Project Treble made it easier for developers to port Android Oreo AOSP on the Galaxy S9

Members over at XDA Developers have made progress with the newest Samsung handsets. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ were the first Samsung handsets to come with Android Oreo out of the box. This means that they are also the first to be compatible with Project Treble.

Simply put, Project Treble’s purpose is to separate the core of Android OS from the OEM’s modifications to address the wild issue of firmware fragmentation that has plagues Android devices since the platform’s initial existence but is best exemplified by Samsung taking very times to update its flagship phones with major updates.

Thanks to Project Treble, Samsung should be able to push quicker updates for major Android. In addition, a tester at XDA-Developers was able to get a Project Treble Generic System Image running on the Galaxy S9. The Exynos version of the phone was able to boot up with Android 8.0 AOSP and according to the post, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, fingerprint, camera and mobile data all work properly. This progress is much more significant in comparison to the AOSP rom that’s available for the Galaxy S8.

What didn’t work is the Iris scanner, which is likely due to the fact that vanilla-Android does not support such a biometric sensor – at least not at this point in time. Someone might be able to extract the framework needed for the Iris scanner to work and adapt it to AOSP Android. It’s much easier said than done.

Currently, this will only work on an Exynos version of the phone since there is yet to be a way to unlock the bootloader on a Snapdragon version of the Galaxy S9. Aside from that, the actual process to prepare the phone for this Generic System Image is still cumbersome, though it can could certainly be streamlined for future builds of LineageOS or CarbonROM, two popular AOSP ROMs in the aftermarket development communities.

Check out the Source link to read more about the progress of AOSP on the Galaxy S9 – if you’re into that sort of thing.

Source