2y ago

Google may be planning to ship a major kernel upgrade to all its (Tensor-powered) pixel phones.

Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman@androiddev.social)

Good news for android overall. Hopefully, this could be extended to other OEMs by 2025 and not be optional like virtual A&Bs when it arrives.

(Meanwhile, my current smartphone running 4.19.. )

21 comments

It's all to get phones ready for Auracast as that's going to be huge.
- What's Auracast?
  
  Bluetooth broadcasting. One device will be able to stream to hundreds and thousands of devices.
  
  It's going to be huge.
- Is this correct? I thought phones basically already supported it and have done since Android 13. Why is a whole new kernel needed for this one feature?
  
  From what I can gather, there's a bunch of optimizations for battery that should bring massive benefits
Will there be any battery improvements? My Pixel 6 could use some (I miss the battery life of my 5a, RIP).
- There could be. Newer smartphones are going to improve. You should hold out for a year or two and wait until the tensor is efficient and provides good battery life.
  Note: The toot mentions Pixel 9 and pixel 8 series smartphones. It could happen but I won't hold my breath for pixel 6.
What does this mean for most users? What features does this allow/improve that they couldn't implement before?
Do we know why they are doing this if it's so unusual?
Edit: and is this an Android change or a Google change? Is a particular android version picky about what Linux version it's built on?
- This only affects modern Pixels, and probably won't directly impact anything in a way that you as a user will notice. I assume there will be efficiency improvements that may have tiny bumps for performance/battery but probably imperceivable.
  I think Google is doing this for security. Now that Pixels are going to be supposed for 7+ years it will be easier to maintain them and keep up with security patches if they are on a more recent kernel version.
- You may be able to mount your NTFS formatted Pen drive via OTG w/o Third party apps.
  
  wow i hope that's not all, that's a pretty lame update. I can't think of even one use-case that that would be helpful for.
My long battery life performant phone running Android with kernel 4.14.116 would like an update but it was abandoned years ago. Which is a shame.
8gb ram 256gb storage and a locked Bootloader. Sad times
- I feel your pain. A past phone I had did have an unlockable bootloader but it needed service due to a manufacturing defect. The one they gave me as the replacement was a carrier version with a locked bootloader.

21 comments