Windows 10: Google Accelerating Android Updates

Brink · Jul 9, 2020

Posted by Eddie Hsu (Technical Program Manager), Brent VerWeyst (Product Manager), Amith Dsouza (Technical Account Manager), Iliyan Malchev (Project Treble Architect)

Over the past few years weâve introduced new capabilities that enable us to deliver updates more uniformly, quickly, and efficiently to Android devices. These capabilities include:

Oreoâs introduction of Project Treble created a system/vendor split for a much cleaner separation of OEM and SoC dependencies from the rest of the code base. This effort sped up the adoption of Android Pie by 2.5X. Every Android device that preloads the Google Play Store has been Treble compliant since that point.

In Pie, we started publishing the Generic System Images (GSI) so that developers can use them for app-compat testing on real hardware. Treble compliance means that every device is compatible with our GSIs, even if it does not ship with them. We also worked with our major partners to launch an OEM developer preview program. As a result, we saw a further 1.5X increase in the adoption of Android 10.

In Android 10, we started updating components of the OS directly via Google Play system updates (Project Mainline). Mainline provides security and privacy updates for the OS in a way thatâs similar to apps â through Google Play. For example, in our most recent deployment, we directly updated 285 million devices with fixes for security vulnerabilities.

Google Play is also responsible for updating critical applications and services, such as authentication, push notifications, and Google Play Protect. A good example is the launch of the Exposure Notification API. Exposure Notifications are a tool to help public-health agencies in the fight against COVID-19. The API was deployed in May via Google Play to over 2 billion devices in the space of just 4 weeks.

Android 10 Adoption

Thanks to these efforts, the adoption of Android 10 has been faster than any previous versions of Android. Android 10 was running on 100 million devices 5 months post launch â 28% faster than Android Pie.

Updatability in Android 11

Below are the major themes in updatability this year:

OEM Developer Previews: In Android 11, device makers (OEMs) are continuing their developer previews ahead of the official launch. Seven OEMs have released Developer Preview builds on 13 devices to provide app developers with diverse hardware as they test for compatibility.

Google Play system update: 21 OS components are now updatable, including 9 additions in Android 11 focused on improving privacy, security, and developer consistency across devices. Highlights include an enhanced permissions component that standardizes user and developer access to critical privacy controls on Android devices, a Neural Networks API (NNAPI) component that optimizes performance and guarantees consistent APIs across devices, and a Tethering component for improved interoperability. The new updatable OS components in Android 11 are: Tethering, NNAPI, Cell Broadcast Receiver, adbd, Internet Key Exchange, Media Provider, statsd, WiFi, and SDK extension.

Generic Kernel Image: Our ongoing updatability work extends to the Linux kernel itself, with initiatives such as 6-year LTS support. In Android 11, we are further isolating common code in the Android Linux kernel to create a Generic Kernel Image (GKI) that works across all Android devices, as well as to enable faster security deployments. Stay tuned for a more detailed post on GKI in the coming months.

Virtual A/B: Most OS updates are not delivered via Google Play. Instead, they use separate third-party Over-the-Air (OTA) services that differ among the various OEMs. These services use a mechanism that, while very space efficient, has the disadvantage of being slow to apply, rendering the device inoperable for the duration. To solve this problem, in Android Nougat we launched a mechanism called "A/B OTA" (aka Seamless Updates). A/B OTAs have the advantage of appearing to be near-instant from the user's perspective, since they apply in the background and become active on the next reboot. However, they doubled the amount of storage reserved for the OS itself, limiting adoption among OEMs.

Weâve developed a new OTA mechanism â Virtual A/B â that combines the benefits of the previous two: being seamless from the user's perspective while requiring less storage. We are working closely with our OEM partners to begin implementing Virtual A/B in Android 11 devices, making OTAs as frictionless as possible. Going forward, Virtual A/B will be the only supported OTA mechanism in Android.

Looking to the Future

Weâre excited by the increased adoption of Android and are grateful for the close collaborations with our chipset and OEM partners to deploy updates earlier. We continue to work on a number of enhancements in the platform and infrastructure to make it easier for developers and users to benefit from the latest versions of Android.

Reminder that the Android engineering team will host a Reddit AMA today at 12:00PM PST to answer your technical questions about Android 11. See this post for details and to submit your questions.
Click to expand...

Source: Android Developers Blog: Accelerating Android Updates

:)

micropage7 · Jul 9, 2020

Google Android users clubhouse

Android Security Vulnerability

What happened
We recently learned that a component of Android responsible for generating secure random numbers contains critical weaknesses, that render all Android wallets generated to date vulnerable to theft. Because the problem lies with Android itself, this problem will affect you if you have a wallet generated by any Android app. An incomplete list would be Bitcoin Wallet, blockchain.info wallet, BitcoinSpinner and Mycelium Wallet. Apps where you don't control the private keys at all are not affected. For example, exchange frontends like the Coinbase or Mt Gox apps are not impacted by this issue because the private keys are not generated on your Android phone

What has been done
Updates have been prepared for the following wallet apps:

Bitcoin Wallet: Update 3.15 can be installed from Google Play or Google Code. Key rotation will occur automatically soon after you upgrade. The old addresses will be marked as insecure in your address book. You will need to make a fresh backup.

BitcoinSpinner: Update 0.8.3b can be installed from Google Play or Google Code. On startup it will advise you on how to proceed.

Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet: Update 0.7.0 can be installed from Google Play or mycelium.com. A wizard will guide you through the process of moving your bitcoins to newly generated addresses, and put the old keys into archive mode.

blockchain.info: Update 3.54 can be installed from Google Play. Version 3.54 and above includes an automatic re-keying wizard. Simply update to the latest version and follow the onscreen instructions. Please make a fresh wallet backup after the process completes.

What you should do
In order to re-secure existing wallets, key rotation is necessary. This involves generating a new address with a repaired random number generator and then sending all the money in your wallet back to yourself. If you use an Android wallet then we strongly recommend you to upgrade to the latest version available in the Play Store as soon as one becomes available. Once your wallet is rotated, you will need to contact anyone who has stored addresses generated by your phone and give them a new one.

If you can't update your Android app, alternatively, you can send your bitcoins to a Bitcoin wallet on your computer until your Android app can be updated. You should make sure not to send back your bitcoins to your old insecure addresses.

Android Security Vulnerability

Vanessa Yar · Jul 9, 2020

3D accelerator

Hi Janine,

The availability of 3D accelerator depends on the graphics card that your system has. If the graphics card supports it, then that option is available. To verify the graphics card you have, please follow these steps:

Right-click the Windows key and select Device Manager.

Expand the Display adapters category.

Please take note of the graphics card/s you have on the list.

To ensure that your graphics card is up-to-date, I suggest updating its driver. Please check out and follow the steps provided on this link:

Update drivers in Windows 10.

Please update this thread on how it goes and kindly include the information regarding the graphics card found in Device Manager.

Looking forward to your reply.

Regards.

Arvind Ram · Jul 9, 2020

Windows 10 How can I turn off 3D Hardware Acceleration?

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

In order to disable 3D hardware acceleration, I suggest you to follow the steps below.

Right click on the desktop and select Graphics properties.

Select Basic Mode and hit OK.

Go to the 3D option.

You can disable 3D graphics acceleration from this screen.

Hope this helps. Please reply for further queries on this.

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