Every time a new version of Android is unveiled many ends up with mixed feelings. On the one hand, changes and improvements are welcome, but the wait until that version reaches your hands can take months or even years.
Fragmentation is one of the biggest problems affecting the Android ecosystem and although it is not the first time Google tries to tackle the issue, so far the result has not been very favorable as you can see in this month ‘s distribution.
With Android O will arrive the nth attempt and probably the most serious to date: Project Treble.
What is Project Treble?
Google calls the Treble project the biggest change to the low-level Android architecture to date and is that it is a reorganization of the system architecture to avoid the bottlenecks that occur in the process since Google releases a new version Of Android and until it reaches the end user.
Like it or not, Android has to go through many steps before reaching our phones.
First, chipset developers must adapt and include the updated drivers for their operation on the system, then pass the ball to the manufacturers of the device that will modify or update the Android layer of the system and, finally, the network operators.
Any system update requires you to go through these four steps, and this is where the restructuring Google devised in your Project Treble changes.
The idea is to separate the low-level implementation of chipset drivers (Qualcomm, Sony, etc.) so that Android updates do not need additional work on the controllers.
Google compares this new architecture to the API for Android developers.
Just as an application can work on millions of devices using this API, the new Provider Interface included in this Project Treble will mean that Android updates will require less effort and time, so presumably, they should be more common and Fast.
Getting Started on Android O
After these encouraging news, we can not forget that this change is now being introduced in Android O, the version of Android that still has no name and will officially see the light in a few months.
If we let ourselves be guided by the historical distribution of Android versions (the latest data, remember, is Nougat with only 7%), it will still be years before Project Treble is noticed.
In any case, better late than never. We’ll know more about Project Treble when Google publishes all the documentation on the Android developer page once Android is officially launched.
