likely to reduce maintenance and binary size, while improving runtime performance and making Chrome code more consistent with the rest of the Android app world, etc. Also, Support Library methods are likely to cover more Android versions/devices.
Examples of methods that can be replaced:
ApiCompatibilityUtils.setPaddingRelative -> ViewCompat.setPaddingRelative
ApiCompatibilityUtils.getPaddingStart -> ViewCompat.getPaddingStart
ApiCompatibilityUtils.getPaddingEnd -> ViewCompat.getPaddingEnd
Comment 1 by bugdroid1@chromium.org
, Jun 14 2018