Google seems to want to make installation updates on Android faster

Google seems to want to make the installation of updates on Android with Seamless Updates faster with two techniques. Installing updates in the background now takes a long time for many users and Google claims it can be done faster.

This involves a method for writing to the storage in batch and compression of the snapshot, reports Mishaal Rahman. He bases it on multiple commits in Android’s code that reflect the changes.

One optimization is that compression can be done on two threads instead of one, which is standard. That shaves off about a quarter of the installation time for a full OTA upgrade of the operating system. The gain with a security update is slightly less. Writing to storage in batches has much the same effect.

Google claims that the installation time of an OS upgrade on a Pixel 6 Pro will decrease from 23 minutes to 13 minutes, while a security update will take 16 minutes instead of 22 minutes. It is unknown under what conditions this was tested: in practice, upgrades take much longer than that for many users.