You might have heard a lot about Project Treble in the past few weeks or months and might be wondering what it is about and how it affects you in real. So today we will try to answer all your questions and explain you about Project Treble.
What is Project Treble?
Project Treble is an attempt by Google to make the Android updates reach you faster. With the release of Android Oreo 8.0, Google announced this project which aims at revamping the architecture of the Android OS framework so that OEMs can modify the Android source code easily and push the updates faster.
The Main Issue
Let's understand first how things work. Every device has a chip commonly known as Processor which is manufactured by companies like QualComm, Mediatek and others. These chips are further used by OEMs in their device. Android being an Open Source OS, can be customised by the device manufacturer as they want. So, the Silicon manufacturers write a low-level software, which is known as Firmware. This code helps the software in interacting with the device's hardware.
Now, there is a Vendor specific code (Firmware), Android Code (by Google) and then customisations done over the stock code (by OEMs). This creates a huge problem when the manufacturers need to update the Android version of the device. They need to invest a lot of time and resources in updating the Android Version, especially if they are heavily customised ROMs like MIUI, EMUI, Experience UI and others. This is the reason why most mid range phones do not receive more than one Android Version upgrade.
How can Project Treble solve this?
With the launch of Android Oreo 8.0, Google made it mandatory for the OEMs that they will have to include Project Treble's support for all the devices sold that run Android Oreo out of the box. That means that they will have to make the Vendor (Chip maker) partition separately.
Earlier, the devices running Android 7.x or before out of the box, had an implementation like the one shown below. So, whenever the OEM want to update the Android OS, they need to modify the vendor implementation also which is quite time consuming.
After the support for Project Treble, the device will have a separate partition for Vendor specific code. A vendor interface will separate the Vendor code from the Android code. This will reduce the time consumption for updating the Vendor code too.
Does your device support Project Treble?
If you bought your device recently and it runs Android Oreo 8.0 or 8.1 out of the box, then it will support Project Treble, which means you will get the updates much faster.
If your device is running an older version of the Android OS, then there are very less chances of Project Treble's support being present. You can check out if your device has its support by downloading this app.
Can your device receive Project Treble support through OTA?
Project Treble needs a separate Vendor Partition which means altering the low level code. This can result in performance issues, soft bricks or even hard bricks. This reason was also stated by OnePlus in one of their statements when they were asked about adding Project Treble support in their existing devices. On the other hand, Huawei told that they will bring Project Treble support to some of their existing devices too. So it's not sure whether your device will get it or not.
Conclusion
Google has put a step forward in reducing the Android fragmentation so that more number of users can have a taste of the latest OS as early as possible. Generally, Android updates and users are compared with that of iOS but one must take into consideration that iOS runs only on Apple devices. On the other hand, Android is an Open Source OS, which is used by multiple OEMs and further customised also. So it remains to be seen how beneficial this will be in actual. It solely depends on the device manufacturers that if and when they want to update their device even if there is support for Treble.
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