Google is said to be working on faster full over-the-air (OTA) updates for its Pixel phones. The tech giant is said to be planning to reduce the installation time of OTA updates. Updates are installed in the background on Pixel phones, allowing users to continue using their device without waiting for the process to complete. However, it took up to 20 minutes and the company is said to have submitted software patches to speed up the process to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code tracker.
According to An Android Police report citing Esper’s Mishaal Rahman, patches have been submitted on Google’s code tracker, which can reduce the time by around 10 minutes or 43% to install a full OTA update on Pixel smartphones.
Google is working on faster OTA updates. A new set of patches has been submitted to AOSP to accelerate OTA on devices using virtual A/B with compressed update mechanism. Combined, these improvements bring full OTA install times from ~23 minutes to ~13 minutes! pic.twitter.com/2hDliWzUZZ
– Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) November 30, 2022
A screenshot of the code submitted for review shows that it took about 13 minutes to install the 2.2GB OTA update on a single device. Pixel 6 Pro with new patches. This process is currently said to take around 23 minutes.
According to details shared by Rahman, the patches also reduced the installation time of the “incremental” OTA update by 376 MB, about 27% faster, from 22 minutes to 16 minutes. After installing the OTA, Pixel users only need to restart their phone to use the update system.
According to the report, the first patch enables COW (copy-on-write) operations in a cluster, and the second uses two threads for faster snapshot compression. These patches are supposed to reduce the time it takes to install updates to about six minutes.
It’s worth noting that Google has yet to approve patches that supposedly improve the speed at which updates are installed, and the company has yet to make any announcements in this regard.
In recent news, Google rolled out free access to the company’s Google One VPN to the Pixel 7 series in select countries. The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro handsets can now connect to Google’s VPN for free.
The company’s VPN service is currently available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Korea, Spain Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK and USA. Those willing to get this feature on other devices are required to sign up for a 2TB Google One cloud storage plan that costs $10 (about Rs 800) a month.
