Android Updates – Promise closer to be fulfilled?

The Achilles’ heel of Android, in my opinion, was always the lack of updates for devices. Most of the manufacturers couldn’t keep the devices updated for more than a year or two (some not even that), which in terms of usability and most important, security, was a big flaw and a major setback for users.

It’s not a pleasant experience buying an expensive smartphone and not getting any more updates as soon as a new model gets released, in most of the cases. I believe this can be one of the reasons why Android users abandon it and change for an iOS device, for instance.

Project Treble, launched with Android 8.0 Oreo, shown that this lack of updates needed to be addressed and fixed to make the OS more robust, secure and durable. With Treble, the Android OS became modular to make life easier for the manufacturers to update the system as they don’t have to change “everything” like before. This project, according to Google, is already allowing to have updates more often and for longer periods of time than before.

Another major step was getting in the beta program other manufacturers besides Google. This way, new versions of Android are available to be tested and developed, by the manufacturers, way sooner than before when the beta was only available for Pixel phones. This allows getting more engagement from both, manufacturers and users that want to participate in the beta, testing the OS and, giving feedback before the final release. For Android Q, the beta is available for more than 10 manufacturers and more than 20 phones. In my opinion, this is great news because it shows that Google wants to be more open and welcomes the smartphone sellers, competitors to join and, together make Android better.

Last but not least, the bigger difference, for me, which was also announced for Android Q, is that security updates will be available for every phone running this version of Android without any interaction from the manufacturers. So when Google releases a security patch, it will be available and possible to install on every Android Q phone right away. This will make the OS much more secure and will keep the users protected from the most recent threats.

With all these updates and, possibly more in the future, I believe the percentage of Android phones running the latest version will be increasingly bigger. This way, Android users will be way happier with their phones for longer periods of time.

If you have any doubts or would like to further discuss this topic, feel free to reach me at tiago@exaud.com