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In theory, how the new Android update system should behave.
Image: Google
One of the things that Apple and iOS can keep about the Android ecosystem is how quickly operating system updates are installed on iPhones and iPads. However, compared to the abundance of potential hardware available in the Android ecosystem, Apple is restricted to a relatively smaller set.
It’s been an issue with Android from the beginning, and in 2017, Google took steps to ease the update process with Project Treble, which separated the OS framework from the low-level vendor implementation on each phone.
And it worked, up to a point.
As Google explained in a blog post on Wednesday, when an Android operating system release occurs, Google publishes a generic image of the open source version of Android that is guaranteed to be compatible with all three previous versions of vendor implementations. . New devices must also have vendor implementations that are compatible with generic images.
“This is the primary vehicle for reducing fragmentation within the framework of the operating system,” Google said.
“In addition to reusing a vendor’s deployment across OS updates, the Treble architecture also makes it easy to reuse the same OS framework code across different vendor deployments.”
However, this picture becomes much murkier for a company like Qualcomm, which needs to support many of its different system-on-chip (SoC) products, and the device manufacturers that buy the silicon.
“The result is that three years after the launch of a chipset, the SoC vendor would have to support up to six combinations of OS framework software and vendor deployments. The engineering costs associated with this support limited the lifetime for which SoC vendors offered the Android operating system software support on a chipset, “Google said.
“The bottom line was that while the device requirements were never retroactive, the requirements for SoCs were. For example, in Android Pie, SoCs had to support two versions of the Camera HAL API on one chipset if it was used to support a new device releases and updates. “
After a year of working with Qualcomm, Google said it has made changes that will allow chipmakers to use the same vendor implementation for SoCs for the device’s supported lifespan, i.e. four years consisting of the original version. Android operating system and three operating systems. updates, as well as the search giant that also uses the operating system framework on various Qualcomm chips.
“In the future, all new Qualcomm mobile platforms that take advantage of the principle of non-retroactivity for SoCs will support four versions of the Android operating system and four years of security updates,” Google said.
“All Qualcomm customers will be able to take advantage of this stability to further reduce the costs of updates and releases and can now support their devices for longer periods of time.”
The changes will begin with the release of all chips on devices running Android 11 and later.
In the past fortnight, Qualcomm released its new flagship Snapdragon 888 chip and on Wednesday unveiled its new mid-tier 678 chip.
