Google surprised everyone with the release of the firstAndroid 14 QPR2beta last week, and once again stunned those updating to the new build with a record-fast installation time. Thanks to a report from Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii, we now know how Google achieved these impressive results. It all boils down to tons of optimizations.
Many people installing the first QPR2 build on the Pixel phone noticed that the process was much faster than usual. Rather than taking 30 minutes or sometimes more than an hour, the new release was installed within a few minutes for many people, ranging from a little more than five minutes to less than 20 minutes for most.Artem Russakovskii talked to sources at Googlewho told him that the faster installation time boils down to three improvements.
He reports that for one, Android runs compression operations parallelly for this new installation method. Since OTA updates need to compress thousands of small blocks, this leads to a 26% reduction in install time in Google’s internal tests. For another, Google also batches operations for these same small blocks. This adds another 24% reduction, with tiny writes of 4KB being combined into bigger operations writing 800KB.
The biggest improvement is exclusive to newer devices, though, with Artem confirming that it’s in place for theGoogle Pixel 8 series, the Pixel 7 series, the Pixel Tablet, and the Pixel Fold. Artem reports that these devices have switched to the newer LZ4 compression method rather than GZ. This is supposed to decrease install time by as much as 50% and is likely the biggest single contributing factor.
The first two optimizations are part of the Android Open Source Project, so all Android phones will benefit from them eventually, not just Pixel phones. The switch to LZ4 compression is part of the Pixel’s own pipeline, though, and up to manufacturers to implement or adapt for their own devices. It’s also unclear if LZ4 compression is coming to the Google Pixel 6 and the Pixel 5a with 5G.
It’s also still not quite clear when exactly these improvements were added. Since the faster speeds are available when installing QPR2, it’s possible that they were part of a previous Android update already. This means the speed improvement might also be available for other, stable updates, like the upcoming December security patch. We will keep monitoring the situation and report back if the December patch offers significantly faster install times, too.
