This process will no doubt sound familiar to those of you who have used Linux. Most Linux distributions offer bootable images that can be flashed to a USB drive or burned to a CD/DVD. When the computer boots from the Linux drive, a complete desktop environment is present, allowing the user to easily test applications and perform other tasks. Nothing is installed to the computer’s internal drive, and all data is deleted when Linux shuts down.
Android Q will include similar functionality, which is currently being called ‘Dynamic System Updates’ (though ‘Live Images’ and ‘Dynamic Android’ were also being used to refer to it). A temporary system partition is created, and an alternative Generic System Image (GSI) can be installed to it. A notification appears when the process is done, and tapping it reboots the phone into the GSI. When you’re done, simply reboot the phone, and you’re returned to your phone’s regular build of Android.
This will be a very welcome feature not just for developers, but also for people like me who would love to test public beta releases before committing.
Awesome! Too bad only 0.1% of Android users will likely get it, and that percentage might be a generous estimate. I’m not referring only to the update situation in Android. How many OEMs do you think want their users being able to do this?
Frankly I’d just be happy if Google would force OEMs to support some sort of driver standard so we can actually upgrade the damn things without tossing them into the garbage for a new one and creating more eWaste.
bassbeast,
+1 from me. The upgradability of mobile devices has been particularly disappointing. We’re too dependent upon manufactures for firmware upgrades and obviously their incentive is to sell us new hardware.
Yup just tossed an Acatel that worked great and had a dual core with a gig and a half of RAM…OEM never put out a single OS upgrade so it was stuck on Android 5. Heck the Umidigi A3 Pro I picked up not 6 months ago works great and has a quad with 3Gb of RAM…will it ever see Android 9? Probably not.
And that to me is the main issue we are gonna have with mobile devices going forward as they go well beyond “good enough” for most users is the forced creation of eWaste by the OEMs who only care about selling you a new device.
There really is no excuse to be making this much eWaste when these devices would have no issues running a newer OS and I find it especially disgusting when my 2008 C2Q system has no trouble at all running both the latest Windows and Linux like a champ while devices that are more powerful with newer CPUs can’t even get a single OS upgrade, its just disgusting and horrible for the environment.