Android 8.0 Oreo was officially launched in August of 2017. Though it comes with many new features, the most notable one is ‘Project Treble’. Let us deep dive in this article to know about Project Treble, supported devices and its future.
What is Project Treble in Detail
This is what Google has to say,
Project Treble, a major re-architect of the Android OS framework designed to make it easier, faster, and less costly for manufacturers to update devices to a new version of Android. Treble is for all new devices launching with Android 8.0 and beyond.
In a nutshell, Project Treble allows ROM developers to update their software to newer Android version easily.
Before Project Treble, i.e. in Android Nougat and earlier versions, the software had a single unified layer consisting of both Android Framework and Vendor implementation. The first one contains all Android Operating System related things and the latter one contains implementations made by hardware vendors, i.e SoC manufacturers to support the Android system. Thus, whenever new Android version arrives, the developers had to update the Android framework as well as rework the vendor implementation to support that software. It was really a tedious work and thus updates took more time to reach the end users.
Project Treble compatible smartphones will have two separate layers for both Android Framework and Vendor implementation. Thus, when a new Android version arrives, the developers just have to update their Android framework. Thus, Project Treble makes the update task easier and faster, so end user can enjoy the latest version of Android quicker than before.
Project Treble Supported Devices
As of now, Project Treble is supported by some handful of devices running Android Oreo or even Nougat in some cases. The list includes Google’s Pixel smartphones both first and second generations, Huawei’s Mate 9 series, Mate 10 series, Honor 9, Honor 8 Pro and Sony’s Xperia XZ1 as well as XZ1 Compact. Sadly, though OnePlus, Nokia updated their flagships to Android Oreo, they don’t support Project Treble. However, it will be supported by almost all smartphone launching with Android Oreo out of the box from next year.
Future of Project Treble
Project Treble has a wonderful future ahead especially in Custom ROM community. Developers can have a one unified build for multiple devices which support Project Treble. A developer has already booted a same Android 8.0 AOSP build on multiple devices from different OEMs as well as different SoC. The smartphones he tested were Huawei Mate 9, Honor 8 Pro, Honor 9, Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact and Essential Phone.
Now, that’s really a breakthrough. Which clearly means in the future, most of the Custom ROMs will have the same build for multiple smartphones.
Conclusion
Though Project Treble makes the task of updating the smartphones easier, it is still in the hands of OEMs to deliver the updates faster. But, the Custom ROM community will bloom more with the help of Project Treble for sure.
So, what are your thoughts on Project Treble ? Will it be successful and popular among all the smartphones from different OEMs ? Let us know in the comment section below.
