Project Treble was announced last May as part of Google’s ongoing efforts to counteract the crippling fragmentation of its mobile platform.
As you may have heard, the Android Oreo rollout for the Galaxy S8 range has been somewhat of an ordeal.
However, that might be the last time Samsung flagship owners have to wait months on end for the latest version of Android.
SamMobile says it has confirmed the brand new S9 and S9+ smartphones support Google’s Project Treble. That means they could be among the first to gain access to 2018’s Android P and 2019’s Android Q.
Project Treble was announced last May at Google I/O as part of the firm’s ongoing efforts to counteract the crippling fragmentation of its mobile platform.
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Announced alongside Android 8.0 Oreo, Project Treble is designed to make it easier for manufacturers to update to newer versions of Android by minimising the amount of tweaks that need to be made.
This major re-architect of Android means OEMs like Samsung can simply update the OS framework without having to wait for chip manufacturers to make the updates compatible with their processors.
So, in short, if the Galaxy S8 had benefitted from Project Treble support, it’s likely the Oreo release would have made it to customers far earlier.
In a blog post last year the company explained: “Today, with no formal vendor interface, a lot of code across Android needs to be updated when a device moves to a newer version of Android.
“With a stable vendor interface providing access to the hardware-specific parts of Android, device makers can choose to deliver a new Android release to consumers by just updating the Android OS framework without any additional work required from the silicon manufacturers.”
With any luck Project Treble will go a long way towards tackling Android fragmentation. At the time of writing only 1.1% of Android devices are running v8.0 or v8.1 of the operating system. That’s six months after it was released.
That number will rise quickly after the release of 2018 flagships, unveiled at MWC 2018 and beyond. However, it’s still Android’s biggest challenge compared with the instant iOS updates available to all compatible iPhones.
Would the promise of fast access to Android P convince you to snap up the Galaxy S9? Drop us a line @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
