What are Kotlin coroutines used for in Android?

Kotlin coroutines are primarily used to simplify code execution on background threads, making them an essential feature in modern Android development. They allow you to write asynchronous code in a sequential manner, which is more intuitive and reduces boilerplate code associated with callbacks and threading. By using coroutines, developers can easily manage long-running tasks, such as network calls or database operations, without blocking the main thread, thereby improving app performance and responsiveness.

Coroutines provide a structured concurrency model that helps manage different tasks seamlessly, allowing you to pause and resume execution at any point, which ultimately makes the code cleaner and easier to read. This approach helps avoid common pitfalls associated with multi-threading, such as race conditions and deadlocks.

In contrast, other options do not represent the primary function of coroutines. For instance, performing synchronous programming tasks goes against the main purpose of coroutines, which is to facilitate asynchronous execution. Coroutines actually aim to simplify thread management rather than increase its complexity, and they do not completely replace traditional threads in Android; instead, they work well alongside them to enhance concurrency handling.