Is it possible to have placeholders in strings.xml for runtime values?

Formatting and Styling

Yes, see the following from String Resources: Formatting and Styling

If you need to format your strings using String.format(String, Object...), then you can do so by putting your format arguments in the string resource. For example, with the following resource:

<string name="welcome_messages">Hello, %1$s! You have %2$d new messages.</string>

In this example, the format string has two arguments: %1$s is a string and %2$d is a decimal number. You can format the string with arguments from your application like this:

Resources res = getResources();
String text = String.format(res.getString(R.string.welcome_messages), username, mailCount);

Basic Usage

Note that getString has an overload that uses the string as a format string:

String text = res.getString(R.string.welcome_messages, username, mailCount);

Plurals

If you need to handle plurals, use this:

<plurals name="welcome_messages">
    <item quantity="one">Hello, %1$s! You have a new message.</item>
    <item quantity="other">Hello, %1$s! You have %2$d new messages.</item>
</plurals>

The first mailCount param is used to decide which format to use (single or plural), the other params are your substitutions:

Resources res = getResources();
String text = res.getQuantityString(R.plurals.welcome_messages, mailCount, username, mailCount);

See String Resources: Plurals for more details.