No, you see that was the "roadblock".. the time and money to do it was not worth it.. now that it's less time consuming, they can do it without wasting resources. Time and money was the problem, the process was time consuming and probably costly considering how much these engineers get paid. Money and time had to be strategically allocated. Is it worth it now? Yes, it's a win win because customers will be happy and money/time isn't wasted on such a pain staking process
Either focus all their time and energy on updating the OS or spend time and money on R&D, so they could come out with new features and technology. Google = great software.. LG & Samsung = innovative hardware. Meanwhile LG help makes the Pixel line of phones which they already had the hardware for thanks to the time and money put into R&D (meanwhile Samsung makes bank selling Apple screens and RAM parts).