The Meizu 17 series will be upgraded to Android 11

This morning in its official Flyme profile on Weibo, the company announced that the Meizu 17 series will receive Android 11. Starting tomorrow, the recruitment of those wishing to participate in the closed beta tests begins, and the final version should be ready in the spring of 2021.

A week ago, Qualcomm and Google announced a collaboration to improve and expand Project Treble, to enable more devices with Snapdragon mobile platforms to run the latest Android operating system. The enhancements are intended to make it easier for OEMs to upgrade their Snapdragon-based devices to the latest version of Android without modifying chipset-specific Qualcomm software and using a common operating system software line.

As part of this collaboration with Google, Qualcomm will now support four versions of the Android OS and four years of security updates for all Snapdragon platforms using Project Treble enhancements, starting with the new Snapdragon 888 mobile platform.

This initiative is designed to allow faster upgrades to the Android OS with less time and resources on the part of manufacturers and a predictable software lifecycle for Snapdragon-based devices. The ultimate goal is to reduce market fragmentation in terms of Android versions and allow more users with Snapdragon-based devices to use the latest version of Android OS and current security patches.

Of course, this does not oblige manufacturers to make the mentioned number of updates to their devices. In addition, a budget smartphone, for example, cannot be expected to have the same long support as a flagship model. But anyway, the initiative of Google and Qualcomm is good and will definitely make it easier for manufacturers to upgrade the Android version.

It is now clear that the Meizu 18 series, which should be released in late spring, will be with Snapdragon 888. How many updates to the operating system will receive, however, will be seen. Let’s not forget that the devices of most Chinese manufacturers do not come with pure Android, but with their own company’s customization, such as Flyme by Meizu, whose update after upgrading the Android version requires a lot of extra time and resources.