Since time immemorial, the Android ecosystem has made quickly updating an operating system across devices seem like an impossible task. Google releases a new version of Android, and while Nexus and Pixel devices get updated, other Android OEMs mostly shrug their shoulders and go about their business. If users are lucky, they might get an OS update six months down the line, at which point Google has already moved on to an even newer version of Android.
Ahead of Google I/O, Google has just dropped a bombshell of a blog post that promises, for real this time, that it is finally doing something about Android’s update problems. “Project Treble” is a plan to modularize the Android OS, separating the OS framework code from “vendor specific” hardware code. In theory, this change would allow for a new Android update to be flashed on a device without any involvement from the silicon vendor. Google calls it “the biggest change to the low-level system architecture of Android to date,” and it’s already live on the Google Pixel’s Android O Developer Preview.
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