Over the years, Google has been working to push updates quicker and decrease the installation time. It introduced the Seamless OTA update with Android Nougat in 2016 to make things seamless 2016. Popular tech journalist Mishaal has tweeted that Google has published a new patch to Android Open Source Project (AOSP). The same will reduce the time OTA updates take to install on Pixel smartphones. The new patch will be compatible with smartphones using virtual A/B partitions and a new compression mechanism update. With the new patch, the time to install an OTA update that weighs around 2.2GB will go down to 13 minutes from 23 minutes.
To achieve this, Google needs to improve its batch write COW (copy-on-write) operations in a cluster. Google improving batch write will help decrease the time to install OTA updates by four minutes. Compared to A/B smartphones, the devices with virtual A/B partitions help to save space for smartphones. In contrast, the virtual A/B partition takes snapshots of the dynamic partition that needs to be updated. Google makes virtual A/B partitions default for smartphones with Android 13.Â
What are Seamless OTA updates?
The Seamless OTA update introduced was meant to avoid shutting down smartphones during the entire process of updates. Instead, it will update in the background with a quick restart to finish the process. It can also be paused or resumed owing to the user’s convenience. It also came with a failsafe feature that will revert an update if the OS doesn’t boot after updating.
The other improvement is using two threads to compress the snapshot taken by virtual A/B. It would make the installation process quicker and will reduce the time for the installation process by 6 minutes. The seamless update also supports streaming updates. It will help a user if he is running out of storage. OS files can be installed as the update package is downloaded. It will reduce the storage space required on a smartphone to update.
The new patch on AOSP will improve Google’s Seamless update. Most OEMs haven’t adopted the Seamless update because of its negatives. However, with the new patch by Google, it will likely adopt the Seamless updates on its smartphones. There are rumours that Samsung will adopt it with the launch of the Galaxy S23 series. We hope other OEMs will also adopt the same.
