Google promises quicker Android updates (again) with Project Treble

Updates are the biggest weakness when it comes to the Android platform, owing to thousands of devices running a variety of themes and skins. We’ve already seen Google try to address this in the past, but it seems like the company is making a bigger effort now, with Project Treble.

Announced on its developer blog, Project Treble aims to free Android from the low-level vendor software. Before going into the specifics of the new initiative, the Mountain View firm explained how Android releases currently work.

What Project Treble does is effectively reduce the need for silicon manufacturer partners (the likes of Qualcomm and MediaTek) to step in whenever a manufacturer wants to update their device. Instead, the original silicon manufacturer software/vendor interface can be used across Android updates — no need for this to be updated as well.

“With a stable vendor interface providing access to the hardware-specific parts of Android, device makers can choose to deliver a new Android release to consumers by just updating the Android OS framework without any additional work required from the silicon manufacturers,” the company explains.

Google says it’s also working with silicon and device partners to move some of their code changes to AOSP (Android Open Source Project), so “they no longer need to rework these patches with each new release of Android”.

Time will tell whether this move succeeds, but we hope it’s better than its 2011 initiative, which saw it form an impressive committee at the time. The committee’s first promise? To deliver Android updates to new devices for 18 months. We know how that went down…