The reason Xiaolong 800/801 device missed Android 7.0 turned out to be...

The latest Android 7.0 version of nougat has now officially released, OEMs are all announced plans to upgrade their own mobile phones, Sony and HTC have been announced, while Google also released Android for Nexus 6, Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P 7.0.

Qualcomm

Unfortunately, there are some mobile phones (and they are selling well) that may not be able to enjoy the feast of this system upgrade. You see, Sony's upgrade plan does not include Xperia Z3, and HTC has not announced its One M8 upgrade plan. , And Google's Nexus 5 also do not know when to be able to upgrade to Android 7.0. For the above three devices, they all have two things in common. First, they were all released in 2013 or 2014. They are a bit old, but do you think Apple's iPhone 4S can't be upgraded as usual? Although the cards became ×; second, they all use Qualcomm Xiaolong 800 or 801 processors.

According to foreign media on Twitter, "Qualcomm will not release graphics drivers for its own 800 or 801, so the HTC One M8 and other handsets that use this processor will not receive the official Android 7.0 upgrade."

We also consulted Qualcomm officials on this issue and got the following reply.

"We, Qualcomm Technology Co., Ltd., have been working closely with our OEM customers to support and launch the latest Android system for all types of Android phones using the Qualcomm processor. The latest system is more dependent on the mobile phone itself. Life cycle, so we recommend that consumers are best to contact the product manufacturer to ask questions about system updates."

OK, then, according to Qualcomm, this is a product lifecycle issue. Sony and HTC, for example, think that the handsets equipped with 800/801 processors are too old and the life cycle is no longer up to date. However, if OEM manufacturers want to update Android 7.0 for those phones? Can you do it?

Sony

Sony previously had been developing the Android 7.0 system for the Xperia Z3, and there was also a developer preview version of the Xperia Z3 that had been updated to the Developer Preview 4, so that Android 7.0 ran on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800/801. There is certainly no technical problem, but the preview version 5 has not been released yet. According to Sony, there are two problems encountered here - technical and legal issues.

(Sony Xperia Z3, Android N Developer Preview)

A person in charge of the Sony mobile phone division said on the media platform: “We are not trying to blame anyone and we will not shirk our responsibility. Unless we are able to pass the Google CTS certification, we may not be able to upgrade the Z3 to the Android 7.0 system.”

Google

This paragraph looks like Sony is blaming Google. So what exactly is Google CTS? In order for OEMs to obtain Google's approval (and use Google's various services such as the Play Store), each OEM must comply with Android's Compatibility Definition Document CDD, which means that it is basically done for vendors' software and hardware. Some basic requirements and definitions, then the equipment produced by the manufacturers also need to pass the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS).

First briefly explain, some people say that the update is not because Qualcomm refused to release the graphics driver of its own processor, Qualcomm said that the right to update or not in the hands of OEM manufacturers, Sony also said that Google's fault ~

Here's an extension of the question. Is there something in the CDD and CTS in Android 7.0 that caused the Nexus 5, HTC One M8, and Xperia Z3 to fail the audit? If it is a processor, we can analyze it in three points: the supported instruction set, GPU, and performance.

Let's take a closer look at the devices that will get the Android 7.0 update and then come up with the following information

The GPUs they use are Adreno 360, Adreno 430, and Mali-T860

The gap in processor performance between these devices is very large, from Helio P10, Snapdragon 410 to Snapdragon 820

Most devices use 64-bit processors

From most device GPUs, it should not be a GPU problem. Devices equipped with Adreno 306 can get Android 7.0 updates, and ARM's Mail GPU team told me that Android 7.0 supports Open GL ES and Vulkan in parallel. The Mali-T760 also supports Vulkan. Not only does the high-end GPUs such as the Mali-T880 or Mali-G71 support Vulkan, so it feels "Quadcom wouldn't release the graphics driver." This is a bit unbelievable.

Second, it should not be a performance factor that prevents you from being able to update Android 7.0. Even if you use a low-end device such as Xiaolong 410, you can still eat nougat, or you can install a device like MediaTek P1. The problem is that there is no indication that the performance of the Snapdragon 801 processor is not up to the standard of the system upgrade, and in my test, the Snapdragon 801 is faster than the Helio X10.

However, it is worth mentioning that most of the devices that can be upgraded have 64-bit processors. In other words, they are all ARMv8 architecture-based devices. So what's wrong with Xiaolong 800/801? However, even the Snapdragon 805 has no problem (32-bit processor on Nexus 6). If you don't turn off the GPU, it's not a performance issue, it's not a 32-bit or 64-bit issue, so what causes the problem? They cannot update the system.

ARMv8 and Advanced Encryption Standards

My conclusion is that Google has forced Full-Disk Encryption in Android 6.0. After this function is enabled, it will cause the read and write performance of the mobile phone to drop drastically. So the CDD also set a feature for this function. At the threshold, device encryption performance that supports full-disk encryption and advanced encryption standards needs to be higher than 50MiB/s.

Android 7.0 uses file-based encryption, which means encrypting individual files instead of encrypting the entire file system. This encryption method enables Android systems to implement more sophisticated encryption policies and also enables direct startup ( (Direct Boot) function, currently the CDD of Android 7.0 has not been announced yet, but it will certainly make AES encryption performance related regulations, then CTS will test it again.

An additional feature of the ARMv8 architecture's processor is hardware-encrypted instructions, which means that SoC-based SoCs such as the Helio P10, Snapdragon 410 and 820 processors can use this function and then encrypt the data with AES. It will be much faster than using software methods to encrypt.

So what Sony calls "technical issues and legal issues" should mean that the Xiaolong 800/801 cannot achieve the performance speed needed for ARMv8 chip AES encryption, because this processor does not support hardware encryption, and Qualcomm is Xiaolong 805. With the hardware required for this encryption feature, the Snapdragon 805 supports full-disk encryption and encryption for Android applications. This may also be the reason why Nexus 6 can be upgraded to Android 7.0, but other mobile phones with 32-bit processors may not seem to be able to upgrade.

My summary is that the Xiaolong 800/801 does not have any technical problems that make it unable to upgrade to Android 7.0. It is only that Google has certain requirements for encryption speed, and Xiaolong 800/801 cannot cross the threshold of CTS. The CDD standard.

Graphic translation from Android Authority

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