Google partners with Qualcomm for faster Android updates
Google and Qualcomm have teamed up to work on Project Treble that Google announced in 2017 to ensure faster rollout of Android updates. The partnership will lead to all new Qualcomm mobile chipsets to support four versions of the Android operating system and four years of security updates.
Google’s Treble project with Qualcomm will kick off with the latest version of Android 11 and later. This will ensure that phones with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets will have easier access to the latest version of Android and up to three versions of the Android operating system. It will also provide security updates for four years.
“All Qualcomm customers will be able to take advantage of this stability to further reduce the costs of upgrades as well as launches and can now support their devices for longer periods of time,” Google said in a blog post.
Google added that it would reuse the same operating system framework software on Qualcomm chipsets. The reason is that this “dramatically reduces the number of vendor and operating system framework implementation combinations Qualcomm has to support on its mobile platforms and results in lower engineering, development costs. and deployment.
According to a report from Ars Technica, Google is starting this with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset. The same will be seen in low-end devices as well, and it won’t be limited to flagship devices only.
Android smartphones have had the problem of slow software updates. This has improved dramatically in recent years, but there is still a long way to go. With Qualcomm powering most smartphones in the budget and flagship segments, it would definitely help Android updates reach more users.
