When Google debuted Project Treble back in May, the big focus was on how it could potentially speed up the updates that Android manufacturers push to your phones. Google will attempt to modularize Android (Android O and beyond) in order to do this, but that modularization has also created another benefit – improved security.
Google detailed the security improvements in a blog post today that you should probably read because it’s all-up in the technicalness. I’ll do my best to summarize its parts here, though.
As a part of Project Treble, the Hardware Abstraction Layers (HAL) – the ones that “provides an interaction between device-agnostic code and device-specific hardware implementations” – are moved into their processes, essentially cutting them off from having access to other HALs, their drivers, and permissions that they don’t need access to. Google refers to this as the “principle of least privilege,” which is an idea that limits a process to only having access to the info that’s necessary for it to function.
Google provides an example of this change through Android’s system server. With Project Treble, they moved 20 HALs out of system server, like HALs for sensors, GPS, fingerprint, and WiFi, to make the system server less attractive to an attacker. Should someone compromise system server in the old setup, they’d be able to “gain privileged system permissions,” but not in Android O with Treble.
The bottom line is that Android O and Project Treble have modularized the operating system and the result is a more secure Android with parts that only have access to and talk to the parts they actually need to.
This will likely make root more impossible for carrier phones that aren’t Pixel.
So this is one of the big reasons I’m not sure if i’m going to upgrade this year, when they first talked about Project Treble they said only phones (other than 1st gen pixel) that launched with Android O would support it. So now I want to see what will launch with it and what the price of a first gen pixel drops to when the new ones come out, because I think this is such a great idea
My question is will phones that ship with “O” be the only ones to take advantage of Project Treble or will any phone updated to “O” benefit from the new modularity? Will my Pixel and 6p see an extended update lifespan or will they still be limited to the 2 year EOL?
This all sounds great but I just hope they fix the android system / android OS battery drain that ruined the battery life on my 6P and Pixel XL. For some reason my S8+ doesn’t have this issue. This all started with Nougat and factory resets haven’t fixed it on my device anyway.
S8+ is a very stable battery phone never experiencing any abnormal battery drain.
My Pixel has great battery life.
So your phone doesn’t drain 30% overnight sitting idle? My wife’s XL will always show Android System and OS as the top battery consumers even with 2 or 3 hours SOT. Google Tech Support told me this was normal even after their suggested factory reset. My 6P was killer until the Nougat update and now it does the same thing. I suspected that was normal for Nougat until I bought the S8+ and it doesn’t do it.
Actually, I did find idle time a bit worse than my last phone but I’m not losing anywhere near 30% overnight and my biggest battery drain is usually the screen, then Chrome.
That said, 95% of the time my Pixel is plugged in overnight as I always want to start the workday at 100%.
And my apologies, I should have realized it was N we were talking about. There is DEFINITELY a known issue with the BT. Try turning it off for a few days (no Android Wear? NOOOOOOOOO) and see if that doesn’t at least mitigate most of the issues. The secdond thing I’d check is your accounts. Often a failed sync will just continue to run run run run run in the background. Finally, if you think it’s AW related, make sure all your AW apps are up to date (mine has Moto whatever it’s called, a 3rd party item running other 3rd party and 1st party apps through them, if that makes sense). Let me know how it goes. Oh, one last one- just tio clarify, go into settings and then battery. Do you have (not sure if this functionality is specific to Samsung or not) a button labeled “detail” under the “App power saving” heading? If so click it and confirm everything but essential apps (I have on Android Pay, Messages, Nova and that’s about it) are “turned off.” All other apps should be set to “save power.” It’s worth noting here: I have seen where forcing apps to save power in this way breaks the app, and it goes all wonky, because it gets “pissed off” that it can’t make a call to the mothership every five seconds (That’s the FB warning from before), so be aware that some apps may go sideways if you shut them down this way.
I think that you meant this post for Droidify.
Whoops, yup. Sorry about that, sir!
Thanks for the tip. I will give that a try. Didn’t wear my watch today and Android system is back at 3% like it should be. I do have most of the apps in auto-doze except for essentials that need push information. My wife’s Pixel has been terrible since we got it out of the box. I will start turning apps off and see if I can find the culprit that is pinging the system non stop. Not having detailed battery stats in 7.0 really makes this more of a crap shoot.
Good luck, sir!
This might be a stupid question, but do you have the doze settings on? Also, do you have “the Book of Faces” (and their related message app) on your phone? Try uninstalling them, THEN perform a factory reset and reinstall them (related, uninstall ANY other items you aren’t actively using). I know that’s a lot of time and effort, but I also know that FB has the WORST time with updates, and they often orphan items after an uinstall (hence the FR step there). Let me know, I support approximately 1500 android devices in the field. Not saying I can fix it, but we can try…
Thanks, yes she has FB but I don’t so I don’t think that was the issue on my old 6P. The reason I think its Nougat related because the 6P went to crap literally as soon as I got the update. I keep very few apps on my phone and the factory reset didn’t help it at all. Today, my S8+ is having the issue too. Android System is at the top at 14% or 539mah of battery consumed. My screen with 1:20 SOT is only at 7%. The only correlation I can put together is that I have an android wear smart watch and the system seems to spike when I’m wearing it. I really think Nougat is just a buggy hot mess.
This all sounds good. I just hope O is not real buggy until they get the whole concept ironed out.
And once again you have to buy a new phone to get this increased security because OS updates are so challenging to the carriers.
Yes and no. I get the carriers can be a hurdle but as of late they seem very open to pushing updates. The manufacturers are simply choosing to not update their phones or do so very late. In the end they want you to buy the latest and greatest rather than stick with what you have.
Manufacturers like LG and HTC have been very quick with updates over the last couple of years. Then AT&T and Verizon can take 3-4+ months to push updates after they receive them from the carriers. The security updates seem to take less time, but the carriers being the middle man significantly increases the time it takes to receive updates. I don’t understand why the carriers can’t be cut out like they are with the iPhone. I get that smaller manufacturers don’t have the leverage to push the carriers around, but Samsung does.