Android - Inner element must either be a resource reference or empty

When declaring id in resources, the body should be empty

<item    type="id"    name="id_name" />

For more info please have a look on below link

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/more-resources#Id

So as Oliver Manyasa mentioned, it should be as below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><resources>    <item name="tv_deviceName" type="id"/></resources>

I had a similar issue after upgrading to Android Studio 3.2.1

The error was pointing to this item in ids.xml file

<item name="mnuActivate" type="id">Activation</item>

As mentioned by the user Sangeet Suresh, I changed it to

<item name="mnuActivate" type="id" />

That fixed the issue.

To all others who are still scratching their head to get the solution for this is create ids.xml inside src/main/res/values with contents similar to the following (but make sure to update it with the ids you're seeing errors for):

<?xml version="1.0" ?><items>    <item name="animator" type="id"/>    <item name="date_picker_day" type="id"/>    <string name="deleted_key"/></items>

Now Android Studio will be giving you an error for explicit values and if those values are coming from some library you are using then you can't make a change in the intermediate file so instead change here and while merging your code Android studio takes care of it.