Google has tried a few times to get Android updates out to the many, many different Android devices in a timely manner, over the years. But Project Treble seems to be the one with the most success. According to Google, when Android 11 launched, there were roughly 667 million active users on Android 10. And 82% of those users got Android 10 via an over-the-air update. And Google is starting to see some of the same momentum with Android 11 OTAs, seeing OEMs updating their devices even earlier.
Today, Google is announcing some changes to Project Treble that is going to make it easier for OEMs to keep their devices updated for longer than the usual two to three years (if you’re lucky).
Project Treble was a very ambitious re-architecture of Android. It created a split between OS framework and device-specific low-level software. This split guaranteed backward compatibility with the vendor implementation. That is checked through a standard compliance test suite, known as VTS. Each Android release publishes a Generic System Image for Project Treble. Which is built from AOSP. This is guaranteed to be backwards-compatible with the previous three versions of vendor implementations, in addition to the current release. Which is equal to four years.
Project Treble’s new work with Qualcomm should ensure four years of updates
Project Treble also introduced the new vendor-impacting requirements for Android devices, but they are never retroactive. Meaning that they only apply to devices launching on that Android version. And not to devices upgrading from an older version of Android. This allows for OEMs to support upgrades both faster, as well as at a lower cost.
But, when we get to the chipset maker – in this case, Qualcomm – this design introduces some additional complexity. Qualcomm would need to create multiple combinations of vendor implementations to support OEMs who would use that chipset to launch new devices and deploy OS upgrades on previously launched devices. This results in the SoC vendor needing to support up to six combinations of OS framework software and vendor implementations, three years after launch. This limited the length of time that SoC vendors were willing to support their chipsets.
And considering chipset makers will have dozens (if not more) chipsets being supported at any given time, the costs of this can be pretty insane.
Google has been working hard to implement a new solution, where it will extend the no-retroactivity principle to the SoCs as well as devices. This change means that the SoC provider would be able to support Android with the same vendor implementations on their SoCs for device launches as well as upgrades.
Google  is also going to reuse the same OS framework software across multiple Qualcomm chipsets. Which is going to dramatically lower the number of OS framework and vendor implementation combinations that Qualcomm has to support across their mobile platforms. That will result in lowered engineering, development and deployment costs.

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Source: ndroidheadlines.com