How long should your phone last?
This is just the latest attempt from Google and its partners to address Android’s original sin. Google’s open approach to Android roped in numerous OEMs to create and sell hardware, all of which were managing their update schemes individually and relying on hardware vendors to provide updated drivers and other components—which they usually didn’t. As a result, even expensive flagship phones could quickly fall behind and miss out on features and security fixes.
Google undertook successive projects over the last decade to improve Android software support. For example, Project Mainline in Android 10 introduced system-level modules that Google can update via Play Services without a full OS update. This complemented Project Treble, which was originally released in Android 8.0 Oreo. Treble separated the Android OS from the vendor implementation, giving OEMs the ability to update Android without changing the low-level code.
The legacy of Treble is still improving outcomes, too. Qualcomm cites Project Treble as a key piece of its update-extending initiative. The combination of consistent vendor layer support and fresh kernels will, according to Qualcomm, make it faster and easier for OEMs to deploy updates. However, they don’t have to.
Credit: Ron Amadeo
Update development is still the responsibility of device makers, with Google implementing only a loose framework of requirements. That means companies can build with Qualcomm’s most powerful chips and say “no thank you” to the extended support window. OnePlus has refused to match Samsung and Google’s current seven-year update guarantee, noting that pushing new versions of Android to older phones can cause performance and battery life issues—something we saw in action when Google’s Pixel 4a suffered a major battery life hit with the latest update.
Samsung has long pushed the update envelope, and it has a tight relationship with Qualcomm to produce Galaxy-optimized versions of its processors. So it won’t be surprising if Samsung tacks on another year to its update commitment in its next phone release. Google, too, emphasizes updates on its Pixel phones. Google doesn’t use Qualcomm chips, but it will probably match any move Samsung makes. The rest of the industry is anyone’s guess—eight years of updates is a big commitment, even with Qualcomm’s help.
