Google Engineers Confirm Project Treble Coming to Pixel, Few Other Android Devices
- The engineers talked about Treble in the latest developers' podcast
- They confirm that Treble is coming to Pixel, Pixel XL smartphones
- Engineers also confirm that they are also working other OEMs as well
Google announced Project Treble earlier this year mainly to
fix the slow Android version adoption and its resultant fragmentation. First,
it was reported that only new devices that ship with Android O will get the
Project Treble framework. However, now Google engineers Romain Guy, Iliyan
Malchev, and Chet Haase confirm that the company has been working with OEMs to
bring Project Treble to some other smartphones as well.
On the latest episode of the Android Developers Backstage
podcast, the three engineers discuss Project Treble and what it would mean for
the latest Android O update. The engineers confirm that Pixel devices are
getting the Treble support because of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 821 chipset, and
other OEMs may too see the same. The engineers confirm that they are in
conversation with some OEMs to bring Treble support to few flagships with the
Android O update, however they refrain from providing any further detail. We
presume that big OEMs like Samsung, LG, and others may be a part of this
project, however nothing is certain as of yet. You can listen to the whole
podcast here.
Android O is largely rumoured to release on August 21, and
may be more information will come out then. For those unaware, Project Treble
was launched in May as an important step toward faster and more frequent
Android release updates on devices. It essentially allows OEMs to update to the
latest Android software, without making a ton of changes.
Previously, manufacturers had to wait for chipmakers to
modify the new release to their specific hardware. After receiving the modified
software from chipmakers, OEMs then made their own tweaks, test it out with
carriers, and then release it to compatible smartphones. Now, with Project
Treble, a separate vendor interface is created between the Android OS framework
and the vendor implementation. Google claims that it will work with chipmakers
to ensure the vendor interface is compatible beforehand, and the validation of
that will be done by a Vendor Test Suite (VTS).
