According to reports, Google is developing quicker complete over-the-air (OTA) upgrades for its Pixel smartphones. The IT behemoth reportedly intends to speed up OTA update installation. On Pixel phones, updates are deployed in the background so consumers may keep using their smartphones while the process is ongoing. The business reportedly sent software modifications to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) code tracker to speed up the process, although it can take up to 20 minutes.
According to a snapshot of the code submitted for approval, it took about 13 minutes to install a 2.2GB OTA update with the additional fixes on a Pixel 6 Pro. At this time, the estimated time for the procedure is 23 minutes.
Rahman provided information indicating that the changes help shorten the time needed to install a 376MB "incremental" OTA update, from 22 minutes to 16 minutes, a 27 percent improvement. Users using Pixel phones just need to reset their devices to access the upgraded software after installing the OTA.
As per the report, the first patch enables COW (copy-on-write) operations in a cluster and the second patch uses two threads for faster snapshot compression. These patches are said to reduce the install times for updates by around six minutes.
It is worth noting that Google is yet to approve the patches that are claimed to improve the speed of installing updates, and the company is yet to make any announcement in this regard.
In recent news, Google rolled out free access to the company's Google One VPN for its Pixel 7 series in several countries. The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro handsets can now connect to Google's VPN for free.
Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and the US are currently among the countries that offer access to the company's VPN service. To access the feature on other devices, users must purchase Google One's 2TB cloud storage plan, which costs $10 (about Rs. 800) per month.
