Your next Samsung phone might support seamless Android system updates
The Samsung Galaxy S23 and other devices launching withAndroid 13could finally be forced to support seamless system updates. This means that you will no longer have to wait for minutes as your phone installs the latest system update — instead, your handset will install the system update in the background and only require you to restart your device to apply it, much like Google has done things with the first Pixel onwards to thePixel 6and6 Pro.
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The option to opt for this install method has existed since Android 7, but Google is only now making it mandatory. That’s because the partition system has drawbacks, too. A phone that has two versions of Android on it needs a lot more space allocated to the system than one that only has one release that gets updated straight away. This has been one of the big problems Google wanted to overcome before forcing the update method onto everyone, and it looks like the company mostly succeeded over the years, with tricks like dynamic sizes for partitions, compression, and by cleaning up files that are no longer needed.
This table shows how much space different partitioning systems take up on Pixel phones, with compressed virtual A/B being the most recent one that only takes up about 0.7GB more than a system that doesn’t support A/B at all
If you’re someone who likes to install Android updates as soon as they’re available, the partition update system has another disadvantage revolving around time. While you have to wait for a few minutes for your phone to update when it only has one system partition, the whole process is fully finished in that timeframe. On Pixel phones, which use an A/B update system, the process can take a lot longer as it’s happening in the background, and other processes take priority. A system update that would take 20 minutes tops from download to fully installed on a Samsung phone can take more than an hour on a Pixel phone.
Since most people prefer their phones to be in a usable state for as long as possible and don’t care for faster update speeds, the forced a/b update system is a change for the better for most people, though.
Google initially already tried to make A/B partitions mandatory with Android 11, but the company gutted the requirement due to storage concerns from manufacturers. This time around, it looks like the company stuck with the requirements, as it significantly overhauled the partitioning system and made it take up even less space than before, with a sample Google Pixel device only taking up 0.7GB more with a compressed virtual A/B system than it would if it didn’t have A/B at all.
For a deep dive into how Google got there, what kinds of partition options there are, and what this new requirement means for the storage available to you on your phone, be sure to check outMishaal Rahman’s deep dive into the topic on Esper.
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