VSync is a related concept, but not quite what's going on here. You have to relayout before the next VSync if you want the drawn frame to be "correct", but you also might need to relayout before this (if you read dimensions of one of the visible objects, like in the article, for example). Android also has a measure and layout phase for each of its views (See View#onMeasure and View#onLayout), which can be quite expensive to perform and is best avoided if at all possible. This phase is also one of the reasons you want to maintain a flat, simple view hierarchy if at all possible (since layout and measuring is much cheaper then, sometimes exponentially so).