Android 9 Pie released on August 6th 2018. With Android being a notorious operating system for having upgrade fragmentation across it’s devices I thought I would take a look at which Android devices currently support the latest version of the OS and speculate on why some other devices do not.
Which Phones Support It?
So far the list of phones that support Android Pie consists of 5 devices.
- Google Pixel
- Google Pixel XL
- Google Pixel 2
- Google Pixel 2 XL
- Essential Phone
This list is pretty good for a new Android release considering it actually includes a phone that wasn’t made by Google. But what happened to all the other devices that were in the Android P beta? We had the OnePlus 6, the Sony Experia XZ2 and the Nokia 7 Plus just to name a few. My only theory is that these companies weren’t happy with the amount of customization they added in the beta and wanted to add more, after all if we just examine the OnePlus 6 running the Android P beta it was missing a lot of features available on the OnePlus 6 running Oxygen OS in Android Oreo.
But What About Project Treble?
Project Treble was announced by Google alongside Android 8 Oreo. It was supposed to fully separate the core of Android as an OS from the skin that manufacturers like Samsung put over it. This in theory would make it easier for manufacturers to release updates for their phones because the two sides weren’t mixing anymore. The problem is Project Treble was partly optional, meaning if your device was on Android 7 Nougat you didn’t have to add support for it. You would think this means only the new phones from this year would support Treble but you would in fact be wrong, several manufacturers released new phones after Oreo released with a prevalent theory being that this was so they would not have to commit to Treble. Sadly it would also seem that devices released with Treble support also continue to be doing a bad job of supporting it.
Sadly even though Androids updates continue to remain fragmented and inconsistent, especially since they require carrier approval, phone sales continue to go up. A lot of the general public see the occasional update every few months and just assume its normal for them to be so rare, or they don’t keep track of main android releases and wouldn’t know they’re getting Android Pie way later than everyone else. Google has managed to keep Android’s greatest weakness from slowing down sales but that does sadly mean one if it’s greatest weaknesses may never be fixed. Let us know what you think in the comments down below!