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I, as an OSS community contributor, have been using Treble for years now, and I have devices who got let down by their OEMs on Android 8, that I pushed up to An

by phh 6y ago

I, as an OSS community contributor, have been using Treble for years now, and I have devices who got let down by their OEMs on Android 8, that I pushed up to Android 11, and that's been pretty cool. I, as an OEM, am still NOT allowed (by Google) to use Treble to provide upgrades. This "legality" issue is being fixed ( https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/treble-plus-one-equals-four.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/treble-plu... ), but its effect won't reach users for at least 2 years.

rincebrain 6y ago
I don't see anything in your second link that explains what the "legality" issue is, could you clarify that for me, please?
- phh 6y ago
  The idea of Project Treble is to separate drivers from Android, and also to version drivers. When you receive a smartphone running Android 10.0, you also receive drivers "targetting" Android 10.0. With Treble, you can replace that Android 10.0, and bring it up to Android 11.0, while keeping the drivers targetting Android 10.0, and this pretty much works. To release a smartphone with Google apps, an OEM must adhere to some requirements. One of those requirements, is that if you provide to customers an Android version X, then you must provide drivers targetting this version. You are not allowed by Google to provide an Android version 10 with drivers targgeting Android 9. This is true even across updates: if you release the smartphone with Android 9, then upgrade it to Android 12, then the Android 12 upgrade must include drivers targgetting Android 12. The change that is coming, is that for Android 13, OEMs will be allowed to keep the drivers they made for Android 12.
  - rincebrain 6y ago
    I wonder what the motivation was initially, to implement a glue layer that let you keep older drivers functional, only to also require the drivers be updated in lockstep. (Specifically the benefits of the lockstep update policy, not Treble in general, I grasp that.)

by phh 6y ago

rincebrain 6y ago

I don't see anything in your second link that explains what the "legality" issue is, could you clarify that for me, please?

phh 6y ago
The idea of Project Treble is to separate drivers from Android, and also to version drivers. When you receive a smartphone running Android 10.0, you also receive drivers "targetting" Android 10.0. With Treble, you can replace that Android 10.0, and bring it up to Android 11.0, while keeping the drivers targetting Android 10.0, and this pretty much works. To release a smartphone with Google apps, an OEM must adhere to some requirements. One of those requirements, is that if you provide to customers an Android version X, then you must provide drivers targetting this version. You are not allowed by Google to provide an Android version 10 with drivers targgeting Android 9. This is true even across updates: if you release the smartphone with Android 9, then upgrade it to Android 12, then the Android 12 upgrade must include drivers targgetting Android 12. The change that is coming, is that for Android 13, OEMs will be allowed to keep the drivers they made for Android 12.
- rincebrain 6y ago
  I wonder what the motivation was initially, to implement a glue layer that let you keep older drivers functional, only to also require the drivers be updated in lockstep. (Specifically the benefits of the lockstep update policy, not Treble in general, I grasp that.)