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Google and Qualcomm have teamed up to allow a longer support window for flagship Android smartphones. Qualcomm, with the help of Google, will now support its chipsets for three years of major operating system updates and four years of security updates, enabling a better tier than Pixel for all future Android phones, provided their OEM be willing to cooperate. This policy starts with the flagship Snapdragon 888, but even low-end chips will be supported. Qualcomm PR tells us that “the plan is to implement this on all Snapdragon chipsets, including lower tier ones, but starting with the new Snapdragon 888 platform.”
Part of the challenge of Android updates is the continuous chain of custody of software that must be maintained, across various companies, from the Android repository to your phone. Google and Qualcomm now say they are willing to pass the update baton on to OEMs for three major updates and four years of security updates, but OEMs will need to update their Android skins and push functional builds to each of their devices. If not, at least now we know who to blame.
The Qualcomm and Google blog posts contain the same wording, which “will support 4 versions of the Android operating system and 4 years of security updates.” Read that quote carefully and you will see two different units of measurement occurring there, which some people have misinterpreted. While there are four years of security updates, the two companies count the initial Android release in their “4 versions of the Android operating system” listing, so that’s three years of major Android updates, not four years. We double checked with Qualcomm and got “Qualcomm will support the release version + 3 OS updates, for a total of 4 major versions of the Android OS. Snapdragon 888 will support Android 11, 12, 13 and 14.”
This is the same update plan that Pixels have received and the one that Samsung promised, but with one more year of security updates. Note that Qualcomm is bringing this level of support to lower-end devices as well, so while this is just a small step for flagship phones, lower-end phones could see much larger support windows.
Treble problem
Google’s blog post details how it has made upgrading easier for SoC makers like Qualcomm. The Project Treble restructuring of Android split the operating system in half, separating the operating system from the hardware with a modular interface. This makes it easy to run the same Android build on multiple pieces of hardware (called a Generic System Image or GSI). While that makes things easier if you are an OEM building an Android skin, Google was apparently piling up update requirements for SoC vendors.
SoC vendors are partly responsible for implementing the “vendor” in Project Treble, the lower half of the operating system division that contains hardware support. While things above the Project Treble division (the software) were guaranteed backward compatibility, hardware support was not. For each SoC, Qualcomm would need to maintain a vendor implementation for each software history permutation. That means one for phones that were released with Android 10, another for Android 11, and a third for devices that were released with Android 10 and updated to Android 11.
This system did not scale well. Today, Google is vaguely announcing changes to Project Treble that will allow Qualcomm to support new and upgrade devices with a single-vendor deployment. Also (again, vaguely) some sort of scheme is in place to allow Qualcomm to use the same vendor implementation across multiple SoCs, which will further reduce your upgrade work.
The fastest updates are happening slowly
Google is also taking this time to update us on the status of the Android update situation. Android 11 is slightly experiencing the fastest adoption rate ever and is outpacing the previous version (previously the fastest), at least in terms of raw users (I doubt the percentage is much different as I doubt the number total active Android users has changed in one year). Thanks to Project Treble, the Android 10 roster turned into an evil hockey stick about 100 days after launch, and we’re not quite there yet with Android 11.
Of course, this still doesn’t align Android with what Apple has been doing, which is five years of major operating system updates and seven years of security updates for iPhones. However, Apple is the SoC provider, OS developer, and device makers, so you have less logistics to sort out and don’t have to deal with preserving profit margins every step of the way.
Every Android update announcement feels like a small step to improve the situation, and nothing will be a silver bullet other than blowing up the entire system. Almost every sentence in this article could end with the warning of “if your OEM wants to cooperate,” and for many, that last link in the upgrade chain will be the critical one. If your OEM doesn’t want to play catch, well, you know what to do, right? Vote with your wallet!
