OnePlus Confirms It Won’t Have Project Treble On The OnePlus 5T

OnePlus held an AMA and answered quite a few questions about the new OnePlus 5T. One user asked if the OnePlus 5T or any other OnePlus smartphone will be updated to support Project Treble, which basically means if any OnePlus device will be fast-tracked for updates. OnePlus confirmed that neither the OnePlus 5T, nor any other OnePlus phone, will be updated to support Treble.

Android software updates have been a painfully long process for devices other than the Pixel or Nexus. That has mainly been due to other OEMs going through their own long process of customising the new version of Android and then slowly rolling out their version of Android to its users.

But, a few months ago Android gained a “Vendor Interface” (VI), largely due to a new development effort from Google called Project Treble. The VI’s aim is to separate the “Vendor Implementation” (that is, “the device-specific, lower-level software written in large part by the silicon manufacturers”), from the Android OS framework.

The new VI is supposed to sit between the Android OS framework and Vendor Implementation. And the new VI will be validated by a Vendor Test Suite (VTS), which is analogous to the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) that Google has been using for API testing of apps. The VTS ensures forward-compatibility of the VI.

What project Treble brings to the table is quite evident from the two images above. Before, the VI needed to be reworked after every single Android OS framework update, while from now on that won’t be the case anymore.

So, what does it mean for the OnePlus 5T? It means that unless OnePlus is quick with its testing and back-end engineering, the OnePlus 5T will be slow to get the latest Android software update, just like a lot of other Android phones.