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kmingis
Executive Editor

All about Android upgrades (and why they’re late) | TECH(talk)

news analysis
Feb 14, 20192 mins
AndroidSecuritySmartphones

The release of a new version of Android always causes a hopeful stir among users. So why does it take so long for device makers to roll them out?

Android robot and gears emerging from isometric mobile phone screen
Credit: cenkerdem / Getty Images

It’s not exactly news that Android upgrades almost always take a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time to roll out to most users. As in months. Often, many months. Sometimes more than a year.

Sometimes never.

(There is an exception: Google delivers new versions of Android to its Pixel line right away, and did just that with the release of Android 9.0 (Pie) last fall.)

It’s now been six months since Pie arrived, which means it’s time for Computerworld blogger JR Raphael’s comprehensive look at how device-makers are doing when it comes to upgrades. 

Raphael joined Computerworld Executive Editor Ken Mingis to go over the findings, as well as discuss how Google’s Project Treble is working. Treble is the company’s answer to slow update rollouts; it’s designed to streamline the process as much as possible to help the hardware folks push out updates quickly.

(Spoiler: Project Treble doesn’t seem to have helped much.)

Raphael then rounds out the discussion with insights into why Android upgrades are so important

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