My interpretation of “flagship” is the Pixel or (formerly) the Nexus lines. What Google considers the flagships. I could also be interpreting that incorrectly. I’m just used to Samsung, LG, and Moto having some level of control and obstruction on when their phones get OS-level updates. Not sure if the Play store apps have enough system-level permissions to implement whatever core services would be needed to support an SDK for other apps to use.
“Same old rhetoric” seems a bit unfair. It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)
>It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)
The major features usually require an OS update, but Google has been compartmentalizing the OS for some time and making things downloadable from the Play store or available via Google Play Services. They also use a Support Library to backport new API's to older OS versions.
It doesn't matter what SoC a device has, if the OS only sees a buggy OpenGL ES 2.0 driver.
I was looking for a technical answer instead of the same old rhetoric. Adding this additional functionality to Google Play Services and to the Support Library would make it available to all devices using GMS.
>Only a small portion of Android phones are "flagship"
This is a ridiculous statement. Do you have any numbers to back up your claim that only a small portion of Android phones are flagships? Any phone with an SnapDragon 8 series SoC, Exynos 8 series SoC, Kirin 9 series SoC would easily be able to handle this.