Virtual A/B, a new Android partitioning technology, is being developed by Google. Our Android smartphones receive system upgrades, which we patiently await before installing the OTA package. What would you think if this procedure went considerably more quickly? Google has recently been attempting to accomplish this.
Virtual A/B is a new seamless update system.
The Android operating system offers two types of upgrades: A/B seamless updates and non-A/B updates. Google later improved the A/B partition mechanism, which was introduced with Android 7.0 (Nougat) in 2016. With Android 13, this is a mechanism that most likely will be implemented. In Android 11, the two processes are integrated through Virtual A/B, offering smooth updates to all devices with little storage cost, and providing Virtual A/B compression option to compress snapshot partitions. This reduces code complexity and enhances the update process.
Like A/B updates, system updates are smooth. Virtual A/B upgrades can be turned back and reduce the amount of time a device is offline and useless. Devices automatically roll back to the prior OS version if the new OS cannot boot. By just replicating the partitions that the bootloader utilises, virtual A/B upgrades consume the least amount of additional space. We take snapshots of additional updateable partitions.
Comparison of Non-A/B, A/B, and Virtual A/B
In this blog, Google has provided several explanations of this partitioning mechanism. With the new partitioning system, the device system will use less storage space, OTA packages will be 30% quicker to decompress, and they will be smaller in size. Faster system updates result from this. The distinctions between the new partition system and other options, including OTA size, system partition size, and installation speed, are listed below.
With Android 11 and later, virtual A/B will be accessible. You may get more details about this system here. Xiaomi's MIUI 14 is the appropriate solution for this topic when it comes to the quickest system upgrades. Recently, it was revealed that MIUI 14 will be quite quick and use very little space. What do you make of this new partitioning mechanism, then? Remember to leave your comment below and check back for more content.
