Google can shift strategy - AR for all even without tango - and I hope they can do it quickly, otherwise they are at a significant disadvantage.

What strategy could that be with the majority of phones with Android running really old OS's and lowend hardware?

Just markerless AR based on video analysis combined with gyroscope. It isn't the hardest thing. Even if it is just 30% of Android phones that is still a larger userbase than iOS.

Android's fault is over reliance on tango hardware because they are going for perfection rather than good enough.

Google has a much harder job here given that Android hardware is more diverse and that the OS images are not under their control. Apple has a significant advantage in that the lowest-end iOS 11 devices ever shipped are >100 GFLOPs with GPU, the lowest end they sell now is about 172, and they control all of the software so they can use the GPU on every device.

They have chosen to do that.

I am quite happy that one year later Android N only managed to acquire 9% and KitKat is still rocking with 18%.

Maybe now that Google sees no one gets their new shinny OS every single year, they change their attitude.

Trello is not the solution as it is only available in Android O, it still leaves to the OEMs the choice to actually make it work and with Android N at 9% one year later, who knows how many years it will take until Android O becomes relevant at all.

For a moment I was confused why Trello was being mentioned and this and the other reply are the only mentions of it on the page. Easy typo to make or autocomplete false-positive, I suppose.

I'm excited for Treble, personally. I'd like to slightly modify your statement to say that it's available for any device that supports it. Google Pixel and Pixel XL shipped with Nougat but they are using it to test the transition from a non-Treble system layer to a Treble-ized (?) one with Android O's release. So other OEMs could choose to support Treble on older devices, given that they meet the requirements and also have support from the BSP vendors like Qualcomm.

That said, I agree with you that it probably will still take some time before we see a huge impact, and it's a shame it's taken this long; better late than never, I suppose?

> Easy typo to make or autocomplete false-positive, I suppose.

Thanks for the remark, yeah my device auto-correct does funny things and I do not always notice what it did.

> So other OEMs could choose to support Treble on older devices, given that they meet the requirements and also have support from the BSP vendors like Qualcomm.

The thing is Treble is nothing new, it is just the attempt N + 1 to sort out the update situation in a technical way, where the all issue is political.

Android already has an HAL that OEMs should adhere to [1], so if they haven't adopted correct behaviours willingly, it is not now that they will start doing it.

[1] https://source.android.com/devices/

Trello causes some issues for OEMs as it will affect their carrier deals. But once we are past that I think Android updated will come faster.

How many years are you willing to wait for it to happen?

I am yet to see Android 7 devices at prices I am willing to pay, one year after its release, with 9% market worldwide.

Rooting devices is not an option for regular users.

> I am yet to see Android 7 devices at prices I am willing to pay,

Well, that only proves that people don't want to pay for security ;)

> one year after its release, with 9% market worldwide.

Android N was not released a year ago, it wasn't even announced a full year ago.

And when it was released it was so buggy OEMs had to wait until February for a fixed version.

The problem is not just device diversity, it's also about calibration. This is an issue that's been known for years now. Most Android phones are terribly calibrated and even within a single apparent model there can be component and calibration differences, especially between regions.