Qualcomm Partners with Google to Extend Android OS Support to Four Years

Google launched Project Treble in 2017, starting with Android Oreo, with a sole purpose of giving Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) easier time to deploy new Android updates to their smartphones post-sales.

Project Treble’s main focus was on making OS updates easier and faster to deploy.

Qualcomm only supported three major Android releases and three years of security updates. The silicon maker has partnered with Google to extend the support to up to four major Android updates and four years of security updates.

The goal of the partnership is to enable more Qualcomm Snapdragon devices to run the latest Android OS, the American silicon maker says.

The extended support period will start with the company’s latest top-of-the-line processor, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, that will be at the helm of most 2021 flagship phones.

Qualcomm says the partnership will also give users of Snapdragon-based devices a more predictable software lifecycle apart from extended support.

“All Qualcomm customers will be able to take advantage of this stability to further lower both the costs of upgrades as well as launches and can now support their devices for longer periods of time,” Google said in a blog post.

While such partnerships are good for consumers, the onus of updating devices still lies in the OEMs’ court. OEMs have to invest in ensuring their customers get the latest OS updates in time. OEMs can choose whether to update or not to update their devices. As such, some OEMs are dedicated to offering timely updates and extended support, while others rarely update their devices.

So where does Project Treble come in play? The main purpose of Project Treble is to give OEMs a way to seed out updates to their devices easily and for an extended period.

I’m hoping MediaTek, and other Silicon makers join the special program as well.

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