Google released the latest generation of its Operating System, Android 9 Pie back in August last year for Pixel smartphones. The update marked the ninth major release of the software by the company. But, despite the latest generation of Android out almost seven months ago, many of the modern devices are still stuck at one or more generations older software. What’s even more surprising is that some OEMs are launching new smartphones with old software on purpose.
This disparity in Android devices makes the mind think about what problems could there be that restrict some manufacturers into providing older versions of the software. The alarming number of different [...]
Google held their Android Dev Summit last week in California. The company demonstrated multiple changes for current & future Android devices. One of them is a big announcement for a long pertaining issue. For a long period of time, Android users have been complaining to OEM’s and Google for delayed updates on their devices. During the Dev Summit, Google developers showcased a solution to the problem in the shape of Project Treble. The company has declared that every upcoming Android 9.0 Pie devices will be Project Treble Compliant.
What Is Project Treble?Project Treble was first introduced with Android 8.0 Oreo which has matured a lot since then. It is a mechanism [...]
OnePlus has been in the news of late for more than just the OnePlus 6. The company recently promised three years of service for every OnePlus smartphone. This includes software updates for 2 years and an extended year of security patches. The company has now taken a step further by including support for Project Treble in the latest OxygenOS Beta update for the OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T.
OnePlus 5
OnePlus has been publically sceptical about Project Treble. No OnePlus smartphone, up until now, supported Project Treble. In one of its AMAs (As Me Anything), OnePlus explained that the possibility of customers’ [...]
With the launch of Android 8 Oreo, Google natively introduced features like notification dots and always on display. However, the upcoming Android P is expected to build upon that introduce more features:
Five expected Features of Android P:Support for notch
Android P is expected to support smartphones with a notch. Though Android already have smartphones with the notch (Essential Ph-1) the inclusion of support for notch will have a major impact on the Apps and layouts. In fact, the upcoming Pixel 3 is also expected to embrace the notch.
Essential Ph-1
Dark mode
This is probably the most [...]
Xiaomi recently launched the Redmi Note 5 Pro in India for Rs 13,999. While the smartphone is a great product for its price and was in fact, sold out within minutes. Xiaomi has a missed a few marks on this smartphone. As a smartphone of 2018, it is surprising that it still runs Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box.
However, Xiaomi may have a fix for this as well. A new report claims that the smartphone may soon receive Android 8.1 Oreo with support for project Treble, which enables faster Android updates on a smartphone with a custom skin. However, as per the developer, the company is testing the Oreo build internally and no actual time frame is specified. This means that the [...]
Android phones apart from Pixel and Nexus devices have been known to receive slow software updates over the years. OnePlus recently conceded that its devices do not support Project Treble. Here is the reason:
Partitions were not required for Android N and previous versions of Android, all of our current devices do not feature a partition. According to our tests, if we were to modify the partition layout via OTA there is a risk that devices will brick during the partitioning.
The reason appears to be valid as the company decided to weigh the pros and cons of this major change and then decided against it. Even without Project Treble, OnePlus believes that it can still [...]
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 [...]
