Project Treble

[br77494]

Is everyone with Oreo getting their monthly security updates?

 

[hallux]

What does this have to do with Project Treble? Project Treble is geared toward platform revisions (8.1, etc), not the monthly patches. Also, there aren't many (if any) devices running Oreo that are not getting updates from Google. Most of the devices running Oreo are Pixel and Nexus devices.

 

[br77494]

Much of the idea of it is to rely less on carriers and OEM's for security updates, which tend to be on a much slower and sporadic schedule, isn't it? I have a Mate 9 that still is showing an Android security patch level of April 5, 2017. I have a feeling Huawei is kicking the can down the road until this device gets Oreo in a few weeks.

 

[hallux]

But the device needed to be designed with Treble in mind, your Mate 9 would not benefit from Treble. For example - my Nexus 6p is compatible with Oreo, but it in no way will support the update enhancements of Project Treble. I believe there are a grand total of TWO devices on the market thus far that will have any kind of support for Treble, the new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, unless Samsung has built support into the Note 8, or HTC into the U11. Nobody's really talking about it though.

https://www.androidcentral.com/project-treble

 

[br77494]

I just found this. Apparently I missed Alex's article on it a few weeks ago.

https://www.androidcentral.com/huaw...ate-9-oreo-update-monthly-security-patch-goal

Dr. Wang confirmed that the Oreo update will bring Google's Project Treble feature to the older phone, potentially accelerating any further updates.

As for security updates — arguably more important than Android platform upgrades — Dr. Wang says Huawei will target monthly security patches for its new flagship phones, assisted by Project Treble.

 

[hallux]

Hmm, that's different from what I've heard previously, regarding having Project Treble as something that is added to a handset after production.

 

[LeoRex]

Well, there is a ton of risk retrofitting it to an older phone. You are reformatting system partitions on the fly. Under controlled conditions with user interaction that can be risky.

 

[Trigati]

From what I've read,. phones that ship with Oreo out of the box have to support Treble to be Google approved, while older phones don't have to.

 

[Gayle Lynn]

My bet there will be a system partition - easily wiped - that lies outside the vendor supplied custom apps. It won't be a single structure. Why you can boot a Mate 9 but nothing runs yet, lacking the hooks and libraries it depended upon.

We could have something like UEFI provides Windows and others.

My bet - "P"(ie) 9.0 will have first full Project Treble foundation and support. Oreo 8.0.0 may work but give minimal support.

Like having Arm64 and 32-bit support but at some point, stop compiling for 32-bit and going with 64-bit instructions and drivers only. Vista made the move to 64bit drivers a decade ago, as did Mac OS X later on. Smaller footprints in storage and loaded to memory. Better support for 4GB addressing.

https://www.xda-developers.com/google-android-p-android-9-0-aosp/

https://www.xda-developers.com/project-treble-custom-rom-development/

 

[Trigati]

Good article explaining Treble. Phones with Oreo out of the box have to support it.

https://www.androidauthority.com/project-treble-818225/
Android Oreo and Project Treble are promising much faster OS updates for Android phones in the future. We explore how this works and if the claims are true.

 

[LeoRex]

I envision a day when Android core sits happily on every phone, free from getting molested by OEMs and getting updates directly from Google, while OEMs are free to keep their overlying customizations up to date as they seem fit. As long as everyone stays compliant to the APIs and frameworks, Samsung can take weeks or months (or never) to update Bixby, or their camera, or their UI , etc... But if a nasty security bug gets patched, Google could blast it out to the world in a matter of days. And all those cheap phones that gather dust on top the 'Check For system update' screen won't be running grossly out of date stuff where it matters, like in the network stack or security packages.

I even see a path where Google could upgrade the core OS and allow OEMs to follow up when (if) they want.

Oh.... To dream.

 

[br77494]

Thanks for the article, Trigati. Great read. Project Treble holds out a lot of hope. I appreciate that Huawei was more proactive about this on some of their nougat released devices, like the Mate 9. It remains to be seen if the promise of quicker updates will actually be realized. But you have to like the competitive pressure it puts on other OEMs.